Awhile ago, I wrote the post The Agenda Mentality

Well, meditation is directly related to that. Because…

The goal of meditation is not meditation. Meaning, there has to be no agenda about meditation.

And yes, you heard me right.

Meditation is unlike anything else that we normally do everyday and all that we are taught to do. That is, most of our doing are about “getting from one place to the next”.

To meditate is to be completely here and now.

To be completely here and now is to be your whole being. And that involves your body, your mind, sensation from 5 senses, your surrounding, and ultimately, everything. This is the state of being, which we are all capable of, that meditation is simply a mean for us to practice it and eventually, be in such state of being without trying – doing without doing.

To fully immerse in the experience of meditation, you cannot be doing something specifically.

So in a way, we qualify meditation as a practice of doing nothing. And to do nothing, it is helpful to be able to conceive and re-discover you are doing something, and also you are doing something that you don’t realize you are doing.

Therefore, we are provided with guidelines and steps to meditate. But keep in mind, to meditate is not to meditate, that is, to follow steps and guidelines.

The easiest way to meditate, at first, is by sitting because in sitting, you are at least not doing something physically.

So then we move on to the mental part. It is irrefutable that modern people are addicted to thoughts. We find our logical minds so useful that we cannot stop using it. Therefore, we are to sit and simply observe our thoughts.

And we do not try to stop thinking in meditation. If we think, we let it happen and simply notice what we are thinking. Eventually it will go away. If we try to stop thinking, we just end up thinking about trying to stop thinking which is another thought.

Beyond the mental part, we have the body. While we can watch our thoughts, we can also watch our body. We can observe all the sensations at the various parts of body. Feel where the tension is. And do not try to relax because trying to relax is itself an effort that causes tension. Simply pay attention.

After awhile, we will notice the intermingling relationship between our mind and body. When we think different kinds of thoughts, we cause different kinds of sensations/tension in our body. So we pay attention to both, which including the reception of our 5 senses and our surrounding is all a part of “the whole experience.”

Of course there are other techniques, such as breathing, but that is an whole other topic. One tip is for us to re-learn belly breathing and that when we focus on breathing, it is impossible for us to be thinking at the same time. There.

To re-iterate, meditation is about none of the particulars described about meditation. Just that if it must be said, it is a practice of a state of being.

Learning to be here.

Not “another thing to do to achieve peace”. Or blah blah blah.

And you start by rediscovering your innate awareness and letting it be free — by paying attention. Pay attention to your mind. Pay attention to your body. Pay attention to your surroundings. Pay attention to things you cannot see. Pay attention to everything.

Thus the story of a master telling a student what’s the secret of practice of zen (meditation) is “Attention, attention, attention.”