Isn't Meditation Fun?

Well honestly... no. Meditation is no fun at all. It's difficult, sometimes tedious, often frustratingly hard work. As a matter of fact, if you are having fun while meditating there is a good chance that it's just your mind trying to distract you from the hard work. Sorry.

Many people today have some serious misconceptions about what meditation is and what its purpose is. So let's first look at what meditation is not.

Meditation is not relaxation. Of course there's nothing wrong with relaxing. It's important to take time to relax especially in today's fast paced, stressful world. And while meditation can and does help us relax, it isn't relaxation itself.

Going to your "happy place" is not meditation. That is relaxing. And, as I've already said, meditation is not relaxation.

By the same token, listening to music is a wonderful way to relax. It is not meditation.
So what is meditation? Meditation is training the mind to stay fully present and in the moment. It is being fully awake and aware of everything going on around us as well as within us. It's being aware of our thoughts, our emotions, and our physical sensations, and at the same time being fully aware of the noises and activities going on around us. While we are aware of everything, we also calmly exist. We are making no judgments about whether a thought, a noise or a sensation is good or bad. We just exist with the universe. The Sanskrit word for this type of meditation is Shamatha which means, "Calm Abiding". In Zen Buddhism it's called Zazen, "Just Sitting".

So here we are, just sitting. The instruction then is to put a portion of our attention on our breath. The reason the breath is used is that it is always with us. We breathe all the time but usually we are not aware of it. It just happens. Also, when our attention is on the breath, it brings our mind and our body into sync. You could say it brings us more fully into our body, more fully into the present. When we breathe in we are aware we are breathing in. When we breathe out we are aware we are breathing out. Then when we have a thought, we label it a thought. We might say to ourselves, "Thinking", or "Thought".

The rest of our attention is on everything else. We are not trying to go into some sort of trance-like state where we lose touch with the world around us. That, also, is not meditation. On the contrary, we are learning to be fully present. When the phone rings we might call that a noise. Or, since the noise and a thought such as "Oh, the phone's ringing" happen so closely together, we could call that a thought as well. Whatever happens we label it a thought, a sensation, a noise. Then we let it go and go back to the breath. It's important that we not form an opinion about these thoughts, sensations and noises. They just are. Just as we just are in that moment. That's the whole of the instruction. Simple right? Yes it's very simple. And it's very hard. And it's definitely not a lot of fun.

There are so many benefits to this basic meditation practice it's difficult to name them all. Physically meditation can lower blood pressure and build the immune system. It can help us sleep better and wake up more easily. Emotionally it helps with depression, anger issues and a wide variety of unpleasant emotions. We find we can concentrate more easily, focus and retain what we learn more efficiently.

But one of the most amazing benefits to meditation is the ability to hear our thoughts, to feel our emotions, and then to realize we have the choice to react to those thoughts and emotions or not. We sometimes identify so closely with our thoughts we don't even hear them. We just react to them. The same with our emotions. We don't actually feel them until we've already reacted. And it is the reaction to these things that causes the problems in our lives, not the thoughts and emotions themselves.This is how addictions work. An irrational thought becomes an irrational emotion and before we know it we've smoked a cigarette, eaten an entire pie or done something else that we regret.

In some Eastern traditions it is understood that we are not our thoughts or our emotions. We are the Watcher, the Witness. The One who decides. With a regular meditation practice we regain the ability to choose. We gain control of our lives and that, I suppose you could say, is fun.

Susan L Qualls has taught meditation, fitness and qigong for many years both in group classes and in one on one mentoring. To read more of her articles please visit http://www.susanlq.com

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