Reddit mentions of Zen Meditation in Plain English

I personally have tried several different forms of meditation and have found that the regular breath technique mbrock talks about above to be the best. I personally have been attracted to and practice Zazen, which is the Zen form of meditation. The book "Zen Meditation in Plain English" by John Buksbazen has been the best commonsense breakdown of this type of meditation I have found. Anyone that ever asks me about meditation I usually refer to this book first.

The technique is very simple. Find a nice quiet place to sit. I sit on the floor in my room. You can use a chair, or the floor. If using a chair simply sit towards the front of the chair such that your back is straight and your legs are comfortably underneath you. (Ideally you should feel very balanced, you don't want there to be too much strain on trying to stay seated up right, it should feel somewhat effortless.) Sitting on the ground usually requires a rolled up blanket, or a good big pillow. There are different postures for sitting on the ground. The grand daddy being full lotus, but that requires a lot of flexibility. I usually sit in a somewhat indian style position. With both legs folded in front, and close to my body. This link refers to the pose I use as cross-legged. I have heard it called cobra before:

http://www.dharmacrafts.com/2INFO01/DharmaCrafts-Meditation-Supplies.html

That link should give you a good idea of the different postures and such that people use. Just remember you don't need all the fancy pillows etc... to do this. A rolled up blanket works great. Just get comfortable.

Now posture is important because the idea is that you want to sit in such a way that you have as little distraction as possible. If you are sitting in an odd way, you are off balance, etc... then you will start to have pain in your back, your butt, wherever. However, if you are seated comfortably and with good posture then you will have less distraction, which then allows you to focus more intently on breathing.

In zen it is taught that it is ideal to sit facing a wall. Preferably a blank wall. The idea here is that there will be less in your visual field to distract you. While practicing zazen you should never close your eyes. It becomes much easier to go into day dreams, etc... when they eyes are closed. Ideally you should keep your eyelids about half open, as if your peeking out. This will help keep your eyes lubricated so you have to blink less. Blinking can be a distraction.

So get next to a wall and get comfortable in whatever position you choose. Now imagine the ground extends past the wall, your eyes should be gazing into the wall as if you were looking at the ground about 3 ft behind the wall. Remember to keep your head straight, good posture. The idea here is to not focus too hard on the wall. Focusing intensely on it will cause your eyes to fatigue. Letting the wall go out of focus is fine, and encouraged.

Now set a timer for yourself... I would suggest starting with ten minutes for your first session. Now you begin to breathe, don't worry too much about the posture and the eyes and all that, let all that go, it doesn't matter. Now all you have to do is breath in and out, through your nose. On the in breath simply feel the breath, you can focus on any aspect of it, how it fills your belly, how it feels in your nose, just focus on the breath. On the out breath count, in your head 1, and on your next out breath 2. Count all the way up to 10 and then start back at 1. Do this for the full ten minutes.

The counting will help you maintain your focus. Sometimes you will be focusing on your breath and an idea, or a daydream, will sneak into your head and you won't even notice. Then all of a sudden you come back to your counting and you are at 18. Your mind drifted away. Simply start back at 1, there is nothing wrong with the drifting, it is just part of practice. After a while you will drift less and less. You will be able to focus more intensely on your breath, and on anything else that confronts you in your life, be it tests or whatever.

I currently sit for 25 minutes, once a day. Doing ten minutes once a week, twice a week, would probably help you. But if you really want results... the important thing is to do it everyday, if possible. The length of the sit is not as important as the frequency of the sits. Even just 5 minutes everyday would be great. Do what works best for you.

As far as zazen is concerned this is the first type of meditation a practitioner would undertake, it then goes to koan study, and past that shikantaza, just sitting.... it's an interesting practice. Hope this helps.

Link for that book I mentioned:(http://www.amazon.com/Meditation-Plain-English-Daishin-Buksbazen/dp/0861713168/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311877074&sr=8-1)

Hi, looks like you've already received some good answers on both Zen subreddits. Just want to share what I did first. Hopefully it's helpful.

I basically started with this book. It was really helpful because at the time I was overwhelmed with the "rituals" and such, and really wasn't sure if I was doing zazen "right." Also I was reading r/zen at the time and that made things even more confusing, haha.

So that book I linked starts off with counting breaths when sitting. Count to ten in a row, then start over. If you lose count (get distracted), just start at one again. I got pretty good at counting to ten without getting sidetracked and eventually stopped counting, but still focusing on my breath.

Brad Warner writes a lot about zazen, and he's got some good videos on YouTube about it. He answers questions via email too.

The cool part is you can make sitting your own thing. You can or cannot bow before/after sitting, all up to you. You could light incense, or light a candle. I've tried a few different things just to change it up. Right now I just use Insight Timer, and my partner recently bought me a zabuton which is amazing.

Learning to zen meditate may be of use. It's core is the practice of controlling your breath. Taking in as much air as possible, and exhaling completely. To do so you must learn to breathe with your diaphragm rather than your lungs. It might sound simple, but it's a pretty strange feeling.

Stamina on the pipes can fade quickly, so playing 5-10min a day, every single day, will be a huge help. I've noticed stamina loss even after 2 weeks of not playing.

To strengthen your lips, treat them as you would any other muscle. Every now and then you need to "lift" to failure. That means playing until you literally can not keep a seal any longer... and playing for another 5 minutes.

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Aside from the physical aspect, having your pipes set up properly, with a reed that you're actually capable of playing, helps a lot. Often times instructors or PMs will give you a harder reed because it sounds better, but it becomes so difficult to play it's simply miserable.

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Edit: Some new thoughts after reading some comments: Switching to an oval mouthpiece really helped me. Also, some pipers will have the mouthpiece in the corner or their mouth. I find that makes it extremely difficult to keep a seal given how lips muscles function. So I'd also recommend learning to play with the mouthpiece right in the center of your mouth to allow your lips to use their full strength.

Also also, this is the book that taught me how to zen meditate https://www.amazon.com/Meditation-Plain-English-Daishin-Buksbazen/dp/0861713168/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=meditation+plain+english&qid=1549821441&s=gateway&sr=8-7

I haven't read Mindfulness in Plain English either, but I've heard good things. I found Zen Meditation in Plain English by Buksbazen to be a helpful intro. For more inspiration than instruction, I liked Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Suzuki.

I have not meditated in several years, but there was a time where I was doing zazen multiple times a week. There are certainly a lot of books out there that could be helpful guides: Zen Meditation in Plain English and An Introduction to Zen Buddhism would be good for the philosophy and practice, but my favorite book to recommend is Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies, and the Truth About Reality by Brad Warner. That last one is a brilliant treatise on Zen philosophy as it pertains to a modern, Western life.

The toughest part about meditation is getting the mind to do the right thing. As you said, it's about being more mindful of the moment that is happening while letting go of the past and not concerning yourself with the future. Generally, most practices center around counting breaths, focusing on the sensation of breathing, and generally getting the brain to shut off all of the extraneous things that are bumping around in there. For BPD sufferers, that would be all of the negative thoughts floating around, making their lives tougher.

Imagine that your mind is actually a little person manning a big control room with thousands of monitors. Each monitor shows a memory, a future plan, current sense data, emotions, etc.; basically everything that makes you, you is up on those screens. Zazen is about learning how to temporarily shut these monitors off at will, either individually, by category, or wholesale. The ideal is to shut all of them off and just be left with the mind alone (this is the idea behind the Buddhist notion of "watching one's own mind". When your mind is not distracted by past memories, by future plans, by sense data, by emotions, it is in it's most pure state: Emptiness. This is not to be confused with little-e "emptiness" but is a Buddhist concept unto itself.

It's tough to get to that point and it requires lots of practice. There will be many times when you are counting breaths and thinking about how stupid the whole thing is, or how you have to run errands later that day, or how your back hurts, or how that one time your friend called you fat in middle school and it really hurt. This is ok! It's normal! That's what your brain does all day every day, you can't expect it to not do that just because you are meditating. When thoughts and distractions arise, let them. Observe them. Then let them fall away and start counting your breaths again. With lots of practice, you will eventually get to the point where you can let all the excesses of your mind fall away and achieve relaxation, knowledge and mastery of the mind, and plenty of other benefits.

Anyway, these are just some scattered thoughts. Just start reading about it! The Brad Warner book is a great place to start because it summarizes lots of Buddhist philosophy in a really palatable way. Good luck!