The morality section is just broken down into three specifics: skillful action, skillful speech and skillful livelihood. Skillful means conducive to the end of suffering for us and for all other living beings. Be kind, honest, clear and compassionate in your whole life, in your actions, speech and work. Notice that nothing is excluded here. The more of our lives we integrate with the spiritual path, the better. Simple to remember and also a powerful guide.
The concentration section contains three things we saw in the Five Spiritual Faculties and the Seven Factors of Enlightenment: skillful energy, skillful concentration, and skillful mindfulness.
The wisdom section has the two last parts of the path: skillful thought or intention and skillful understanding or wisdom. These two are often rendered in different ways, but the meaning is the same: understand the truth of your experience and aspire to kindness and wisdom in your thoughts and deeds. Again, simple but powerful.
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9.PRACTICAL MEDITATION CONSIDERATIONS
WHEN, WHERE AND FOR HOW LONG?
The best time to meditate is when you can, as in “get it while you can!” The best place to meditate is where you can, and the best duration is for as long as is available or necessary for you to get what you wish out of it. This may seem like an obvious answer, but people can sometimes get it into their heads that certain times are better than others and thus not meditate when that seemingly sacred time period is unavailable or interrupted. They may feel that certain places or special circumstances (special cushions, noise levels, etc.) are oh-so-necessary, and if these are not available then they may feel frustrated and unable to practice. They may feel that a certain minimal duration of meditation time is necessary, and thus find themselves unable to make use of what time they may have.
If you have two hours each day for meditation, great! If you have two jobs, six kids, and just can’t find more than ten minutes each day for meditation, make good use of what you’ve got. There have been times in my life when I was very grateful that I had twenty hours a day to practice. On the other hand, when I have only had ten minutes a day, I have been grateful for the sense of how precious those ten minutes were. Skillful urgency and well-developed gratitude for a chance to practice at all can allow us to really use limited pieces of time to their fullest.
If you can take off a month each year for intensive retreats, wonderful. If a weekend retreat once a year is all you can do, go for it.
In short, honor where you are and what you can realistically accomplish given your current circumstances. If they are not entirely to your liking, and you want to take more time for practice, work on rearranging things a bit in a way that leaves you with a life that you still find fulfilling should you later decide to practice a bit less.
Luckily, meditation is an extremely portable endeavor. You don’t have to lug around special equipment, have other people around, or schedule an appointment. There are no fees, waiting lists, or red tape.
Reality happens. Sensations arise. If you’re payin’ careful attention to them, really feeling exactly what it is like to be here now, you’re doin’ it!
It’s just that simple.
Practical Meditation Considerations
While I have definitely come to appreciate “ideal” meditation conditions and their obvious benefits, I have also had profound insights and extraordinary experiences in places that would hardly be considered ideal (e.g. in the break room at work, while brushing my teeth). While I definitely appreciate the additional depth of long periods of uninterrupted practice, I am certain that being able to make use of little bits of time here and there has done much to move things along.
I sometimes meditate when reclining before sleep, when reclining in the morning before I have to get up, when I wake up in the middle of the night, before catnaps on the couch, during boring lectures and meetings, and in the lounge of the school I attended before afternoon classes. I have come to the conclusion that five minutes of really engaged, clear and focused practice in poor circumstances can often produce more benefits for me than an hour of poor, vague and distracted practice in “optimal conditions.”
I have also come to appreciate the value of timed sits, where I vow to sit and pay attention for a defined period of time. I take a little travel alarm clock or kitchen timer and vow to sit for a predetermined space of time, usually somewhere from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours. I have found that, during untimed sits, I tend to get up when I run into difficult territory, mild pain from sitting, or other things that I don’t want to acknowledge and investigate clearly. A timed sit makes it much more likely that I will be able to sit in the face of these things, thus developing more confidence and discipline, as well as the insights that come from persistent investigation.
DAILY LIFE AND RETREATS
A very related issue here is that of the world of retreats and monasticism and how it contrasts with the world of “daily life” or the life of a “householder.” Each has its own set of issues, but many of them overlap and the differences may be more question of degree than of dichotomy.
Now, it is true that the battle is not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift, but that’s the way to bet. In other words, those who do lots of practice in daily life, go on more and longer retreats, are more consistently able to concentrate and investigate quickly and precisely, pay attention more often during their daily activities, and have their 68
Practical Meditation Considerations
morality trip more together are, on average, much more likely to make progress.
When on retreat, people have the opportunity to practice nearly all day in settings that are usually designed to be very conducive to clear, precise inquiry and depths of meditation. (Why so few people actually take advantage of these circumstances when they go on retreat is beyond me, and I will spend some time ranting about that later.) The point is that going on retreats can give opportunities for much faster and deeper practice to those who choose to really practice. Said another way, if you go on retreat, make good use of that time.
There is a huge difference between the experiences of people who do retreats halfway and people who really follow the instructions all day long. In my experience, there is no comparison between retreats I have done when I really powered the investigation from the time I awoke until I went to sleep at night, causing fast and profound progress, and when I took breaks here and there to think about things such as my issues and meditation theory, generally causing moderate to slow progress. While many people think that retreats are for more advanced practitioners, I think that a few retreats early in one’s practice can really jump start things, allowing one to then make much better use of meditation time off retreat.
I often think of the momentum that retreats generate in terms of rolling a boulder over a hill. If you get a long running start, pushing hard the whole way, you are more likely to be able to get the boulder rolling fast enough so that it rolls over the hill in one straight shot. If you push intermittently or half-heartedly, the boulder is likely to roll back when you get to the steep part of the hill, but you have worn the hill down a little bit, and you may also be a bit stronger for the exercise. Thus, it is possible to wear down the hill given enough time, but it is much faster to simply power over it the first time and move on to the next hill. I know of no obvious benefits from slow practice that fails to gain some footholds in the territory of concentration or insight.
Those who take the wear down the hill approach may eventually lose faith and interest, having done lots of work to little effect. Those who really apply themselves and cross a few hills early on through focused and consistent effort, such as retreats or really solid daily life 69