Preliminaries to Meditation

Meditation covers the traditional preliminaries to meditation practice. These are meant to warm the mind up for your main meditation practice.

Transcript

So find a comfortable seat.

Sit them nice and tall.

Each vertebrae stacked on the next,

Rising up long through the spine.

And whether you're on a chair or sitting on the ground,

Make sure your legs are comfortable.

Hands and palm face down on the thighs or hands in your lap,

Left palm down,

Right palm on top.

And draw the low belly in very subtly.

Relax the shoulders.

Draw the shoulder blades together on the back gently.

Chin is slightly tucked.

Mouth closed,

Teeth slightly separate,

Tongue resting against the upper top teeth.

And then eyes gently closed.

Relax the forehead,

Jaw,

Corners of the eyes,

And corners of the mouth.

And just for the first part,

Still the body completely.

So make the body like a rock.

No fidgeting,

No moving.

Perfect stillness at the outer body.

And slowly start to come to your breath.

Start with the gross movements in the body,

So the belly,

Chest,

The shoulders moving with the breath.

And then refine even more and bring your focus to the tip of the nose and watch the breath come and go out of the two nostrils.

So tie your mind to that place in between the two nostrils.

And start to lengthen your exhales.

Just let the inhale take care of itself.

And then we'll start the perfect ten.

So the perfect ten is trying to get to a count of ten breaths without your mind leaving the breath.

So if your mind leaves and you start your count back over,

If you get the ten,

Then start your count back over and begin your count on an exhale,

Being the first half,

Inhale,

Second half of the breath.

So reverse of how you normally would count your breath.

Okay,

And then however far you got,

Let that go.

And then we'll start to move through the preliminaries.

So first preliminary to meditation practice is generating,

Sorry,

Going for refuge.

So bring the mind your best understanding of karma and emptiness,

Your best understanding of taking refuge,

And just think of how all the things that we typically do to make something happen,

All the ways we go about those things,

That those things,

If they had the power in and of themselves to bring about the result,

Then they would always work and they would work for everyone.

And that you would never have to try.

You would always just do the thing that created the effect that you wanted and it would be done.

There'd be no stress,

No anxieties around it.

And just see that how most of the things we do in life sometimes they,

Or most of the time they don't work out.

They don't produce the result that we want.

And then we suffer because of that.

So we're constantly trying to make the same mistake that we did in the past.

And then we're trying to make the same mistake that we did in the past.

So we're constantly trying to grow tomatoes,

But all we have is banana seeds and dandelion seeds.

And so take refuge in your understanding that things are coming from us,

Not at us.

Things are empty of having any power in and of themselves.

So medicines have no power in and of themselves.

Because if they did,

Then they would work all the time for everybody.

And that's not the case.

And we know that.

And then the missing element when something doesn't work for us is karma.

We're missing the kindness,

Showing that kindness to somebody else,

Giving somebody else that medicine,

Giving somebody else that thing that we're trying to achieve,

Helping someone else achieve that.

And then you do the things that you typically do,

And then they'll produce a result.

A desirable result.

But if you don't have the causes in place,

Then you can try everything in the book and not get the result that you want.

And then we suffer because of that,

Because we're constantly doing that.

We're constantly stressing if something's going to work out or not.

So take refuge in karma and emptiness.

Whatever is the cause,

I just have to help somebody else get that same thing.

And so the next preliminary is generating bodhichitta.

So try to develop a feeling in your heart and your mind that you want to get yourself out of suffering as quick as possible so that you can help other people get out of suffering as well,

And how we're no good,

Ultimately no good to others if we're still struggling and suffering ourselves.

So motivation should be,

Fix myself so that I can help other people.

And here it's good to bring the mind somebody in your life that's suffering in some way.

And just see them with that problem that they have.

And just try to develop a wish in your heart to want to help them,

Desire to want to help them.

And then just make that part of your practice today that you're sitting before them.

Like I'm here sitting,

Meditating today so that I can help myself and my suffering so that I can help that person ASAP.

Next preliminary is bring to mind a holy being,

A teacher for you.

And this could be somebody from a particular religion like the head of a religion,

Like the Buddha,

Or a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is Instructor,

Excellence,

B folder,

Masterford,

Jesus,

Muhammad,

Or it You know,

Look through all the people in your life,

All the people around,

And try to find the person that has guided you the most,

Maybe shows you really a good example of virtues,

Better ways of being that you wish to develop yourself.

So bring them to your meditation and see them come sit out in front of you.

And they're happy to be here with you.

Just start to paint in their silhouette,

Start with their silhouette.

And then if you get more detailed,

Start to paint in the features,

Their face,

Eyes,

Nose,

Mouth.

And then next step is making prostrations.

So here just bring into mind those good qualities that you see in them and just acknowledging them and be happy that you see these qualities in them.

And just respect,

Like have a mental respect for them,

For exhibiting these qualities to you.

So maybe see them in situations where they show you that quality or have shown you that quality that you see is high,

Higher than ones that you currently possess.

So maybe they're just really generous people or really generous person,

Really kind,

Really wise.

Just mentally bow down to those qualities.

The next preliminary is giving them offerings,

So making them offering for being a presence in your life,

For coming to sit with you today.

So this can be a traditional offering,

A sky full of flowers,

The earth covered in flowers.

Or one of the most powerful offerings is your practice,

Your willingness to sit down and do your practice.

The fact that you're here sitting,

Doing your meditation,

Offer that to them.

And the next preliminary is purification.

So think of something you did in the past 24 hours that you weren't so proud of,

Some unkindness,

Some act that hurts somebody else in a small way or even a big way.

Bring it to mind.

So first recognize it.

And then bringing to mind your understanding of karma.

Develop some regret for it.

So like you just drank some poison and you didn't know it was poison.

So a healthy regret,

Knowing that you shouldn't have done that because you just put some poison into your mindstream,

And then it will later produce an undesirable result for yourself.

And then three is make a deal with yourself not to do it again for a certain period of time.

And very important here to make sure that it's something you can follow through with,

So don't say for the rest of your life or for the next five years,

Make it something doable that you know you won't break and lie to yourself.

Create another negative karma.

And then finally,

Think of something you can do to counter that negative imprint you left in your mind,

So some counteractivity to indicate that karma.

And then next preliminary is rejoicing.

So bring the mind something positive you did,

Some kindness you did towards someone else in the past day,

And see where you were,

See where they were,

And just replay like a movie in your mind and just feel happy about it.

Be happy about the good things you're doing.

Very important.

See how it made them happy or maybe it relieves a little bit of their stress,

Whatever it was.

Most important is just feeling happy about it.

So replay it.

Okay,

And then bring to mind the being sitting in front of you.

Thank them for being a presence in your life.

Ask them to stay.

Ask them to continue to be a presence in your life.

And see them start to rise up off the ground,

Shrinking in size,

Coming up to the level of your forehead.

They shrink down to the size of a thumbnail.

They turn to face the same way as you.

And they come on top of your head.

They come to sit right on the top of the crown of your head.

And they shrink down even smaller,

The size of a pea.

They start to come down the inside,

The area of the spine dropping down the shaft of light,

Your central channel,

And start to work down along the back of the head,

Down the spine until they get to the area of the heart inside this central channel made of light.

Then see them find a little room the size of a pea.

Sit them in there and there's beautiful furnishings inside,

Very comfortable,

A lot of room.

And then finally dedicate the efforts,

The merit of doing practice,

Doing this meditation.

Very good karma.

So dedicate it to somebody,

Maybe dedicate it to your goals,

Dedicate it to being able to stop your suffering so you can help other people.

Just find something to dedicate your practice to.

And come back to breath,

Take three deep breaths before you come out of the meditation.

Reviews

Very comprehensive. Recommend highly.

Amazing 🙌🏼🙏🏼

Enjoyed it a lot. A new approach for me. Glad to find stuff like this in Insight Timer. 😀

great guide! really got into this -helped me drop a lot of dead weight off of my mind i was carrying for no reason - went on a journey and now ready for a peaceful day :-)

Thankyou a great insight ....
Namasté🕉🙏

Nice "walk through" to get on your way to understanding the principles behind meditation.

Great grounding thanks