Sitting, Breathing

Doing something new with meditation....

I first tried meditation for a science class at Oakland Community college. We had to do something self-impropy and chart the results, and I tried meditation for 40 days. I'm not sure if this was before or after my meeting Buddhism for the first time in a separate OCC class (World Religions 101: one of the most influential classes I've ever taken: after that, nothing was the same). I don't remember what the results of my meditation-experiment were, if they were good or bad.

Meditation is one of the big-ticket items in the world of Buddhism. If you don't meditate, you aren't Buddhist, and you aren't Buddhist if you don't meditate. (Although some sects, for instance SGI, do chanting instead). While meditation is not restricted to Buddhism, it is inseparable from the image of Buddhism.

I've never been good at sitting meditation. Although: is sitting meditation something you get good at? I'm not sure that it is, to be honest: the harder you try, the worse you would get, I suspect. At any rate, it's hard for me to sit still for 30-40 minutes. So instead, these days, I'm trying for 20 minutes at a time, three times a day. Once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening.

You read a lot about breath meditation in the Buddhist magazines and website: it's recommended that one try to do ten "mindful" breaths in a row. Instead, I try to take one mindful breath, and then I do it again and again.