are three steps in mastering these techniques. Reading or hearing about them is the first step. Contemplating and thinking about their meaning, value, and application in your daily life is the second step. Taking the meaning and value to heart and directly applying them to your life is the third step. All three steps are important in discovering the power and profundity of each technique. Though benefits may be immediately apparent, the real fruits of these methods will only emerge gradually as you cultivate them with sustained effort. As your practice deepens, the fruits will grow sweeter and your appreciation of life as a continuously improving learning process will grow.
How long will it take to master a technique? How long would it take you to learn to master the flute or cello? The key to all learning is personal commitment and discipline. While books, tapes, and teachers are invaluable, ultimately it will be your own diligence that will assure your success. Have faith in your ability to tap the life-giving forces available to you. The beauty, pain, and uncertainties in your life and in the world will provide a continual reminder of the vital importance of practicing these skills.
Each of the chapters on the different forms of meditation begins with an introduction and a description of guidelines for using the methods contained in that section, followed by the practices themselves. As you read, we encourage you to note those ideas and exercises that seem to speak most directly to your needs and interests. This chart will help you identify the techniques in this book that speak most directly to specific issues you may wish to attend to in your practice.
| If you are interested in… | Experiment with techniques on these pages |
| Flow state, peak performance, and achieving breakthroughs | 00-00 |
| Enhancing creativity, innovative thinking, and intuition | 00-00 |
| Self-empowerment | 00-00 |
| Mastering attention | 00-00 |
| Mastering physical distress (headaches, muscle pain, aches, tics, etc.) | 00-00 |
| Mastering mental distress (anxiety, worry, intrusive or repetitive thoughts, etc.) | 00-00 |
| Mastering emotional and autonomic distress (hypertension, migraine headaches, eating disorders, addictive behaviors, etc.) | 00-00 |
| Opening the heart: awakening love and compassion | 00-00 |
| Strategies for working with pain and enhancing healing | 00-00 |
| Tapping the life-giving forces of the human spirit | 00-00 |
Once you have identified them, put them into practice by reading them slowly and thoughtfully. Then proceed step by step to get the feeling behind the words. You may find it helpful to have a friend read the exercise to you, or to record it in your own voice to replay at your leisure. Or you may feel inspired to change our terminology to better suit your own style or beliefs. As your familiarity with a technique grows, you will learn to mentally progress through its various stages without needing to read or listen to the instructions. Though at first you may mentally talk yourself through an exercise, gradually cultivate the skill to move through the method as a progression of shifts in awareness, a series of mental images or feelings, rather than mere words and concepts.
THREE FOUNDATIONS OF INNER DEVELOPMENT
The classical teachings on meditation exist within a larger body of spiritual teachings that span all of the dimensions of our lives. Universally, the foundation of meditation practice is rooted in developing harmonious relationships with the world around us. When we are out of harmony with our world and with those who share it, that disharmony is reflected within us as tension, distraction, confusion, frustration, anger, or enmity. When the mind is dominated by these disturbing “mental poisons,” and the body is flooded with their associated biochemical analogues, it is virtually impossible to bring enough balance to the mind to engage in any fruitful meditation. If you are really intent upon developing yourself, then your first step is to begin to make peace and find harmony in relationship to your world. The practice of ethics, morality, and “right relations” not only benefits others but, in the long run, helps us create the causes for inner peace that we long for. The stronger this foundation, the more profound and fruitful will be our meditation practice.
As Vietnamese poet and Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn reminds us, the world is both wonderful and terrible: there is considerable injustice and tragic suffering. Making peace with the world is not to look away from these heartbreaking circumstances, but to have the courage to witness suffering with compassion and understanding. Only then will we have the insight necessary to respond with wisdom and effectiveness.
Though living in accord with the Golden Rule is enough to transform our lives, a second foundation is necessary to really establish a meditation practice. As outer turbulence subsides, we are left to the inner work of reducing the turbulence within ourselves. Taking the first step, we focus within our body and begin to recognize the ways we armor ourselves with unnecessary tension. Then, applying the principles of kindness and merciful compassion to ourselves, we learn ways to relax and to release the unnecessary tension we carry in our body. Looking ever more deeply, we find that physical tension is tied to the inner tension and turmoil of our mind-emotions. So, as you see, the practice of kindness and compassion—inner and outer—is the really the ground of meditation.
As we learn to open blocked energy, release tension, and come to rest more at ease in our body, we are better able to engage in the inner work of enhancing the power of our mindful attention. This opens the next doorway to meditation: the development of concentration. Developing concentration transforms mental dullness into mental stability, distraction into vivid mental clarity. Along the way we also develop the strength of our mindfulness and vigilance—so necessary to keeping our meditation focused and on track. As a result of this inner transformational work, we are able to bring a calm intensity to whatever we do, and this powerful peace of mind can then be carried into our lives, relationships, and any other meditation practices we may engage in.
These three foundations—“right relations,” relaxation, and meditation—create outer and inner harmony and a focused presence of mind. Together they support the awakening of wisdom and compassion—the real goal of our practice. Profound insight arises. We see that when our body is at ease in its natural state and our mind isn't being unnecessarily churned, the mind is calm, peaceful, and vividly clear. And when the mind is peaceful, present, and undisturbed, the world we behold is one of wholeness. We understand that the natural state of our relationships is that of deep interdependence, completely empty of isolation and separateness.
As our understanding of all these factors emerges, we realize the true measure and test of meditation training. This is found in a spiritual maturity that results from taming the mind's fixations; eliminating such basic malaise as selfishness, greed, and hatred; deepening insight into the nature of reality; and the awakening of a growing concern for the well-being of others. Meditative powers and insights are honestly of little value if they don't help us to do these things.
THE DANCE OF MASTERY AND MYSTERY
Nobody…knows what a single thing is. It is a great and wonderful mystery to us all that anything is or that we are. And whenever anyone says, “I don't know how anything came to be,” or “God made everything,” they are simply pointing to the feeling of the Mystery—of how everything is, but nobody knows what it really is, or how it came to be.…If you will remember every day to feel the Mystery, and if you will remember that you are more than what you look like, and if you will remember to be the Mystery itself, then you will be happy every day.
—The words of a young child
This book invites—and challenges—you to learn to dance with Mystery and mastery in your life. The inner alchemy that weds mastery to Mystery is sometimes described as the marriage of Earth and Heaven, as the harmonizing of yang and yin or the creative and the receptive, as merging masculine and feminine, or as balancing intellect and intuition. True mastery is realized only when our discipline has been so wholehearted that it carries us to the threshold where, to go any further, we must surrender to Mystery. The union of mastery and Mystery is a path toward wholeness, a dynamic state of being as natural as inhalation and exhalation, the pulse and stillness of each heartbeat, or the striding, balanced rhythm of our two feet carrying us along life's path.
Through the practice of relaxation and meditation we increase our mastery as well as our capacity to