Introduction to Meditation - What this practice really is

Today I’d like to give a short introduction to meditation, a practice so popular today. Indeed, everywhere we go, we hear the word meditation. Yoga and meditation, sitting meditation, walking meditation, just meditation, or whatever meditation that could be. Meditation became a generic term to describe the whole variety of practices that came from different religions and philosophies.

Therefore, to say “I am practicing meditation” is like saying “I am into fitness” without specifying what kind of fitness: jogging, body weight, weight lifting, other kinds of resistance or weight training, zumba, aerobic dancing, cycling, cardio kick boxing, etc. So saying I am doing meditation is just letting somebody know that you are practicing some kind of mental, emotional or spiritual fitness, whatever your program is. But that’s about it. There’s no word meditation in Yoga, Martial Arts, Buddhism, Daoism etc.

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The word itself, – “Meditation” originated from latin word meditari, which means to think, to contemplate. Practice of meditation is often associated in the West with Indian or Oriental culture. However, that is only a small example of what meditation really is. Let’s read a little, from this book:

“May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord.”

– Psalm 104:34

or this one:

“I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.”
– Psalm 119:15

Does this sound familiar to anybody? Yes, these are verses from the Bible. To be exact, that was ESV edition, or English Standard Version. I don’t remember how many times I found meditation mentioned in the Bible, but it was more than 30.

Want to know more about my perspective on Meditation? Listen to my podcast! …or just read the transcript below 😉

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Eugene

Introduction to Meditation Podcast Transcript

Hi everybody,

This is Eugene Sukhorukov coming to you from beautiful San Diego, CA. I hope you are having a great time in your corner of the world. Welcome back to my Healthy Positive Lifestyle podcast.

We are having a great night here in San Diego. I went outside for my evening workout, and the fog was quite dense. Though it feels like the temperature is at low 60’s. Which I think is not too bad for mid November midnight.

Well, this is episode #11. We successfully survived first 10, and we keep going. Hopefully somebody finds this program somewhat informative and useful. I know I do. It gives me time to rethink some basics I’ve been practicing and literally might have been taking for granted for the last 30 years, since the moment I learned them for the first time.

Today I’d like to discuss one of the most popular practices, and that is Meditation. Indeed, everywhere we go, we hear the word meditation. Yoga and meditation, sitting meditation, walking meditation, just meditation, or whatever meditation that could be. Meditation became a generic term to describe the whole variety of practices that came from different religions and philosophies.

May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord.

– Psalm 104:34

or this one:

I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.

– Psalm 119:15

I had some fun with that when I first came to the US. I was in a midwest surrounded by Christian people. I have nothing against Christians, I was baptized too. What makes me smile is when my Christian friends are trying to convince me that Meditation is some kind of evil I should stay away from by all means. This is when I can take the Bible out and show them the scripture about meditation.

So, MEDITATION has nothing to do with any Godly or demonic activity. It has nothing religious or philosophical in it. It is just a tool to help us to keep our attention on one specific subject or process for certain amount of time. That’s it. Nothing more to it!

Meditation to our mind is similar to what pencil is to the paper. What meditation is used for is a totally different topic for another discussion. Or rather many other discussions. But we are not getting into that today.

If meditation is just keeping the attention on the subject, does it mean that anything can be meditation?

I remember an old joke. A student came to the teacher and asked:

– Teacher, can I smoke during meditation?

– No, teacher said.

The student rephrased and asked again:

– Teacher, can I meditate during smoking?

– Why not?

Well, this was a joke. Nevertheless, many of us know about ceremonial pipe smoking practiced by Native Americans. That is a sacred ritual and is a form of meditation.

Yes, practically anything we do can become a form of meditation. People practice mindful eating, mindful breathing, mindful walking, mindful house cleaning, mindful gardening and many other forms of mindfulness. Not always they even realize it. Have you ever seen somebody so consumed by a book or a movie that they even don’t respond right away if you call them by name? This too can be considered a form of meditation. I am not saying whether it is good or bad, but it certainly fits the criteria: the mind in completely occupied by whatever the person is doing. Yes, TV can be a form of guided meditation. And really strong one, otherwise TV commercials would not cost as much as they do. Even millions of dollars per minute during super bawl. I think now is a good time to remind you to be careful about watching TV. Sometimes we may underestimate the effects of what we put in our brain…

I am not planning to discuss any specific meditative practice today, nor am I trying to save the Nation from stress and suffering. I’d just like to give you a general idea of what is available. You may try several groups in your area and chose the one you like. Just because you may not like one meditative technique does not mean that all meditations are alike. Just as if you try cycling you don’t not like, does not mean that all fitness groups are the same and all are practicing cycling. Try something else.

I did not study any specific classifications of meditation techniques. I am sure there are scholars who do that. I am just saying what I know so far from what I studied. If you have something to add or correct, please shot me an email.

All meditation techniques came out of some traditions. They would not be called meditations in those traditions, as we discussed earlier today. Simply because meditation is a western word with latin origin. For example, I hear a lot about Yoga meditations or breathing meditations offered in Yoga studios. There’s nothing wrong with that, I love those meditations. What I am trying to say here is that these yoga techniques have specific names. Breathing techniques in Yoga are called pranayama, and meditation in Yoga is Dhyana. So, Dhyana in Yoga will look different from Zazen, which is meditation in Zen Buddhism in Japan. They are quite different from Muraqaba, which is meditation technique in Sufi tradition. And Daoist meditation will be quite different from all of the above. Even though they may look somewhat similar from outside, they are tied into completely different philosophical concepts. Again, what picture are we drawing in our mind with our imaginary pencil?

Some meditations can be practiced as stand alone techniques without any religious background, others – can’t. For example, dhyana, or yoga meditation, can be practiced by anybody regardless of religious background. Another very popular technique is meditation of mindfulness. Though it comes from Buddhism, it can be practiced by anybody. Mindfulness is not tied into philosophy. It simply is the way to stop chaotic thought process and quietly look at the present moment. Stop for a second. Sit. Or Stand. Or whatever you do, do just one thing only. If you eat, you just enjoy your food, don’t try to stuff your face, talk, listen to the TV news and check text messages on your phone at the same time. You can just close your eyes for a few minutes and enjoy the present moment. Be here and now. Listen to the wind, or birds, or just listen to your breath..

If you don’t like sitting still, there is a large group of moving meditations. Walking labyrinth, for example. I think it comes from ancient Greek tradition. There are even labyrinth groups and societies all over the World. People like mindful walking.

If not labyrinth, there are walking meditation in Buddhism, Daoism, and many other philosophies. I have been practicing circle walking meditation since 1986. Well, this is a part of my martial art school, but circle walking can be practiced independently as a stand alone technique.

Of course, you can do mindful garden work or mindful house cleaning. They can be excellent forms of moving meditation, and quite useful, BTW. Remember Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid 1? Wax on – wax off… breath…

It can be knitting, crochet or other kinds of crafts.. I love crafts, and as a young teenager I could spend hours carving, engraving or doing similar type of work. My favorite is jewelry making, yes, the kind you see in jewelry stores.

Not all kinds of meditation can be easily practiced independently from their background. Every religion has some kind of meditation while worshiping God, even though they are not called meditations for the same reason I mentioned above. Even though I quoted the Bible earlier, nobody is usually using the word meditation in Christian tradition. Maybe because christians don’t wanna get mixed up with other kinds of meditation.

Native indians have excellent meditative traditions. Playing the Native American flute is part of it, and it is available to anybody today, but something like Sweat Lounge ceremony or Vision Quest cannot go without tight connection to the Native Traditions.

In spite of all the differences in various meditation traditions, they all have something in common. The purpose of meditation is to free our mind from chaotic thinking and concentrate on a single thought, or idea, or an object. The subject of meditation will change from one tradition to another. The idea of keeping the attention will remain the same. Again, I will compare it to the pencil drawing. The pencil, of meditation in our case, will be the same. It is just a tool. But the picture we are drawing with that pencil in our mind, will be different.

Subject for Meditations will be different in every tradition. For example, Zen Buddhism is teaching to observe the present. Just be here and now. Wherever you are, whatever you do, just observe the present moment without making opinions or passing judgement. Try this for at least 5 minutes, it is much harder than you think!

Oops, I did not even last 5 seconds without voicing my own opinion about the meditation itself. Right, I did it on purpose this time, but this has happened to me as well as to anybody I know. We all do that, and this is what we are trying to minimize by simple quiet sitting and observing the present moment.

Meditations can involve creating mental images, or pictures of certain objects or events, in our mind. They can be neutral by nature, like rotating balls, water stream, fountain, ocean waves etc. We can visualize and observe the energy flow inside our body. We can feel it. When I asked my teacher if this was real or imaginary, he said, nobody really knows. But it works, and we use it.

Another set of images can be directed towards reprogramming our mind. We may need to forget something, or change how we react to certain things, etc. Ancient warriors used this approach to prepare themselves to a certain assignment. These techniques have been refined by scientists, and they are widely used in NLP today. I use them too periodically. Also, as I was telling in my second podcast, I started my Path with Autogenic Training. This lead me to meditation, Autogenic Training is just a refined standardized set of suggestions, tailored to the western mind. And it has been very successfully used by athletes, businessmen, students, you name it. Yes, even by doctors, and I will be the first one to testify for that.

Some meditation techniques are using additional tools to help concentration. This can be visual, candle light for example, or audio, like bells, drums, flute etc. Warm stones placed on the body may become points to concentrate on.

Moving meditations can take various forms. Movement may be as small as rotating Chinese medicine balls in the hand, or it can be circle walking, labyrinth walking or just walking, dancing, practicing Chi-Kung, shooting arrow from the bow, raking gravel in Zen garden, painting calligraphy, tea ceremony, and many many others.

The purpose of this episode is to tell you that there are so many different styles of meditation, that if you did not like the first hundred you tried, there’s always something you may be interested in. You may be doing meditation and don’t even know that what you are doing is a type of meditation.

On the other hand, my teacher said that our approach is to start where you are, and let your body to adjust later. Sitting still with straight back for one hour may not be quite what you like or used to. But if you start with something, then as you change, later you may come to the practice which you did not even consider in the beginning. Eventually, meditation becomes not what you do, but who you are and how you live.

I am not trying to teach meditation through the podcast, and I am not trying to teach lifestyle over the internet. I would like to talk about various types of meditation. Also, on my video channel I may be doing presentations of different groups and clubs. You will find the link on my HealthyPositiveLifestyle.com web site.

I hope this was helpful at least to somebody in some way.

Now, let’s stop for a few moments.

Close your eyes, take several deep breath, listen how you inhale and exhale:

——————————–

If you’ve never done meditation before, then congratulations, you just had your first experience. See how easy it was? Do this few times a day and see what difference it makes. Send me an email at healthypositivelifestyle@gmail.com

I’d love to hear about your success!

Until then,

Smile, stay happy, keep the balance and make a wonderful day happen!

This was Eugene from San Diego, CA. Talk to you next time!

Want to know more about my perspective on Meditation? Listen to my podcast! 😉

You can subscribe to it in iTunes

Like us on FaceBook!

You can listen to the rest of my Holistic Life Story here

If you like this page, then please help me to promote PEACE and HARMONY. By clicking “Like” button you will join me in spreading PEACE and HARMONY around you! Make a wonderful day happen!
Peace!

Eugene