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Welcome to this Buddhist meditation coaching site for non-Buddhists.  I teach Buddhist meditation without dogma. Whether you're just beginning or experienced, I can help you on your way. I offer practical advice on how to progress based on years of meditating.  This program covers various techniques such as Jhana, Metta, and Vipassana. Join us on this journey towards a deeper understanding of the mind and the causes of suffering.

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Interdependence - the Butterfly Effect and Buddhism.
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I have been meditating since 1996, when I went on my first 10-day silent Vipassana retreat at a Buddhist monastery in Chang Mai, Thailand.  Since then, in addition to a daily practice, I have been on 8 Vipassana retreats, 1 Metta retreat, 2 Jhana retreats, a 6-week Vipassana retreat, a 3-month Vipassana retreat in Nepal, and several Jhana self-retreats.  I have studied Buddhism extensively in the Theravada tradition and most recently, Emptiness, in the Nagarjuna/Madhyamaka tradition.

I started out in Vipassana, but recently I am focusing on Metta and Jhana.

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If you are interested in getting started with meditation or help progressing please email and I will see if I can help.

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With much metta, Paul

email: paul@learnbuddhistmeditation.com

Motivation - there are many reasons to meditate from relaxation to enlightenment to the Jhanas.  This site aims to help people understand the way in which our thinking and understanding of our self and reality causes us to suffer. By following the techniques on this site you will deepen your concentration and develop a mind strong enough to see reality for what it is and how our psychological views cause us to suffer.  By understanding why we suffer and being able to accept things as they are, the suffering can be reduced.  To develop this type of insight, one needs to be able to be calm, concentrate the mind, and direct it without distraction for long periods of time.  Hence we meditate.  The Jhanas are a type of meditation that help build concentration - not a means to an end.  There is a cognitive piece to this as well beyond pure insight.  Learning that our thoughts, feelings, and moods are often beyond our control, help us to understand and accept their empty nature.  Empty in the sense that they are not significant or permanent in the grand scheme of things.  Putting too much weight into thoughts, feelings, or emotions is wasted energy as they fade and disappear over time.   These truths grow with time through meditation and study and the suffering becomes more manageable.  Patience and persistence are helpful traits. 

Getting Started

Step 1:  Pick a Good Time

Pick a time to meditate when you are not too stressed and you don't have too much on your mind.  It's difficult to get concentrated when you are first starting out if you are agitated or have a lot on your mind.  It can be frustrating if you can't get your mind focused until you get more experienced. If your mind is racing when you get home from work, then wait until later when your mind has calmed down a bit.  Do something like exercise, read, or listen to a podcast to calm the mind - then you are ready to begin meditating.  Many people mediate first thing in the morning when their mind is fresh.

Step 2: Sit Comfortably

Find a position to sit where you are comfortable.  On retreat you often feel pressure to sit crossed legged, but this is not necessary.  It's difficult to make progress if you are uncomfortable or in pain.  On monastery retreats, the teachers typically tell you that the pain can be overcome when your concentration and mindfulness is stronger.  I have been on many long term retreats, and its my experience that the pain doesn't get overcome with mindfulness.  It's more likely you will blow out a knee or disk in your lower back.  Sitting crossed legged is natural for people in many cultures and back in Buddha's time.  But most westerner's cannot sit crossed legged comfortably for long periods of time.  Meditating with pain has some benefits but overall it is not the best for making progress.  You want to develop concentration and mindfulness that leads to insight and the reduction of suffering, not just investigate pain tolerance.  So find a comfortable way to sit like in a chair or lay back against a wall.  Eventually, you need to be able to sit comfortably for an hour straight.  Even for experienced meditators it takes time for the mind and body to calm down.  If you stop too early because you are in pain you might miss out.

Step 3:  Pick a Meditation Method  
There are many good meditation methods.  There is not a best way to practice.  There are hundreds of meditation methods going back even before the Buddhas time.  The Buddha actually spent many years doing a concentration practice based on the Jhanas before he discovered mindfulness meditation called Vipassana.  Each meditation method or practice has a different purpose.  Often they are designed with a specific goal in mind.  The Buddha taught Vipassana primarily to achieve enlightenment.  Vipassana can be difficult and sometimes harsh if you have difficulty concentrating.  So often on a Vipassana retreat they might have you start off doing a few days of a concentration meditation before switching to Vipassana.  There is a good argument for this as the Buddha spent many years practicing concentration before Vipassana.  There are also many different types of Vipassana practice depending in their Buddhist lineage.  Goenka teaches a Burmese Vipassana practice he learned when on retreat there - a body sweeping technique that is  excellent for developing concentration.  But even in Burma, there are many different Vipassana practices passed down by word of mouth from the time of Buddha.  They all adhere roughly to the Buddhist literature, although the literature is abstract and not very specific on the technique.

Step 4:  Generate Joy
It's difficult to concentrate when you are meditating if you are not in a good mood. To concentrate you need to have a little joy. So if you are distracted or worried when you sit down to meditate you should try to think of something happy, funny, or joyful to help you get started. With a little joy in your heart, you will begin to be able to concentrate. Concentration in turn creates joy. So this is the start of a positive feedback loop. A little joy helps you develop a little concentration. The concentration increases the joy. So they can go back and forth with one supporting the other. A great way to generate joy is to do Metta in your meditation. When you wish others well, it makes you feel good, generating joy in your heart. Then you can concentrate and increase the joy and in turn increase the concentration. This is the basic mechanism that nuns and monks use on retreat to enter into the Jhanas.
 

Step 5:  Set a Timer
It’s generally a good idea to set a timer,  whether 5 mins or 60 mins to help create self-discipline. For the time period, try not to move or open you eyes. At first it may be difficult but it becomes easier with time. Make sure you don’t have any expectations, they will only create extra pressure making it more difficult. People often say they can’t meditate but that doesn’t really mean anything. If you sit down and close your eyes for 5 minutes then you just meditated, even though you very weren’t concentrated.  Even experienced meditators and monks/nuns have times when they can’t concentrate well. If you have trouble sitting still or staying with your meditation object, you are learning the first important insight - that you are not in control of your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. If you were in control, it would be easy to tell yourself to sit still and keep your eyes closed. The purpose of meditation is to gain deeper and deeper insights to your mind to help you understand the self, identity, and ego and how our perception of them leads to suffering and unhappiness. So a “bad” meditation where you have difficulty sitting still can lead to valuable insights as long as you don’t beat yourself up for not reaching expectations.
So set the clock, try and stay completely still, keep the eyes closed, and stick with your meditation technique patiently.  Just do the meditation without judgement - like you are brushing you teeth.  We don’t have good tooth brushing days or bad ones, we just brush and forget. Try to do the same with meditation, put your time in and don’t judge.

If you sit consistently, your ability to stay with your meditation object will naturally grow with time. But this is not a linear process or continuous improvement, there will be ups and downs and there will be progress and the insights will come.

Step 6: Relax with Effortless Effort
Try to make effort without trying hard with effortless effort.  If you try too hard or try to force yourself you will get frustrated.  You need to relax and let go of the desire to get anywhere or accomplish anything.  This may seem like a paradox but you will find that if you can focus with a relaxed state-of-mind, you will make progress.  Try and relax all the muscles in the body except for the minimum neccesary to keep you sitting upright.  The same with the mind - use the minimum mental energy possible to remain on the meditation object.  There is a reciprocal relationship between the mind and the body.  You need to relax the body to be able to relax the mind, and you need to relax the body in order to relax the mind.  If you have a negative thought, there will be an uncomfortable feeling in your body.  This uncomfortable feeling in the body will cause your mind to have a negative thought.  So you need to be aware so that you don't get caught up in this negative feedback loop.  You have to relax both mind and body as they are bound together.  This negative feedback loop, is opposite of the positive feedback loop discussed about between joy and concentration,

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