How to Meditate? My Suggestion - "Vital Reading"

 

Meditation Described Briefly (by spirituality teacher Roger Walsh)

Meditation is a universal practice found in practically all spiritual-wisdom traditions. It is basically a concentration technique that has two key elements: 

1. First, choosing a focus for attention. This is usually one's breathing (in and out). But it can be extended to an emotion, a thought, a part of one's body, etc. It can even be applied to a sacred word or mantra (as it is done in the prayer-practice known as "centering prayer"). 
2. Second, when one notices that one's attention has wandered elsewhere, gently bring it back to the point of focus.

The heart of the method is to gently turn your attention back when it wanders to other places. Our minds--as Buddhism often teaches--are like restless, wild monkeys that jump from tree to tree ("the monkey mind"). When one can tame this restless, wandering mind and train it to focus on something, then the spiritual path can progress in earnest. (cf. Roger Walsh, Essential Spirituality, pp. 155-56)

A Suggestion on How to Meditate - A "Vital Reading"

For the absolute beginner, I would recommend starting with 10 minutes every day and aim to expand that eventually to 15~20 minutes. For people who are especially addicted to being mentally engaged (often, distracted) with technological gadgets, that can seem daunting. But it is necessary to resolve and set out to "just do it" (as the Nike ad says).

There is a popular spiritual practice in the Catholic Christian tradition called the "Lectio Divina." That means "Sacred [Divine] Reading." It is a time-tested and proven method of reading the scriptures in a prayerful manner. It is based on a simple method that can be summarized in the following steps: (1) Read -- (2) Think -- (3) Pray -- (4) Act.

I will adopt and tweak a bit the 'Sacred Reading' method and propose it to beginners or people who want to progress further in their meditation practice. First, I'll rename the practice to "Lectio Vitalis" (Latin) which I take to mean "a life-sustaining reading." We can call it in English "Vital Reading" for the time being and take "vital" to mean primarily "life-giving, life-sustaining, life-affirming," but also as "important" for cultivating and sustaining one's spirituality.

I name it this way because this practice is meant to sustain us in our life and help us both to go deeper within and also transcend ourselves. In this way, we tap into the resources that--the spiritual wisdom traditions say--can sustain, affirm and lead us to greater peace, balance, and wholeness. It is not only meant for religious believers but for everyone as long as they feel that they can use meditation for its many potential health, psychological, and spiritual benefits, as even science clearly shows nowadays. It is described as a "reading" because it presupposes an attitude of openness and listening to what life itself is teaching us - adopting an attitude that Zen Buddhism calls "the Beginner's Mind" (初心者). All of that is what the expression "vital reading" implies. 

The method I propose here will take the traditional lectio divina steps with a few tweaks. Instead of "Read" as step one, I will add--what I think--is a more fundamental first step. Let me propose the following steps then (BReTMA):

1. Breathe
2. Read (or Recall)
3. Think
4. Meditate
5. Act

The Method: Nuts and Bolts

The different steps explained more in detail:

1. Breathe - This is the time to quiet and calm your heart and mind. Concentrate exclusively for a short while on the breath (deep in-breath / deep out-breath) until you experience some measure of inner calm. Note well that in many contemporary explanations of meditation (whether secular or broadly "Eastern"), this first phase is already what meditation is all about. This is what one should mainly be doing during one's meditation time. If you feel that you want to adopt that practice because you feel that going to the other steps would "clutter" your meditation practice too much, that is of course OK and good. Refer to the simple description of Roger Walsh above. If you feel you need more structure though, you can proceed to the other steps.
2. Read / Recall - You can use a literal text here or--what I'd like to call-- a "life text". I use "text" in the wider sense of the term. A "text" can refer to practically anything (an event, something you read, something you witnessed, a phrase you heard in a movie, a beautiful nature scene, etc.) that struck you or stood out for you recently and to which you would like to direct some reflective and meditative attention. Remember: when something "strikes" you, that usually means you need to discern some important lesson from that thing because it has a special significance for where you are in life now. If you use a written text, it can be your religious tradition's scripture (Bible, Quran, Teachings of the Buddha, etc.) or a book with short excerpts that is good for meditation purposes (for example, short passages from spiritual teachers or collections of great teachings). It is not advisable to read passages that are too long.
3. Think - This is when you reflect on what you have read (or the "thing" that stood out to you from life). This phase is when we engage in the active, cognitive reflection on what we have just "read". We actively discourse about it interiorly, in our minds: trying to understand more deeply its meaning and implications, drawing out conclusions, making connections, etc. We can also ask ourselves: What does the text say to me? Religious believers can also incorporate prayer into this phase.
4. Meditate - I differentiate "think" from "meditate." In this "meditate" phase, we tone down the busy interior cognitive/reflective activities going on in our minds about the text, select a key word, phrase, or thought (like a mantra or a "sacred word" in the practice called "Centering Prayer") and savour it, make it sink deeply into ourselves by slowly repeating it for a while. This is a move away from active thinking to a more "contemplative" phase in the process.
5. Act - We end the session by asking ourselves 'How will I act in response to the reading I've just done?'. Then we go back to life and try to practice our resolution.

Those steps might make the 10-15 minutes of 'Vital Reading' survivable for absolute beginners, right? For more advanced practitioners, this process will definitely be "too busy," way too active and structured. Feel free to tweak it as you see fit. Those steps are not set in stone at all. The main goal is  to train your mind to be less distracted and focus for a little while on a point that will hopefully lead to more interior peace, balance, and wisdom.