How To Successfully Follow A Meditation Guide
When learning to meditate it is best to find professional downtime, a serene location and a teacher with many meditation accolades to learn from. That’s 95% of it. Then you just commit to following the teacher’s personalized instructions for you and put in the work. No doubt, I learned to meditate thanks to suitable learning facilities and great meditation teachers. Being professionally irresponsible helped a great deal as well. What I didn’t anticipate was that a large part of my “progress” would come from studying a meditation manual (or two). Here’s what I wish I had known about following a well-written meditation manual that was given to me a few weeks before my last retreat.
Meditation guides are written for everyone. Yet, not every meditator (or yogi) is the same. Each yogi has a different disposition and particular learning preferences. How can a guide written for everyone advance our particular development needs and help us overcome the unique circumstances we face when attempting to master breath meditation? Is that even possible?
For example, some yogis prefer tropical locales, more fresh fruit, and perhaps a slightly more strenuous exercise regimes in between meditation sessions than others. I do. While other yogis, particularly because of attention-grabbing, ill-will-stoking mosquitos, don’t like tropical locales. Yet others, who are less physically inclined, could care less about how vigorously they move in between sittings.
For some beginners, it is truly challenging to cultivate serenity during the rainy season in Burma if rainy days dampen your spirits and bloodsucking mosquitos raise your ire. Even more so if you have dietary restrictions or “spicy” food is not to your suit.
Turns out that we have more in common than I wanted to believe. A generic meditation guide maybe super valuable in spite of our individual and cultural differences. That’s because beginners must struggle with the same defilements (a standard set of mental phenomena that hinder our progress).
Ideal Learning
Ideally, the meditation teacher is located in a setting that is perfect for your temperament in every way. Ideally, the meals are great. Ideally, you have unfettered access to your teacher and can discuss specific challenges with your teacher during the interview period.
Unfortunately, gaining ideal access to an outstanding teacher is not trivial. Economics comes into play. Serenity is in high demand and skillful teachers are in short supply.
Even if you are able to travel to the monastery or meditation center of your favorite meditation teacher, you might find the facilities under construction or in some other state that deprives you of the long, intimate interviews that you dreamed of prior to the retreat. These obstacles to equanimity (or “upekkha”) are well-documented. It is easy to find fault in learning conditions. [1]
I am not complaining, but I certainly have had many meditation retreats that have been less than ideal. The biggest bummer for me is insufficient interview time. No doubt, I [still] crave time with my teacher. Every missed or short interview session gives me just one more opportunity to practice patience (or “khanti”), which is a virtue that I wasn’t really planning to work on when I undertook Anapanasati meditation. Seriously.
A meditation guide helps dispel doubts and worries when learning circumstances aren’t ideal. I found it beneficial to reflect on the instructions in a meditation manual prior to each sitting. Reflecting helped remind me of how to practice and keep my mind calm.
Meditation Manual
During my last meditation retreat, I was fortunate to have access to the book entitled Instructions on Anapanasati Meditation for Beginners by Bhikkhu Revata. It was invaluable to me. It is a quick study and I certainly recommend it for you too.
It is such an easy read that I had no intention to carry it with me when I was packing for the retreat. I felt like I knew it. I read it long before the trip and understood what Bhikkhu Revata was trying to explain. In fact, I planned to carry Knowing and Seeing by the internationally renowned Pa Auk Sayadaw with me instead. It’s much more dense and he’s Burma’s most acclaimed meditation master. Why mess around with any other resource?
Turns out that other meditation guides maybe just as helpful. So get as many as you can and then read them all. I used Knowing and Seeing on prior retreats. It’s a great guide. However, it didn’t emphasize something that was a really key ingredient for me: PATIENCE. Bhikkhu Revata’s book really forced me to look at my patience and that was what was needed at that time.
Meditation Notes
Whichever meditation manual you select for your retreat, pay attention to the thing that your mind wants you to discount the most. The mind is tricky. It’s like a child that wants to choose honey instead of bitter medicine. It wants to focus on what it finds most palatable.
In my particular case, applying effort (or “viriya”) was not so difficult. I tend to put a lot of effort into the activities I pursue. Perhaps my harried parents would argue that I was born with too much energy. Yet, taking that bitter patience medicine was really important for me to actually mature.
Apart from being patient, I also had to learn to drop all expectation. Sheesh. That’s equally hard. Who undertakes an activity without having any expectation of a result? If you know me, you’ll know that that’s not my style. I’m as results-oriented as they come.
Conclusion
The most important thing to realize about a meditation manual is that it is not two dimensional. Certainly, the words are written on 2D pages. However, it is super important to understand that there is a time dimension.
Not every part of the guide is relevant at the same time. You need to be mindful of which phase of meditation you are in. For example, in Pa Auk Sayadaw’s Knowing and Seeing section on Anapanasati, He advises counting to eight to help calm the mind so that you are able to focus on the breath. After you certain period you won’t need to count to become aware of the breath because you’ve leveled up on your mindfulness (or “sati”) and wisdom (or “panna”).
Consequently, and based on painful personal experiences, I recommend taking a slow and steady approach. Read voraciously. Plan multiple retreats and experiment with different guides for each.
Be patient with yourself. A few years ago, it took me one whole retreat to learn to stop wandering thoughts. It takes lots of practice to level up.
See if you can spot the different levels of mindfulness that the author is outlining. Don’t push yourself to a level you aren’t fully ready for.
[1] The Visuddhimagga, a meditation manual written by Buddhaghosa around the 5th Century in Sri Lanka, outlines 18 faults to a monastery. The challenges with finding a suitable location to meditate are well documented.
Professor Zumbi is a certified Capoeira teacher. He received his teaching qualification in the presence of great Capoeira masters like Mestre Suassuna and Mestre Acordeon. Zumbi organizes Capoeira Retreats that conclude with an introduction to Anapanasati at a highly acclaimed meditation center.
Professor Zumbi is not a meditation teacher and this is not a meditation guide. Zumbi’s meditation articles are written to share thoughts and personal experiences. Please find a qualified teacher if you want to undertake Anapanasati. Follow your teacher and forget everything you’ve read here.
