The word buddha means awakened. Most people are not fully awake because they are lost in their thoughts and emotions. They are regularly reacting to the world. This causes a lack of contemplation and leaves them confused, ignorant, and misunderstanding the reality around them. They are lacking insight.
Insight is gained through meditation. First, calming meditation by not allowing the thoughts in your mind and your surroundings to distract you. Second, insight meditation by cultivating your mind on a single purpose such as gratitude, kindness, self-awareness, compassion.
When you have learned to calm your mind and develop insight you begin seeing the world more clearly. This reduces your suffering. The source of all our mental suffering is wanting the world to be different rather than clearly seeing it for what it is. The wonderful thing about developing a meditation practice is you don’t have to master it to start to benefit from it. The benefits can start immediately, do start in a week, and have significant impact in just several weeks.
It’s called a meditation practice because you have to practice it every day. Preferably 2-3 times a day for 10-20 minutes each time. In today’s world, this probably sounds inconvenient, and you’re wondering where do I fit this in? I’ve found it does take discipline, but it’s achievable with behavior adjustments. Here’s a few you can reduce and replace with meditation:
- Scrolling on your phone
- Posting on social media, and commenting on articles/posts (social, news, otherwise)
- Watching television
- Participating in unhealthy relationships
- Engaging in idle chatter (sports, politics, entertainment, etc.) and gossipy conversation
- Getting drunk and/or getting high
- Time spent on busywork that doesn’t accomplish anything of value
You’ll notice almost everything in this list, at its core, is or is related to a toxic behavior. Reminds me of the saying, “An idle mind is the Devil’s playground.” Do you recognize any of these? Maybe you have others. You know, the things you do that come with at least a tinge of guilt. You should listen to those, stop doing them, and replace those choices with healthier experiences. It makes me think the simpler life is the better life… the chorus from John Prine’s ‘Spanish Pipedream’…
“Blow up your TV, throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus on your own”
Making time becomes a two-for-one opportunity… Reduce/Eliminate toxicity from your life and reduce your suffering through meditation. With these changes you can find time for a 20 minute meditation in the morning, over lunch, and in the evening. Once you’ve established meditation fundamentals, instead of finding 20 minutes of meditation over lunch, you could instead meditate for 5 minutes in-between meetings or tasks.
Another thing to understand about finding 30 to 60 minutes a day is that it aligns nicely with the Buddhist practice of the Middle Way. The Buddha emphasized the importance of restraint and moderation, not falling into the extreme of overindulgence.1 It’s important to understand and recognize extremes occur on both ends of the spectrum. When you make this recognition you begin to see reality more clearly. The Buddha came to his realization when he observed both people completely absorbed in self-denying and abstinent practices and other people who were completely engrossed in materialism and gratification. In the context of our current topic, finding time to meditate, at one extreme you could go on as you are and not meditate at all. At the other extreme, you could go to a weeklong retreat and meditate nearly all day long. But there is a compromise available by making some lifestyle adjustments. As my Grandma used to remind me, “Everything in moderation.”
You can then exercise restraint on when, how, and which realities you respond to.
- “The Essence of Buddhism: An Introduction to Its Philosophy and Practice” by Traleg Kyabgon ↩︎