Meditation

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Here's a good quote by the Buddhist Nun Tenzin Palmo regarding meditation,

People say they have no time for meditation. It's not true!, You can meditate walking down the corridor, waiting for the computer to change, at traffic lights, standing in a queue, going to the bathroom, combing your hair. Just be there in the present, without the mental commentary. Start by choosing one action during the day and decide to be entirely present for that one action. Drinking the tea in the morning. Shaving. Determine, for this one action I will really be there. It's all habit. At the moment we've got the habit of being unaware. We have to develop the habit of being present. Once we start to be present in the moment everything opens up. When we are mindful there is no commentary - it's a very naked experience, wakeful, vivid.

Return

• Meditation actually means to focus on one object or thought to the exclusion of all others, such as a mantra or image.
• Not on an object (vichara – investigation of self) just return, see Sri Ramana Maharshi
• Meditation is then a concentrated period of only the practice of return, rather than practicing it for short moments while doing other things.

Habits

Habits form a very fundamental aspect of our perception. Habits are the result of momentum in Conceptual Space (the medium or system in which our conscious content resides). It takes energy to change the structure of habits currently in place (the state), without applying energy the same patterns will keep on rolling and gaining inertia from the energy supplied by conscious attention.

• Make sure activity is purposful and then do it in being. Don't partake in activity merely to overcome boredom, because that increases the habit of restlessness. Boredom can only be overcome properly with return.

Associations

One of the first obstacles one comes across when learning meditation is to overcome powerful desires to scratch itches or to resolve unclosed loops of thought. The first step to overcoming any such problems is to increase the habit of awareness because the earlier the discrepancy of action is spotted the less momentum it will have gained, and so it takes less energy to resist its attraction and return to the role of observer.

Such associations of habit can be built up for all patterns of thought that lead to various kinds of bad habits and suffering in everyday life. They also provide a good means of doing many small meditations as discussed by Tenzin Palmo in the above quote. For example you can build up the association of feeling an itch with the action of returning to a state of observation to eventually replace the normal action of scratching the itch with a state of awareness, over time leading to increased peace.

See also

• Hexagram52 of the Yi (Kên, Keeping still) talks about stillness and meditation