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Meditation is mind training. To someone who is new to the concept, it may seem shrouded in mystery and mysticism, but it need not be so. Learning to meditate can be easy. Listed here are a few ways how to meditate easily. Hopefully as you read along, you will begin to slowly build up an understanding of what meditation is. In the purest form, meditation cannot be explained or condensed into words and the best advise is to practice, practice, practice.

Find a comfortable posture.

Posture in meditation is very significant. The way you position your body has an effect on how your energy flows. When your energy is stable and steady, abiding calmly, then the mind easily follows this stable and steady pattern.

While sitting crossed legged in full lotus posture, eyes half open, hands in meditation mudra (mudra means hand gesture) is a beautiful way to meditate, it can be uncomfortable for most of us.

Any comfortable crossed-legged position will do. Place a cushion on your seat so that your knees can rest lower than your hips. Place your hands on your knees to support your back or rest your right hand on top of the left with thumbs gently touching.

If sitting crossed-legged proves to be quite challenging for you, do not force the issue. Instead, sit on a chair. The most important part of the meditation posture is to keep your spine straight. You can sit with a wall behind you to help you do this.

Keep the eyes half-open and half-closed, with a relaxed gaze looking down about two feet in front of you. As much as possible try not to blink, just relax your eyes. If you feel too distracted, close your eyes lightly but do not shut them tight to avoid mental drowsiness. If you intend to practice meditation for longer periods of time, it is much better to get used to not closing your eyes.

Keep the whole body quiet and relaxed, now begin your practice.

Keep the instruction simple.

One needs a fair amount of concentration and single-pointed focus to be able to meditate successfully. One must first be able to place the mind on its object of meditation without wavering and being distracted. To achieve such focus, it is best to stick to simple meditation instruction rather than jumping to complex visualizations. Your mind needs to relax and be free of thoughts to be able to gain clarity. Sometimes complex visualizations just serve as another distraction.

One very simple practice is mindfulness of breathing. The instruction is simply to watch the breath as it comes in and out of the body. You can feel as the belly rises and falls or place your attention right at the entrance of the nostrils where the air is coming in and going out. Choose only one focus. Then when you find your mind has wandered away, simply bring it back to the breathing, gently and calmly.

Keep the meditation sessions short but frequent.

If you are training to run a marathon, you don't run 53 kilometers on your first training day. If you did this, you would probably not want to run ever again. To begin with, keep your meditation sessions short and if possible, frequent.

Meditate only as long as it feels good. You might go for 5 minutes, or 10 minutes or 1 hour, it all depends on your own capacity. As you feel comfortable, slowly increase the length of your sessions. . In this way, you will want to keep practicing and you will build your meditation practice slowly but surely as you gain experience.

Find the motivation to practice everyday.

To progress in your meditation, you need to practice everyday. It does not have to be long sessions, even a little but done everyday is much better than a long drawn out session where you are uncomfortable done twice a month. In this way, meditation sessions will become a habit.

Keep yourself motivated and always recall your intention at the beginning of each session. Sometimes meditating for your own calmness and peacefulness in not enough, strengthen the motivation by including others. How do you do this? Think to yourself that you want balance and peacefulness in your own life so that you can benefit all others around you. This is a very beautiful motivation and one that can carry you through all your goals and beyond.

A great idea is to keep a meditation journal, Make it a point to write on it everyday after your meditation session. Write down any little notes about what transpired during your session. Try not over-analyze whether the session was good or bad. Do not be attached to the outcome of your sessions. The journal will help you find patterns of thought what works and what doesn't that will help you adjust your meditation sessions accordingly. Actually, the main purpose of this journal is to propel you to your meditation cushion, because you know that you have to write down something in your journal and not leave any blank spaces.

Set a time and place to meditate.

Try to meditate at the same time and place everyday. Clear out a spare room in your home or a small part of the room. Try to clear this space of anything that might serve as a distraction to your meditation session.

Early in the morning when everything is fresh and quiet is a very good time to meditate, also in the early evening when everything starts to quiet down, Find what suits you est and work with it.

Eat light foods.

Eating light foods help your state of mind. Not only does the body feel lighter but the mind is also clearer. A lot of energy is spent in the digestive process. Eating lighter foods means energy can be used for other purposes such as spiritual practice. Notice how sluggish you feel after a greasy heavy meal. This is how the yogis of ancient India and today developed the culture of eating curried and pressure cooked food that is easily digested. Cinnamon, cumin, turmeric and other curry (masala) spices are known to be very good in aiding digestion.

Meditators from time to time practice fasting so that their minds stay fresh, alert and clear. Many Buddhists today still practice eating no evening meal (no meals after lunch) as was practiced by the great Shakyamuni.

Simply your life and minimize distractions

This is good advice to follow, not just for meditating but for life in general. To make space for all the good you wish for in life including meditation, you need to simplify your life. You don't need to fill your life with busyness to be productive. Even when you sit back for a moment in silence, there is already so much going on around you and inside you. Our lives are so awash with sensory overload that the mind, instead of being this finely tuned sensitive instrument becomes numb and jaded.

Take a look around you. Take a look at your physical surroundings as if you were looking for the first time, a visitor who has come in from very far away and sees your home, your car, your office, all for the first time. Does it reflect calm and tranquility? Is it full of clutter, things you re so attached to they rot away in your space?

Then take a look at your daily, weekly or monthly schedule. Is there anything there that is absolutely essential? How much time do you spend in meaningful activities and how much are just trivial things? Of course, any activity no matter how seemingly mundane or frivolous can be transformed into a pure enlightened activity but as beginners, let us choose our activities well. This in itself is a very good step in awareness and purification.

Simplifying our lives and minimizing distractions affects our meditation practice. Clarity and concentration comes more easily.

Purify your actions, speech and mind.

If you want peacefulness and joyfulness in your meditation, you need peacefulness and joyfulness in your actions, speech and thought. This creates the conditions for you to meditate successfully and that in turn affects your day-to-day actions, speech and thoughts.

So examine yourself well in all that you do, in all that you say and how you think about yourself and others and the world around. Make the effort to be conscious of these actions and also of their effects, both immediate and long term, subtle ones and obvious ones. Bring the consciousness you have during meditation into your post-meditation say-to-day life. Then slowly you will not feel so disjointed but flow in a clear steady stream.

Seek the advice of a meditation master.

If you examine it well, you will realize that what you have now is so precious the interest to meditate, the mind with its infinite capacity and the opportunity to practice. IT takes many lifetimes to learn to meditate in the highest states, the time you have is both precious and extremely short. Seek the advice of a meditation master who will guide you personally in the best possible way.

This way when a question arises in your mind, it will be answered. When an obstacle arises in your meditation you will know exactly how to work through it and you won't waste your time meditating on the wrong things or in the wrong way.

No matter how many books you read, there is no substitute for sound personal advice. Even the demeanor of the master, merely being in his or her presence has a tremendous effect on your practice.

Always end in a good note.

As with any activity, always end in a good note. You are more likely to repeat an activity that you end in a good note.

Just think about the billions of people in the world. Only a few are mildly interested in meditation and even fewer are those who practice. Think about those who do practice (including yourself) lovingly with reverence, lightness and joy in your heart. Then dedicate the merits of your practice for all meditators including yourself and all beings in general.

May all living beings be happy and free! Lokha samastha sukhinoh bhavatu!

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