Chapter 7 Beginner’s Practical Guide

For beginners in meditation, creating a suitable environment is crucial. First, you need sufficient private space, free from disturbances. When you begin to try meditation, stay away from the phone and free yourself from worldly affairs. Leave a note on the door saying you are meditating for one hour, do not knock. Then, when you enter the meditation room, take off your shoes, because you are walking on sacred ground. Not only take off your shoes, but also let go of all your worries, consciously letting go of everything along with your shoes, entering without any attachments. A person can take one hour out of twenty-four hours. Twenty-three hours are given to your body, career, desires, thoughts, ambitions, and plans. Take one hour from all of these, and ultimately you will find that only this one hour is the true time of your life; the other twenty-three hours are a waste, and everything else is in vain.

Secondly, choose a suitable location: a natural environment or a dedicated space for meditation. You should find a place conducive to meditation; for example, sitting under a tree can be helpful. Go to nature, go to the mountains, go to the trees. Trees are in a state of constant meditation; silence and unconsciousness are their meditation. I'm not saying you have to become a tree, you have to become a Buddha! But the Buddha and the tree have something in common: he is full of life like a tree, he celebrates like a tree; of course, there is a difference: the Buddha is conscious, the tree is unconscious; the tree is unconsciously on the path, the Buddha is consciously on the path—there is a huge difference, a world of difference. Go to a natural environment, a place that has not yet been polluted.

If you can't find such a place, then sit in your own room. If you have a special room in your home for meditation, even a small corner will do. Place a plant there, or if it's a secret practice, a rose—that's all fine. If the prayer space can be tuned, use agarwood to cleanse the area before meditation. It should be a place specifically prepared for meditation. Why specifically for meditation? Because every activity creates its own microwaves. If you simply meditate in that place, then that place will also become meditative. When you meditate each day, it absorbs your microwaves, and when you return the next day, those microwaves begin to return to you. They are helpful; they reward you.

When a person has truly become a meditator, he can meditate in front of a movie theater, he can meditate on a train platform. When I was young, I traveled frequently, year after year, always on trains, on airplanes, in cars—it made no difference. Once you truly take root in your nature, nothing is different . But this isn't suitable for beginners. When a tree has taken root, the wind and rain don't matter; they make the tree stronger. But when a tree is small and fragile, even a child can be dangerous for it.

Finally, ensure your body is comfortable: your posture should be comfortable. Your posture should allow you to forget about your body. What is comfort? When you forget your body, you are comfortable; when you keep thinking about your body, you are uncomfortable. So whether you are sitting in a chair or on the floor, the key is to be comfortable, because if you are physically uncomfortable, you cannot expect other deeper blessings to arise: if the first level is missed, the others are shut off. If you truly want happiness and joy, then it should begin with joy; physical comfort is the most basic requirement for those who want to achieve inner ecstasy. If we have a guru, we gain his approval, including time and space.

For most people, especially modern people, I suggest starting with catharsis rather than going straight to meditation. I rarely tell people to start with meditation. Begin with something easy. Otherwise, you'll start to feel a lot of unnecessary things. If you start with meditation, you'll feel a lot of internal distractions. The harder you try to sit, the more distractions you'll feel; you'll only feel your mind, nothing else. It will also create repression; you'll feel frustrated, you won't feel joy. If you sincerely and earnestly try to "just sit," you might actually feel crazy, but because people don't usually try so hard to be quiet, madness doesn't have a chance to happen. So I never recommend anything that creates frustration or repression… People are usually not prepared to know the madness in their minds. You have to gradually let yourself know certain things; knowledge isn't always good, it must unfold slowly according to your capacity to absorb it.