On Cultivating Motivation for "Meditation"
A friend sent me a message, saying she wanted to meditate and did not know where to start. And when she tried to practice meditation by following some instructions online, she could not shake off the fear that she was doing it wrong.
When I received her message, I felt like an imposter being asked for expert advice. Because in no way am I a regular meditator. And yet I felt that I did have things to share with her, perhaps precisely because I am a struggling meditator and by nature a nervous person but who yearns for a desired mental state. As a result of my habitual failures, I have devised many ways to motivate myself and began to re-define meditation in my own terms.
I believe someone who is liable to fail could perhaps give better advice than someone who has an easy time doing something right.
This is my response:
Hi YW, I feel flattered that you turn to me for this question. I myself am not a good meditator --I can tell you that -- but perhaps I have some ideas that may be helpful. For me, the most important thing in doing anything is motivation. And motivation is a mental resource that could be tapped infinitely; and needs to be managed constantly. I call it motivation management. It seems that you are already motivated to meditate. This is good. But often this motivation is not necessarily strong enough to counteract all the hassles in life. After all, we all want peace, but we never want it hard enough to actually practice it. The strength of motivation needs to be strong enough to topple the obstructing forces.
Motivation
My way of motivating myself to is to turn "meditation" into a project -- in its most mundane sense. In my work and studies, I love the idea of starting a project and dumping an incredible amount of energy onto perfecting that project. In this same spirit, I am turning "meditation" into a project, and I call it "cultivating space, depth and eternal silence day to day". Now "meditation" has the same importance as the project of writing a paper or organizing a conference, and I am ready to treat meditation as a central part of my life like my studies and work. We already know how to be dedicated when it comes to studying or finishing a task, and we just need to transfer that mundane skill and momentum into practicing "meditation".
An additional spice for inspiring motivation is having a tenacious curiosity for understanding its technique. I love being technical and the idea of mastering a craft or a skill. For example, I love training my memory, to the extent that I don't care about which language I want to use my memory for. Likewise, I sometimes just practice meditation for the sake of learning its "technology" rather than using it to achieve a certain goal. And indeed, meditation is an intricate technology that has its principles, nuances and specific mechanisms. Perhaps this article can give you a glimpse into the technical nature of meditation: https://tricycle.org/magazine/tibetan-buddhist-meditation/ . It takes 10, 000 hours to be a master in anything (if we believe in this rule). The same can be argued for the skill of meditation, which is not that much different from other skills like dancing or playing piano.
Redefine "Meditation"
You do not even have to sit down to meditate every day (for now). Meditation is a broad term that can be applied to many mental activities. George Dreyfus is a western Tibetan monk, also a scholar. On meditation, he wrote that when he memorized a text, he considered it a practice of meditation, because it helped him to concentrate and be free of distractive thoughts. So even when you are writing an essay or talking with someone, it can also be a meditation practice which is training your focus and cultivating peace. So why not re-define meditation as any exercise that helps you bring about a desired mental state (in this case, the focus; in other cases, peace, space, egolessness, etc).
If you are clear with the realization that peace or whatever desired quality is your goal, then meditation is only a tool. Thinking of meditation as a means rather than a goal, will relieve you of the fear that you have done it wrong. You will learn to trust your own experiences. Whatever works for you, you use it. You will handpick and create your own version of "meditation". And in fact, there are countless meditation techniques out there. If you think of meditation as one standardized technique, then you would always feel that you are meditating wrong. There will always be other meditators who will tempt you to learn their techniques.
Eventually, everything you do will be about meditation, because you are using all your activities to practice and strengthen a state of mind. As I wrote in another blog entry, "Prioritize the state of mind over the activity; being over doing. All activities only serve as the space of a workship, in which I deisgn and fashion a state of being that I want to abide in and project out. When my desired state of being is failing, start a short meditation session to re-set it.".
Knowledge
That being said, it will help you also tremendously to learn about the history of meditation. By knowing the specifics and features of various meditation traditions, you will know which technique you are using, and where you are in this messy "landscape" crowded with different meditation traditions. And you will also know what are some principles and technique that are shared by all meditation traditions. For example, observing the breath is the fool-proof method that you cannot do it wrong. Check out this video for a quick instruction. Just bear in mind that focusing on the breath is not the goal; the goal lies in that movement of eternal return -- back home to your breath"
you can also consider going to Vipassana meditation retreat. It is a 10-days retreat in which you cannot speak for ten days. You only meditate. I started to meditate in this retreat. There are several centers in the States and Canada. And it is free of charge.
When I received her message, I felt like an imposter being asked for expert advice. Because in no way am I a regular meditator. And yet I felt that I did have things to share with her, perhaps precisely because I am a struggling meditator and by nature a nervous person but who yearns for a desired mental state. As a result of my habitual failures, I have devised many ways to motivate myself and began to re-define meditation in my own terms.
I believe someone who is liable to fail could perhaps give better advice than someone who has an easy time doing something right.
This is my response:
Hi YW, I feel flattered that you turn to me for this question. I myself am not a good meditator --I can tell you that -- but perhaps I have some ideas that may be helpful. For me, the most important thing in doing anything is motivation. And motivation is a mental resource that could be tapped infinitely; and needs to be managed constantly. I call it motivation management. It seems that you are already motivated to meditate. This is good. But often this motivation is not necessarily strong enough to counteract all the hassles in life. After all, we all want peace, but we never want it hard enough to actually practice it. The strength of motivation needs to be strong enough to topple the obstructing forces.
Motivation
My way of motivating myself to is to turn "meditation" into a project -- in its most mundane sense. In my work and studies, I love the idea of starting a project and dumping an incredible amount of energy onto perfecting that project. In this same spirit, I am turning "meditation" into a project, and I call it "cultivating space, depth and eternal silence day to day". Now "meditation" has the same importance as the project of writing a paper or organizing a conference, and I am ready to treat meditation as a central part of my life like my studies and work. We already know how to be dedicated when it comes to studying or finishing a task, and we just need to transfer that mundane skill and momentum into practicing "meditation".
An additional spice for inspiring motivation is having a tenacious curiosity for understanding its technique. I love being technical and the idea of mastering a craft or a skill. For example, I love training my memory, to the extent that I don't care about which language I want to use my memory for. Likewise, I sometimes just practice meditation for the sake of learning its "technology" rather than using it to achieve a certain goal. And indeed, meditation is an intricate technology that has its principles, nuances and specific mechanisms. Perhaps this article can give you a glimpse into the technical nature of meditation: https://tricycle.org/magazine/tibetan-buddhist-meditation/ . It takes 10, 000 hours to be a master in anything (if we believe in this rule). The same can be argued for the skill of meditation, which is not that much different from other skills like dancing or playing piano.
Redefine "Meditation"
You do not even have to sit down to meditate every day (for now). Meditation is a broad term that can be applied to many mental activities. George Dreyfus is a western Tibetan monk, also a scholar. On meditation, he wrote that when he memorized a text, he considered it a practice of meditation, because it helped him to concentrate and be free of distractive thoughts. So even when you are writing an essay or talking with someone, it can also be a meditation practice which is training your focus and cultivating peace. So why not re-define meditation as any exercise that helps you bring about a desired mental state (in this case, the focus; in other cases, peace, space, egolessness, etc).
If you are clear with the realization that peace or whatever desired quality is your goal, then meditation is only a tool. Thinking of meditation as a means rather than a goal, will relieve you of the fear that you have done it wrong. You will learn to trust your own experiences. Whatever works for you, you use it. You will handpick and create your own version of "meditation". And in fact, there are countless meditation techniques out there. If you think of meditation as one standardized technique, then you would always feel that you are meditating wrong. There will always be other meditators who will tempt you to learn their techniques.
Eventually, everything you do will be about meditation, because you are using all your activities to practice and strengthen a state of mind. As I wrote in another blog entry, "Prioritize the state of mind over the activity; being over doing. All activities only serve as the space of a workship, in which I deisgn and fashion a state of being that I want to abide in and project out. When my desired state of being is failing, start a short meditation session to re-set it.".
Knowledge
That being said, it will help you also tremendously to learn about the history of meditation. By knowing the specifics and features of various meditation traditions, you will know which technique you are using, and where you are in this messy "landscape" crowded with different meditation traditions. And you will also know what are some principles and technique that are shared by all meditation traditions. For example, observing the breath is the fool-proof method that you cannot do it wrong. Check out this video for a quick instruction. Just bear in mind that focusing on the breath is not the goal; the goal lies in that movement of eternal return -- back home to your breath"
you can also consider going to Vipassana meditation retreat. It is a 10-days retreat in which you cannot speak for ten days. You only meditate. I started to meditate in this retreat. There are several centers in the States and Canada. And it is free of charge.
Best of luck!
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