What Is Meditation? - Episode 2

In Episode 2 of the Nature of Meditation podcast I share my experience and understanding of the nature of silent meditation practice.

This episode was recorded two weeks in advance of it's 5th January 2025 publication date, to coincide with the date of the first United Nations General Assembly designated World Meditation Day on 21st December 2024.

Nature of Meditation monthly podcast is an exploration of the nature of silent meditation practice. Produced by Ayla Michelle at The Therapy Garden, a BAMBA accredited, registered and supervised mindfulness teacher.

Transcript

Hello,

My name is Michelle.

Welcome to the Nature of Meditation podcast,

Episode 2,

Titled What is Meditation?

Recorded on the 5th of January 2025.

Let's start with a three-minute silent meditation practice to give ourselves time and space to arrive and tune into your breathing.

And as best you can,

Begin to relax.

And I will let us know when it's time for the teaching meditation to begin.

Coming to the end of this three-minute silent meditation practice,

There are many different forms of meditation.

But in this podcast,

The teachings are not intended to be an exhaustive description of meditation.

Just my current understanding of silent meditation practice.

I'm going to be talking about silent meditation in a non-academic general way.

And I will repeat myself a few times,

But say the same thing in slightly different ways.

So that the teaching I'm trying to convey is made clear and can be easily understood.

In a nutshell,

My understanding of meditation is resting your attention in your field of awareness without being affected by what you're experiencing in the moment,

Internally inside yourself or externally,

Outside of you in the environment.

So as far as I understand,

The core of meditation is simply resting your attention on your moment-to-moment experience without being affected by your experience.

By affected,

I mean without being absorbed by and absorbed in or consumed by or attached to any particular momentary experience.

Meditation happens at the junctures of life where your senses meet an object,

In an internal object inside oneself or an external object around you in the environment.

So the object of your perception is not something to get stuck on or lost in.

Our perception,

Our sense perception,

Meets and makes contact with a mental,

Emotional,

Sensorial or physical object,

Giving rise to moments of awareness.

That is what meditation is.

And there is no need for that momentary experiential contact to have a lasting impact upon you.

So in meditation,

We're not trying to achieve a certain state of being or state of consciousness.

We're not trying to get rid of our thoughts and emotions or rise above them.

We're simply being aware of our momentary experience,

Aware of what our sense perception is contacting and experiencing.

In the moment,

Aware of the experience of spaciousness around,

Beneath,

Above and below any and every experience.

For many people,

This is not easy because when you stop and become still and silent,

You notice a lot of internal noise and agitation.

So you become aware of internal activity and you can allow the activity,

The mental,

Emotional,

Sensorial,

Biological activity.

And paradoxically,

There's a holding space for whatever experience arises and at the same time,

A letting go.

One's capacity to hold space for whatever experience you may be having in any given moment is equal to one's capacity to let go of any given momentary experience.

So the extent to which I can make space for my experience in my field of awareness,

The extent to which I can make space for it is the extent to which it will easily be,

Is the extent to which I can let go of any experience in my field of awareness.

So there's a compassionate,

Non-judgmental,

Unconditional holding space which naturally gives rise to a letting go,

An easing of the experience that naturally falls away of its own accord.

And we're simply being aware of our momentary experience.

We don't need to get involved with it or touch it.

We don't need to react or respond to any experience or reject or overcome or transcend any momentary experience.

We don't need to be affected by it or caught by any particular mental,

Emotional or sensorial experience.

So we pay no mind to our momentary experience,

Apart from being aware that it's there.

Other than that,

We don't engage with it in any way.

We're aware of it,

But it's not important.

It's not more important than your peace of mind.

So this means not being bothered by your wandering thoughts,

Your affective emotions,

Your bodily sensations.

And they don't need to be embellished with any meaning.

And you don't need to give any momentary experience a positive or negative spin in order to derive an identity from your experience.

So paying no energy to your experience means being open and allowing it to be how it is.

Holding space for all your experiences in a non-judgmental,

Open way,

In a spacious way,

In a peaceful way.

So allowing,

Accepting,

Surrendering to one's momentary experience,

Whatever it is,

Positive or negative,

And by allowing,

What we're actually doing is relinquishing the grasping mind or the ego,

The ego that's perpetually trying to create an identity for itself,

That's desperately trying to create an identity for itself.

So in holding space and allowing in an unconditional,

Non-judgmental way,

What we're actually letting go of is the surface level of the mind,

The ego,

That does want to criticise and judge,

Assess,

Evaluate and label and categorise and position.

And measure itself.

So to allow one's experience and not need to achieve anything or grasp anything or name anything or discriminate in any way,

Those two things together,

Holding without judgment in a spacious way,

Is to cut the root of the problem,

So that that which is bothersome to the ego,

No longer bothers you,

No longer bothers one's true nature,

That is spacious,

Open and non-discriminating.

And as you sit in meditation,

Of course you will notice that your mind comes,

Goes and changes emotions,

Sensations,

But you don't have to add anything to your momentary experience.

You don't have to pay any energy to it,

Interact with it in any way.

You notice it,

And that noticing is your true nature,

That awareness is your true nature,

That starts to come to the foreground of your mind,

And you come to know meditation as who and what you are.

Even in,

Even when there's busyness that seemingly appears to cover up your silent meditation,

Just as the weather seems to cover the sky,

So meditation is not something you can do,

And there's no set framework for it.

It cannot be done,

And you cannot make it happen,

Because it's a completely natural function of the mind that happens all by itself,

All the time,

Without you trying to make it happen.

If we try to formulate silent meditation,

Or fix it to a particular set of things that we have to do,

Or a particular posture,

Then it becomes an ego project on the surface level of the mind.

It becomes contrived,

And then it becomes an obligation,

And we think we need to make it happen,

Or else it won't happen.

But we cannot sustain such an ego project that is unnatural and unhealthy.

There are ritual meditation practices that are important for some purposes,

But here I am describing meditation practice broadly,

In a non-religious way,

In a secular way,

For the general public.

And anyone can practice silent meditation.

It doesn't need to be formulated,

Or judged by your thinking mind,

As in,

As if thinking,

This is what meditation is,

This is how it should be,

This is how to meditate,

Sometimes I get it right,

Sometimes I get it wrong.

Those are all judgments,

Assessments and evaluations,

Coming from the ego surface level of your mind.

And they're all statements indicative of you trying to make meditation happen yourself,

Which you cannot do.

Meditation is an experiencing of your experience in the moment.

That's all it is.

For example,

Right now,

You're breathing,

Are you doing it or is it just happening naturally?

It's happening.

Your life,

Are you doing it or is it happening?

Life happens.

Suppose you're breathing and your life were given to you to do,

And you got stressed and forgot to do it.

Fortunately,

All of the vital functions of life are happening naturally.

And you can just enjoy the natural process of breathing,

Of life and of death.

You can even enjoy your dying process as well.

So I invite you not to make an ego project out of silent meditation practice,

Because meditation is not in your hands to create.

But you can create conditions for the seed of meditation to sprout and grow and flourish.

You can create a peaceful atmosphere within you and around you through relaxation,

Relaxing your mind and body.

If it is spring,

In the temperature,

The atmosphere and the soil,

Flowers will blossom.

But flowers won't blossom because you sit and peel them.

Likewise,

If you try to meditate it's not going to happen.

But you can create conditions in your mind and body and in your life and death such as giving yourself time and space allowing yourself to put down your ego projects for a while and forget about creating an identity or worrying about your identity.

And just let yourself relax for a while always remaining alert and aware.

We're not practicing deep relaxation.

Remaining relaxed and aware meditation will follow naturally.

So for the seed of meditation to blossom a certain level of preparedness such as a relaxed body and mind are the conditions for meditation to blossom naturally.

But if you yourself try to meditate you'll be creating a superficial ego project for yourself that you won't be able to keep up.

So instead of being on the surface level of your mind in your ego being the weather you can experience being deeper in your true nature being the sky and you're not trying to achieve any special state of being you're not trying to go somewhere else other than where you are right now you're not trying to get somewhere where you haven't been before or do something that you haven't done before or be something that you haven't been before Meditation is a homecoming coming back to your true nature that is always here the sky above,

Beyond,

Behind and beneath the weather So I can ask a very simple question to illustrate what meditation is Can you hear my voice now?

It's not a trick question Can you hear me speaking?

If you can hear me that is meditation Because the essence of a meditation is awareness knowing what you're hearing seeing,

Smelling,

Tasting,

Touching aware of what's on your mind knowing what thoughts are passing through your mind or are on your mind knowing what you're feeling sensing intuiting and doing in any given moment knowing what's going on in your field of awareness Meditation is simply being aware of your present moment experience just as it is without needing to embellish any experience with memories,

Stories fantasies ideals or worries no matter what the experience is positive or negative pleasurable or unpleasurable Meditation is just experiencing what is happening in the present moment And meditation is valuable for knowing what you're experiencing And knowing what you're experiencing is valuable for knowing your true nature So this is not striving to become or be something or someone or do anything True nature just is it's not the cognitive mind it's not striving or grasping for anything True nature and meditation are synonymous in that they are original nature and already exist And if you do notice yourself striving or trying to meditate at the same time you're aware that you're noticing yourself striving grasping onto meditation practice holding space for your ego for your grasping mind And it's an ongoing holding letting go moment by moment holding the next experience that goes holding the next experience whatever the experience is positive or negative if you notice yourself judging yourself holding that too that's just a negative mental experience that you're having that you can easily hold in your field of awareness So whatever you're experiencing is not important as I said earlier What's more important is being present and aware of your experience present for it allowing a spaciousness around it so that it doesn't bother you or disturb you or disturb your meditation because your experience can be there within the spaciousness and you can come to know your true nature that underlies the surface conditioned mind and you can come to know your unconditioned mind that is your true nature which is awareness without judgment and at some point through this holding unconditional holding space and paying no mind to whatever experience is in your present moment conditioned ego identified experience starts to fall away and so you can be busy or not busy you can be silent or noisy your experiences can be positive or negative you can be sitting or not sitting you can understand or not understand and yet you still experience your true nature that becomes you meditation becomes you because you already are meditation and you've always been meditating but it starts to reveal itself as you come to hold space for present moment experience so after a few distractions with different things happening around me let's come to the close of this teaching meditation with a few minutes of silent meditation practice and again the invitation to find an anchor for your attention an anchor to help you stay centered and balanced steady and stable so bringing this episode to a close now I hope that you found some of the teaching helpful or insightful in some way and I'm looking forward to producing the next episode for you so I invite you to explore your own meditation practice in your own way and in your own time and I look forward to meeting you again in episode 3 bye for now