Rediscovering Stillness
Alistair McCall
Meditation can be defined as concentration. Not the sort of concentration you might apply to solving a problem, but rather a light, bright attention to your inner state.
There are many benefits from meditating regularly. Stated conservatively, you will experience an increased sense of peace and wellbeing. If you continue in your practice, you may notice that your daily life begins to feel richer and more vivid.
Anybody (or any-mind) can learn to meditate. In fact, practicing meditation is a very natural thing for a person to do because, when we meditate, we are simply returning to being who we really are without preconception or judgement.
Happily, you don’t have to fold yourself into a pretzel shape to practice meditation! The actual practice is very simple. In the Satipatthana sutra, the Buddha’s advice is very straightforward indeed: Find a tree (or quiet space), sit with the body upright, and observe the breath. Try it. Find a time when you have fifteen minutes to yourself. Sit comfortably with eyes gently closed and the spine straight—a hardback chair is fine— breathe freely and watch what arises within your mind and body. It could be a thought, a feeling, a sensation, or something else entirely.
Most people’s minds struggle to accept that anything that offers a great benefit can also be this easily achieved. For this reason, people often worry that they ‘aren’t doing it right’. That’s where trust comes in. Trust whatever it is you are noticing, keep your attention on it and see what it does. There’s no need to describe the feeling to yourself or create an inner commentary on it. Just let it be what it is. Give it total acceptance. And, when the next thing pops into your head, do the same with that. You might notice in time that the space in-between things ‘coming up’ increases.
At some other point, your mind will probably stray. Mine does! This is normal and fine. Bring your attention back to the breath. Don’t worry about it. It is only by redeploying the energy we lose to the various distractions of everyday life that we get to focus on our true selves for a while.
Last thing to mention: I sometimes speak to people who have the impression that their meditation has been unsuccessful unless it is a profound spiritual experience. The truth is that, for many people, most of the time, meditation is not like that at all. This is because when we meditate, we move beyond what we sometimes refer to these days as the ego—which is essentially a collection of stories we have constructed about ourselves. It is this ego that is gratified when we feel a sense of achievement.
Surprisingly, it is this break from the need to achieve or ‘be something’ that, for many people, can be the most compelling aspect of meditation. Meditation is unconditional love applied to every aspect of our being. No wonder it does us so much good!