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There's a Zen saying that goes:
“You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day. Unless you're too busy, then you should sit for an hour.”
When I first learned about meditation, I was a bit skeptical. Isn't sitting there doing nothing a waste of time? If I'm already so busy, isn't sitting there doing nothing going to make things worse for me?
I'm no expert when it comes to meditation, but after learning more about meditation from various teachers and actually practicing it for a few years, I now see the truth to that claim. Recently, I chatted with some friends about meditation, and I realized a lot of people don't understand meditation (like me when I first started), so I'm writing this article to help others gain a better understanding of meditation and hopefully benefit from it.
Here is a clickable table of contents to help you navigate this article:
Part 1: The Usefulness and Importance of Mediation
Billionaire investor Ray Dalio said,
"The quality of your life ultimately depends on the quality of your decisions."
A quote attributed Einstein goes,
"We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them."
Most of our problems arise from a mental state of stress, worry, anxiety, fear, and other negative emotions. In these states, we are much more likely to make bad decisions, leading to bad consequences. Meditation helps us to calm our minds and achieve a state of tranquility, relaxation, and ease. When we are in this state, we can make better decisions and work more productively.
Happiness researcher Gretchen Rubin said,
"Ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree that a key—maybe the key—to a happy life is strong relationships."
The energy that we give others is the energy that we'll attract back. If we give others negative energy, such as impatience, blame, and annoyance, that will attract opposition, defensiveness, and annoyance from them as well. Meditation helps to bring out calm, kindness, and positive energy in us, and when we give that to others, it attracts that from them back, leading to happier relationships and more positive conflict resolution.
Over the years, I've heard some clever analogies that helped me understand the usefulness and importance of meditation.
Analogy 1: Cleaning The Home
One analogy is that our mind is like a home that we live in. Our environment influences our state of mind, so if we live in a disordered environment, our mood will naturally become disordered. If we live in a clean and orderly environment, our mood will be good too.
Throughout the days and years, our mind has accumulated a lot of dust and garbage, making the environment rather stuffy and dirty. Meditation is like cleaning the home and clearing out the garbage.
In other words, one goal of meditation is for our mind to feel light and refreshed afterwards. When we bring this kind of mood to our daily life, everything seems better. Moreover, cleaning needs to be done regularly, so meditation needs to be done regularly too.
Analogy 2: Sharpening The Tool
Another analogy is that our mind is our most important tool. If we want to do things, we usually need tools, and the better the tool, the more effective our work. When we use our minds a lot, it gets tired and dull, just like a tool slowly gets worn out. Meditation is analogous to sharpening the tool.
When our mind is clear and refreshed, it becomes sharp again, and we can do our work much more productively.
Analogy 3: Cleaning The Mirror
A third analogy is that our mind is like a mirror, and wisdom is the ability to see things clearly. This blog is titled the Weekly Wisdom Blog, so of course, we value wisdom a lot here, and meditation is key to unlocking our innate wisdom.
When the mind is tranquil, it is analogous to a clean mirror: it can see and reflect everything clearly, objectively, and holistically. When there is nothing in front of the mirror, the mirror has nothing in it. When something comes, the mirror reflects it clearly. When the thing leaves, the mirror becomes empty again.
Similarly, if we maintain a tranquil mind, then we can see everything with wisdom, allowing us to make effective decisions. When we don't need to use the mind, the mind is tranquil, still, empty, and at ease. When matters come, the mind is able to respond promptly, effectively, and with wisdom. When the matters leave, the mind returns to tranquility, stillness, and emptiness.
However, most of us have a dusty, agitated, and full mind. We have lots of wandering thoughts (dust) and biases (marks on the mirror), which prevent the mirror from reflecting things clearly, or even distorting the images. We often think of the past (marks left on the mirror) or worry about the future (making up an image when nothing is in front of the mirror).
Think back to a time when you made a bad decision. Did you make that decision in a calm, tranquil state of mind? Chances are, you probably made it in an agitated state of mind full of strong emotions, such as desire, anger, stress, impatience, annoyance, worry, anxiety, confusion, fear, even excitement.
When we are in a certain negative emotional state, thinking often exacerbates that state. For example, if I really want something that I know isn't good, then the more I think about it, the more those negative emotions grow. If I'm angry at someone, the more I think about it, the angrier I get. Of course, one way to treat those negative emotions is to bring out proper and moral thoughts, such as kindness, empathy and humility, but in that negative emotional state, this is quite difficult to do. Meditation helps to calm down our agitated state of mind and wipe that mirror clean.
When we calm our minds down, we can finally notice the specks of dust (emotions and wandering thoughts) and marks (biases), notice the impact they are having on our state of mind, and choose to let it go or wipe it clean. In a tranquil state of mind, proper thoughts can arise much easier, and they will be much more powerful than in an agitated state of mind.
Analogy 4: Letting The Water Settle
Yet another analogy along similar lines is that our mind is like a container of water. When the mind is tranquil and still, the water is still, and it reflects everything clearly. All our emotions and wandering thoughts are analogous to shaking that container of water, such that now there are ripples and bubbles, which then prevent the water from reflecting things clearly.
Meditation is analogous to letting that water calm down again. We notice the bubbles and ripples, and we stop shaking the container. We simply relax and calm down, we bring our awareness to the present moment rather than thinking about the past or future, and then those ripples and bubbles naturally fade away.
Scientific Perspective
From a scientific perspective, our emotions correspond with our emotional brain, which is the inner brain (amygdala). Logical thinking corresponds with the pre-frontal cortex, which is the outer part of the brain.
Normally, our pre-frontal cortex can exert control over our inner brain, and we can do things that we may not really want to do but that we know are good for us. However, when our emotions become excessive, even though we know doing something is not good, we can't seem to control ourselves.
In other words, the emotional brain is too strong and the pre-frontal cortex can't control it with rationality. In this case, doing a calming activity like meditation helps the emotional brain calm down, then the pre-frontal cortex is able to take control with its rationality again.
Part 2: Ways to Meditate
There are six common forms of meditation:
Mindfulness meditation
Breathing meditation
Body scan meditation
Visualization meditation
Loving-kindness meditation
Mantra meditation
Other meditative activities
Note that these are not mutually exclusive, and you can combine different forms together if you like.
1: Mindfulness or Awareness Meditation
Mindfulness meditation is basically practicing being in the present moment. That can involve focusing on our natural breathing, a sound, or bodily sensations, or we can observe our thoughts and emotions without judgment. We can sit down in a comfortable position, close our eyes (or keep them open but looking downwards), relax our shoulders and body, and then tune into the greater awareness that we all have.
We'll notice that we are not our thoughts and emotions. We'll notice that our thoughts and emotions are impermanent; they come and go, like clouds floating by in the sky. As our mind calms down deeper and longer, the clouds start to disappear, and the bright sun (representing our innate tranquility and wisdom) that was always there becomes clearly visible.
When we attune with the greater awareness inside of us, we detach ourselves from our thoughts and emotions, so that their reins on us become weaker. Instead, we become the master, and we can choose to ignore or let go of those thoughts and emotions. When we (as the greater awareness) notice the impermanent nature of our wandering thoughts and emotions, their effect on us becomes weaker.
In Buddhism, the practice of Zen is observing the impermanent nature of our thoughts and emotions and then letting them go, thereby achieving a mind of purity and tranquility. We all have the deeply ingrained habit of wandering thoughts, and these thoughts are analogous to dust falling on the mirror. But when we practice awareness and keep cleaning off that dust, eventually, less and less dust falls. When we maintain a mind of tranquility for a long enough time, our inner wisdom flows out.
From a physiological perspective, when our mind is tranquil, our pre-frontal cortex can bring out our rational and moral thoughts with more ease and strength, allowing us to overcome the inner brain's agitated thoughts and emotions.
A lot of people get frustrated at meditation because they feel like it's impossible to stop wandering stops from arising (I've been there too). But actually, the practice of meditation isn't to not have thoughts. The practice of meditation is to notice those thoughts arise, to remember that we are not those thoughts and emotions, that we have the power to ignore and let go of those thoughts and emotions, and then let them go and return to awareness of the present moment. Every time we do this, we strengthen our "meditation muscle".
An important point about mindfulness meditation is that we want to sustain this state of mindfulness and awareness outside the meditation. So when we get up from our meditation and go eat, we want to eat mindfully, chew slowly, and really taste the food. When we go outside for a walk, really notice the scenery and feel the fresh air. When we listen to someone talk, really give them our full attention rather than thinking about our response or other things. In this way, the benefits of meditation truly extend into our daily life as opposed to just when we're sitting down and meditating, allowing us to live more fully and appreciate life more.
2: Breathing Meditation
This is basically like mindfulness meditation, except that the focus is on our breathing. There are so many unconscious physiological activities in that body that we cannot control, but one thing we can control is our breathing. This is really powerful because our state of mind and our breathing influence each other.
When we have negative emotions such as stress, anxiety, worry, anger, annoyance, fear, etc., our breathing changes. It usually becomes faster and more shallow, which corresponds to a state of fight-or-flight (sympathetic state). When we do breathing meditation, our goal is to calm the body with slow, deep breathing, which puts our body into a state of rest-and-repair (parasympathetic state). To do this, we want a longer exhale.
For example, we can inhale for a count of 4 and exhale for a count of 8, which is a 1:2 ratio of inhale to exhale. If that's too difficult, we can inhale for a count of 4 and exhale for a count of 6, or even inhale for a count of 4 and exhale for a count of 4. The longer the exhale, the stronger the relaxation effect.
If you've been doing a 1:2 ratio for a while and start to get sleepy, and you want to continue the meditation, then you can use a 1:1 ratio. Of course, doing breathing meditation before bed is a great way to induce sleepiness, and you can definitely do it lying down on the bed.
Aside from the inhalation to exhalation time ratio, we also need to breathe deeply. Shallow breathing goes into the chest. In breathing meditation, we want to breathe fully into the belly; this is called abdominal breathing. This kind of breathing really relaxes the body. We can also notice our body and muscles relaxing during the exhales.
3: Body Scan Meditation
This type of meditation is often done to help relax before bed and fall asleep, though you can use it anytime to relax the mind and body. You can do this in a sitting position or lying down. Basically, we scan through the entire body from top to bottom. When we bring our awareness to that part of the body, we relax it.
For example, we start at the top of our head, and we imagine the muscles there becoming relaxed. Then we move to our forehead, and we imagine it becoming relaxed, those wrinkles removed. Then we move our awareness to our eyebrows and imagine them becoming relaxed. We continue on to the eyes, the nose, the cheeks, the jaws, the neck, the shoulders, the arms, the fingers, all the way down to the toes.
4: Visualization Meditation
I learned about visualization meditation from Dr. Joe Dispenza in his books Becoming Supernatural and Overcoming the Habit of Being Yourself.
He explains that when we imagine or visualize something in our mind, our body responds as if it were real. For example, if we imagine a juicy orange entering our mouth, our mouth naturally starts to salivate even though there's no orange there!
In Overcoming the Habit of Being Yourself, he gave an example of a study from the 1992 Journal of Neural Psychology. Subjects were divided into three groups. Group A did a finger exercise for five one-hour training sessions per week for four weeks. Group B mentally rehearsed the same exercise on the same timetable without physically moving the finger. Group C did nothing (control group).
At the end of the study, Group A had 30% greater finger strength than Group C. This is no surprise. But surprisingly, Group B had a 22% increase in finger strength! Similar experiments with participants practicing piano or doing bicep curls found similar results. This shows that visualization really does have a significant and noticeable impact on our body.
The body scan meditation mentioned earlier is kind of like a visualization meditation in that we are visualizing each part of the body becoming relaxed. We can also visualize calming scenes, like lying down on a warm beach, bathing in the warm sun, listening to the soothing sound of ocean waves. Our body will respond like we are really in that environment.
Dispenza also teaches us to use visualization to change our emotional habits and personality. This is very important because our emotions and thoughts create our energy field, and our energy field then attracts our reality, so when we have negative emotions, we tend to attract negative events, and when we have elevated emotions, we'll attract good events into our life. For more on this, check on my article on quantum physics and manifestation.
For example, if we easily get angry at a certain person or situation, that anger will only make things worse. We can then use visualization meditation to change things. We can visualize ourselves encountering that person or situation, and responding in a calm and compassionate way. We do this over and over again in our mind, which literally changes the mental wiring in our brain, such that the next time we truly encounter this situation in real life, we are much more able to respond in the way we visualized.
Similarly, we can use visualization to prepare ourselves for the future events. For example, if you have a big presentation or interview coming up, you can visualize yourself being calm, smiling, and enjoying the process. It's also helpful to visualize the things that can go wrong, and then visualize ourselves responding in a calm manner and resolving the problem smoothly.
5: Loving-Kindness Meditation
Dr. Dispenza explains that different emotions have different energy levels. Emotions related to stress, desire, anger, worry, and fear are all negative emotions, and they have a low energy level. On the other hand, elevated emotions like love, gratitude, and freedom have high energy, and these are good for us.
Loving-kindness meditation is a type of visualization meditation where we visualize loving energy inside of us, and then we give that loving energy to others. For example, we can imagine someone we love dearly, or simply imagine loving energy inside of us. Once we feel that love, we can imagine it as a ball of energy coming outside of us. Then let that loving energy grow and cover your whole body. Then send that energy to someone who you feel needs it, or to someone you dislike as a way to let go of your negative emotions towards them.
Loving-kindness meditation helps bring out a state of love and compassion. In this state, we naturally overcome negative emotions. It's kind of hard to feel stressed and upset when we feel a lot of love and gratitude in our hearts. After we get up from our meditation, we want to sustain that elevated state of love and compassion as long as possible, such that we give others a soothing energy in our interactions.
Moreover, when we truly feel elevated emotions, and we visualize ourselves giving that energy to others, they actually do benefit! In Becoming Supernatural, Dr. Dispenza describes experiments he did where he got a group of 550 to 1500 students together. Then he picked 50 to 75 people randomly to sit in the front of the room.
During the meditation session, the people all cultivated and sustained an elevated emotion. Then he told all the students to send the energy of their elevated emotions into the space of the whole room. Additionally, he told them to have the intention of wanting the greatest good or the students sitting in the front rows, for their lives to be enriched, their bodies healed, and mystical experiences to find them.
The result? All those people sitting in the front row got coherent and elevated emotions, measured by their electromagnetic fields, at the same time, in the same meditation, on the same day. They repeated this over and over and found consistent results, thereby proving that we can impact other people to feel elevated emotions with our elevated emotions.
Also, just from our own experiences, we know that emotions are contagious: if others give us a bad mood, our mood becomes bad too; if others give us a bright smile, we naturally feel better too.
6: Mantra Meditation
I first learned about mantra meditation from the book Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty. He explains that a mantra is a spiritual sound expressing thought and meaning, and it summons a power greater than ourselves. "Mantra" literally means “to transcend the mind.”
Sound transports us to a different time and space. For example, when we hear a favorite childhood song, we are transported back to that time and space. Chanting a mantra uses the power of sound. Jay explains,
“The repetition of sound purifies us. The sound is immersive, like giving our souls a regular bath. You can’t put one drop of water on your body and be clean—you have to go underneath the water.”
The oldest, most common mantra is Om, which has the meaning of "infinite knowledge". The vibrations from Om have been shown to stimulate the vagus nerve, which decreases inflammation and calms the emotional brain.
If you don’t want to chant a spiritual sound, then you can use affirmations, which can be anything that inspires you, such as
“At your own pace, in your own time.”
“This too shall pass.”
"I'm happy, I'm healthy, I'm stress free."
"I can do it."
"Amor Fati" (which means love and embrace everything that happens)
I also learned about mantra meditation from Venerable Jing Kong, and he explained that the purpose of a mantra is to cease our wandering thoughts, thereby purifying the mind. A mantra has a meaning, but when a teacher gives a mantra to the student, the teacher doesn't tell the student the meaning. Therefore, the mantra has no meaning to the student, and so the student won't think about anything during the chanting. The student just keeps chanting that mantra in their head, and this mantra replaces all other thoughts. When we attain a state of single-minded focus on the mantra, wandering thoughts perish, and our inner wisdom flows out.
However, many people might not be willing to chant a mantra if they don't know what it means, so then we tell them what it means. For example, Venerable Jing Kong recommends us to chant "Amitabha". He explains that "Ah" means "non", "mita" means "to measure", "ba" means enlightenment, so "Amitabha" means "non-measurable amount of enlightenment", or "infinite enlightenment." It can also mean infinite life (time) and infinite light (space, wisdom). Who wouldn't want to have infinite life and light?
Enlightenment includes many things. Venerable Jing Kong explained that the enlightened mind is one of sincerity, purity/tranquility, equality (no discrimination), wisdom, and compassion. These are all connected parts of one whole. When our mind is tranquil from meditation, our innate wisdom and compassion naturally flows out.
So when chanting "Amitabha", we ideally don't think about anything. We just listen with awareness to our chanting. But wandering thoughts will inevitably arise. If we struggle to calm the mind down, then we can re-direct our mind towards visualization. We can also visualize ourselves emitting infinite light and bathing in that light, and this light gives us health and wisdom. After our mind calms down, we can return to pure mantra meditation.
In daily life, we can also chant Amitabha in our minds, and when doing so, it should serve as a reminder to keep a tranquil, sincere, and compassionate mind towards everything we do and everyone we interact with.
7: Other Meditative Activities
If meditation is just not your cup of tea, you can look for other activities that you enjoy and that have meditative qualities, making the mind feel relaxed and refreshed. Examples include yoga, Qigong, listening to soothing music, taking a warm bath, drawing, knitting, going for a run, etc. What works for each person is different, and it's important that you find what works for you.
Part 3: My Experience
My first experience with meditation was in university. During exam season, everyone is very stressed, so my university had a meditation class for students. I attended, and there, I learned about visualizing my thoughts as clouds passing by in the sky, and relaxing the body through deep breathing. Overall, I had a good first experience with meditation.
Later, I experimented with all types of guided meditation. I also started learning Buddhism, and my teacher taught me to chant "Amitabha". Currently, I do both visualization and mantra meditation daily.
Breathing Meditation
I had a short period of time where I tried a form of breathing meditation called the Wim Hof breathing method. One session only takes 11 minutes, and I find that it's really effective at refreshing my mind. It's basically a short period of fast but deep breathing, followed by an extended period of breath holding, repeated three times. This breath holding lasts for over a minute, but it feels very easy and peaceful.
After doing it for a couple weeks, I even held my breath for three minutes. During the breath holding, my mind feels very clear and fresh. I remember one time, I got really angry at something, so I went to do this Wim Hof breathing, and after two sessions, I felt much better. If I ever need a quick way to calm down, I know I have this as a tool.
Visualization
For visualization meditation, I do it for about five to ten minutes every morning. My goal is to become a better version of myself, to eliminate bad habits and create good ones. Basically, I think about common situations that make me upset or annoyed, and then I visualize myself responding to these situations in the way of a true philosopher. When I later encounter these situations in real life, I can more easily remember the ideal way I'd like to respond and actually behave that way, thereby manifesting a better future.
For example, I visualize people criticizing me unfairly (and if this happened recently, I'll re-play that scene in my head), and I visualize myself being calm and humble instead of annoyed and wanting to defend myself. I imagine myself saying, "Thank you for letting me know" instead of explaining myself and criticizing them back for jumping to conclusions.
I then visualize them getting influenced by my calm and humble energy, and then they stop feeling the desire to criticize anymore. Other examples include being patient and calm when I am in a rush and when others delay my time, or being kind and respectful towards those who treat me rudely (I replay past events and visualize myself responding better).
Mantra Chanting
As for mantra chanting, my teacher taught me that it's important to start off small and easy, and then gradually add more as our ability and endurance improves. If we start off trying to meditate for 30 minutes or an hour, we'll feel like it's too difficult to stay focused that long, and then we'll get demotivated and stop meditating. Therefore, I started off by chanting "Amitabha" out loud for just 10 minutes in the morning after my visualization meditation.
I also learned that the goal of mantra meditation is to enter a mental state of tranquility, like cleaning the mirror, or like letting the water settle down. We use the mantra "Amitabha" to replace all thoughts. If other thoughts arise, that's fine, just ignore them and bring your awareness back to the mantra.
The analogy my teacher gave is that those wandering thoughts are like uninvited guests in your home (mind). The more you tell them to leave, the more attention they get, so they feel entertained and want to stay. But if you simply ignore them, they'll get bored of trying to annoy you, and they'll give up and leave.
When I do mantra meditation, I usually sit down in a lotus position, close my eyes, and chant very slowly (like Ahhhh, Meeeee, Taaaaa, Baaaaa). When I say these sounds, it's kind of like a long exhale, which helps to put my body into a parasympathetic state (rest and relaxation state). I don't breathe deeply though, I just breathe naturally, because my focus is on chanting the mantra, not on breathing. I focus my awareness on the sound of my chanting, on the sound traveling from my mouth to my ears, and on the silence between the syllables. I also focus on the movement of my mouth as I say the different syllables.
When I am able to focus my senses and awareness on the mantra, I can feel my mind becoming still, at ease, and relaxed, and when wandering thoughts do arise, I can notice it relatively quickly and then bring my attention back to the mantra. The morning session is great because my mind is relatively calm in the morning already, so the meditation feels easier. Starting the morning with a clear mind is a nice way to set the mood for the day.
I later thought to myself, "Maybe this would be a great way to refresh and sharpen my mind after it is tired from hours of mental work." Hence, I decided to add another 10 minute meditation session in the evening after dinner. This is important for me because I continue doing mental work in the evenings.
At first, there were some days when I didn't want to meditate after dinner because I felt like I have too many things to do, and it's not worth the time to meditate. Then I remind myself that if I bring this impatient and agitated state of mind to my work, it's going to affect the quality. It's precisely because I feel like I have no time that I need to meditate and calm my mind down. Besides, it's just 10 minutes, can you really not spare 10 minutes?
So I go and meditate, and oftentimes, I'll suddenly remember something that I should do that I forgot about, or I'll suddenly think of a better way of doing things. When this happened multiple times, I was convinced that meditation is definitely worth the time! Even if this doesn't happen, I still reduce those feelings of anxiety and impatience, and I'm able to bring a more relaxed attitude and sharper mind to my work.
At night, I do mantra meditation and maybe with deep breathing while lying on the bed to help myself fall asleep. Since I chant in my head, I'm able to do deep breathing at the same time. I find that if I think about things that happened in the day or about the future, my mind tends to get agitated and go down rabbit holes. But if I chant "Amitabha" silently in my mind while doing deep breathing, it's much easier for me to fall asleep.
Moreover, the great thing about mantra meditation is that it's very convenient. We can do it anytime throughout the day so long as we don't need to do mental work. For example, we can chant the mantra in our mind while eating, doing chores, going for a walk, waiting in line, etc. One goal of the focused meditation sessions is to create a strong mental association between "Amitabha" and a feeling of tranquility. That way, whenever our emotional state becomes agitated during daily life, we just start chanting "Amitabha" in our mind, and we can immediately start to feel calmer.
Longer Meditation
My teacher also told me that if I really want to experience the benefits of mantra meditation, I need to make some time to go deep. Thus, I decided to try doing a two-hour meditation session once a week. The goal is to stay in that tranquil state of mind longer and to develop the habit of chanting the mantra without conscious effort. After all, "Amitabha" is the Buddha of infinite life and light, so we can develop the habit of always chanting "Amitabha" in our mind, we'll always be attracting good fortune and wisdom.
A two-hour meditation session is very different from a 10-minute one. If I sit there for 30 minutes with my eyes-closed, I start getting sleepy. Therefore, I changed my method to a walking meditation, where I walk around in a big circle while chanting "Amitabha". I still chant very slowly, and I take one step with each syllable.
I do find that walking around with my eyes open helps my mind stay alert, but it also makes it easier to have wandering thoughts. To help me focus, I use the ten-recitation method. Basically, I subconsciously keep count and chant 10 "Amitabha" as one cycle. I don't actually count "Amitabha 1, Amitabha 2, Amitabha 3…", but I know which count I'm on.
If I get distracted by wandering thoughts, then I'll lose count, in which case I restart again at 1. If I got on a train of thought, I'll notice that my chanting speed unconsciously became faster than usual, in which case I adjust the speed back to a slower speed. Once in a while, I'll also pause after a cycle, which serves as a short test, then I start another cycle.
If I still have a lot of wandering thoughts even after using the ten-recitation method (which is common), I can add visualization. For example, I might visualize a field of light emitting from my body, expanding outwards towards my neighborhood, the Earth, and the whole universe, and this light brings tranquility and good fortune to everyone it touches. Or I imagine Amitabha Buddha above me, shining his light on me and giving me blessings.
If something repeatedly pops up in my mind during meditation, then I'll stop and tell myself, "Just let it go for this meditation session. Nothing bad will happen in 2 hours. After your meditation session, your mind will be calmer, and then you'll have more wisdom. Then you can think about it."
Other times, if I've already been meditating for quite a while, I'll stop, stretch for a minute, and then continue; this serves as a short break for the mind. After all, focus takes energy. If I get tired from walking, I can sit down and meditate. But after doing this for a few weeks, I'm able to do the walking meditation for the full two hours.
Similar to the evening meditations, I sometimes remember important things that I have to do, or I get sudden ideas during meditation. I'm not trying to get these, but they just come up. In that case, I will write it down on my phone and then keep meditating.
After a few weeks of practicing mantra meditation, I started to notice that the mantra sometimes arises in my mind by itself, and it sort of chants in the back of my mind without too much conscious effort. Moreover, when I get impatient, annoyed, or flustered, I can more easily remember to chant Amitabha and breathe slower, and I do feel that it helps me to calm down.
When my mind is more serene and still from meditation, I can really notice when other people's minds are agitated (by the speed of their speech and movements). When this happens, I don't become agitated with them; instead, I make a conscious effort to chant the mantra in my head and maintain my serenity. When they notice my calmness, they might get influenced too.
Conclusion
Everyone agrees that we need to make time to brush our teeth, to take a shower, to clean the house. Well, meditation is very similar, except it's cleaning our mind. A clear mind is the root of good decision making and mental effectiveness, so meditation is very important and useful.
Moreover, happy relationships are key to a happy life, and if we want happy relationships, we need to bring positive energy to our everyday interactions because the energy we give others is the energy we'll attract back. Meditation helps us to bring out elevated emotions like compassion, gratitude, and joy. When we give this kind of energy to others, we will attract that kind of energy back.
So seriously, if you don't have time to meditate, you probably need it even more. There are many forms of meditation out there, and it's worth the effort to experiment with them and find a method that works for you.
Weekly Wisdom # 323
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