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Meditation in daily life

Buddha-Dipa

Buddha sculpture at Dipabhavan med­i­ta­tion centre, Koh Samui, Thailand

1. Introduction
The Dalai Lama wrote in his book A­wak­en­ing the Mind, Light­en­ing the Heart, p. 72-73: “To make our spir­i­tu­al prac­tice stable and endur­ing, we must train con­sis­tent­ly. A fair-weather prac­ti­tion­er has little hope of a­chiev­ing his or her goal. It is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to prac­tice the teach­ings day after day, month after month, year after year. [...] Dur­ing the (med­i­ta­tion) ses­sion we are actually re­fu­el­ing or re­charg­ing our en­er­gy to be able to prac­tice after the ses­sion.
Therefore the more we are able to mould the mind dur­ing the ses­sion, the better we will be able to face dif­fi­cul­ties after­wards.”

This under­lines the im­por­tance of stick­ing to a reg­ular formal med­i­ta­tion prac­tice. It is even more im­por­tant to carry these skills into our daily ac­tiv­ities. The fol­low­ing will give some hints about how to start and con­tinue your med­i­ta­tion prac­tice out­side of a med­i­ta­tion center.

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2. Formal med­i­ta­tion
2.1 Time of the day
Set up a certain time of the day for your for­mal prac­tice. The best time, in my opin­ion the only time with some chance of suc­cess, is the early morn­ing. If nec­es­sary get up half an hour ear­li­er and make it the first thing you do after your bath­room rit­u­als. Many may find the ear­ly morn­ing to be very con­du­cive for med­ita­tion and it might be eas­ier to avoid dis­trac­tions, eg by other fam­i­ly mem­bers or ex­ter­nal noise.

The second best time is the eve­ning, be­fore go­ing to bed. But it is more dif­fi­cult to stick to a reg­u­lar eve­ning med­i­ta­tion than an ear­ly morn­ing med­i­ta­tion. The eve­ning is the time for all kinds of acti­vi­ties and social events. Visit­ing friends, meet­ing others for din­ner, go­ing to the cinema or some­where else is quite often ac­com­pa­nied by the use of al­co­hol or other kinds of drugs. Al­co­hol and med­i­ta­tion do not mix. Other drugs are even worse. Even with­out, you will prob­ably be tired – may­be too tired.

The third best time is when you come home from work and be­fore you start your lei­sure activi­ties. But dur­ing this time demands on you by other fam­i­ly mem­bers or the nec­es­sary duties like shop­ping, pre­par­ing meals and clean­ing may be quite heavy. Ad­di­tion­ally you may be tired or quite ex­haust­ed by your job.

Try to use the early morn­ing, sit­ting eve­ry day for 30 min­utes at least. If you have more time to spend, fine. You may want to sit for a long­er pe­ri­od or have a sec­ond sit­ting at an­oth­er time of the day. You will not reach deep stages of con­cen­tra­tion with only 30 min­utes of med­i­ta­tion daily, but half an hour to calm the mind, to re­flect on what is hap­pen­ing in your life, will help you to ac­cept life as it is. The need to ma­nip­ulate rela­tion­ships, sit­u­ations or the en­vi­ron­ment ac­cord­ing to your likes and dis­likes will lessen. You will become more con­tent and bal­anced, more valu­able to our­selves and others.

It is nice and bene­fi­cial to end sit­tings with a few min­utes of lov­ing kind­ness med­i­ta­tion or even devote a whole ses­sion every now and then to this kind of prac­tice.

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2.2 Suitable place
Set up a certain place for your prac­tice, a place you ex­clu­sive­ly re­serve for for­mal sit­ting med­i­ta­tion prac­tice. This may be a spare room or just a corner; you may dec­o­rate it with flow­ers, a pic­ture, a sculp­ture or what­ever.
It should not be a fancy place, but a spot where you want to be, free of dis­trac­tions, a place to calm down, to relax, to look inside.

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2.3 Group support
Try to find a group of fel­low med­i­tators. Now­a­days you will find in many towns in the West groups who come to­geth­er for spir­i­tu­al de­vel­op­ment reg­ular­ly, may­be once or twice a week. It has not nec­es­sari­ly to be a Bud­dhist group, as long as they sit quiet­ly and med­i­tate. Look in the news­pa­pers, in maga­zines or on the inter­net. The group sup­port and the group en­er­gy will help you to stick to the for­mal practice.

As the need for spir­i­tu­ality grows, there are all kinds of eso­ter­ic offers avail­able. Many are hon­est; some just aim to make money. Choose care­fully your group or teacher.
Ask the teacher where and how long he or she has stud­ied and why; and how long she or he has been teach­ing – find out for your­self wheth­er the teach­er is ap­pro­pri­ate for you, do not be­lieve just be­cause the teach­er is fa­mous, or be­cause others have told you. A rec­om­men­da­tion by the Ven­er­able U. Vima­lar­amsi, a med­i­ta­tion teach­er, says: “The way to select a good teach­er is by ob­serv­ing if their stu­dents are kind, pleas­ant, friend­ly and sup­por­tive.” Of course the teach­er should also show the same qual­i­ties. If there is no med­i­ta­tion group in your vi­cin­ity, you could start one to at­tract like-mind­ed people.

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2.4 Short-term retreats
Try to do a short-term re­treat with friends or alone at home from time to time. May­be you can re­serve a week­end ded­i­cated to med­i­ta­tion and to si­lence. If a whole week­end is too much, just have a day of si­lence eve­ry now and then. If you have the time, do a 10-day re­treat may­be once a year to re­charge your spir­i­tu­al bat­tery, to get more set­tled in the prac­tice. Mean­while there are med­i­ta­tion cen­ters near­ly eve­ry­where in the West with some ex­cel­lent teach­ers; many of them have prac­tised for years as nuns or monks in India or South East Asia. [...]