If meditation is a priority, then it is helpful to take the word literally and put meditation first. An example would be my rule of not turning on the computer before I’ve meditated. Simple, but effective. Probably the most trenchant advice I ever heard was in eight words from Suzuki Roshi, “Organize your life so that you can sit well”.
To train the mind, first we have to get a handle on it. We are thinking all the time. If we observe that thinking process for a second, we’ll see that it is triggered by the five sense faculties: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. We smell something or we see something, and we’re distracted. It’s hard to train the mind by using just the five sense consciousnesses — just smelling or just tasting, for example. We need to get hold of the discursive mind itself, the consciousness of thoughts, memories, and dreams. It’s being pulled in a lot of different directions, so we need a technique to stabilize it.
Training the mind is dependent upon the body. We reduce the body’s activity to focus the mind, so posture is very important. Then we use the breath, which is stable and consistent, as a focus for our intention. Joining our mind with the breath in meditation is often compared to the horse and the rider. The horse is the breath and the rider is the mind. We want those elements to be in continual contact. We have to be pragmatic about our practice. The mind is powerful. After racing around all day, it’s hard to follow through with the intention, “I’m going to stabilize my mind for one whole hour.” Instead, at the beginning of our session, we take the attitude, “Now I am going to focus.” Focus will bring us to moments of stillness and deepening, which profoundly affect the mind.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Try making a commitment to getting into the meditation posture at least once a day. You don’t have to sit for any length of time., just get on the cushion. A lot of times the hardest part is getting there.
Once you’re sitting down you think “I might as well sit for a few minutes” and more often than not, you’re getting full sessions in.
Joseph Goldstein in Commit to Sit
“Wanting” is a universal phenomenon, and our mental list of what we want is seemingly endless. We wake up in the morning and ask “What do I want today? What do I want to eat, what do I want to buy, how much do I want” Wanting, when it goes beyond our basic, ordinary needs, is an expression of a longing for something either more than or different from what we already have,. There is a sense of being fundamentally unfulfilled. It is well worth looking more deeply into the nature of wanting, recognizing how you know wanting is there, and naming it. When you become familiar with recognizing and naming wanting, then it will become easier to notice when are captured, and therefore you will more likely be able to free yourself. The practice fo mindfulness is a fundamental way of becoming more familiar with your mind, and getting used to observing how mind states arise, are noted, and then dissolve. With practice you can become better at noticing the “I want” state of mind, letting it arise, and letting it go.
Sasha Loring, How to Tame the Wanting Mind
Meditation is simply a question of being. You just quietly sit, your body still, your speech silent, your mind at ease, and allow thoughts to come and go, without letting them play havoc on you. If you need something to do, then watch the breathing. This is a very simple process. When you are breathing out, know that you are breathing out. When you breath in, know that you are breathing in, without supplying any kind of extra commentary or internalized mental gossip, but just identifying with the breath. There is no particular point on the breath on which you need to focus, it is simply the process of breathing. Twenty-five percent of your attention is on the breath and seventy-five percent is relaxed. Try to actually identify with the breathing, rather than just watching it.You sit quietly and let all thoughts and concepts dissolve. It is like when the clouds dissolve and the mist evaporates, to reveal the clear sky and the sun shining down. When everything dissolves like this, you begin to experience your true nature, to “live”.
Sogyal Rinpoche, Essential Advice on Meditation
Now if the practice [of meditation] is so good for us, why is it so difficult to maintain a steady practice? It may be that the notion that practice is “good for us” is the very impediment – we all know we can resist what is good for us at the table, at the gym, and on the internet. This mechanical notion of practice – “if I practice then I will be (fill in the blank)” – leads to discouragement because it is not true that practice inevitably leads to happiness, or anything we can imagine. Our lives, like the ocean, constantly change,and we will naturally face great storms and dreary lulls. How then do we put our mind in a space where practice is always there, whether tumultuous or in the doldrums? It requires a completely radical view of practice: practice is not something we do, it is something we are. Seeing our practice as our life, we just let go and do it.
Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, Like a Dragon in Water
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