How to start a meditation practice

The Simpsons, S31, E19; Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Alma Soltera, Wisdom Quarterly

Dharma Buddhist Meditation

It will be useful to know these things at the inception of an incipient sitting meditation practice:

Of course the mind will wander. That's what it does. That's its business. Let it do as it will (worry, stress, go crazy, explode, black out, fizzle, burn, become ecstatic, anything) but not as it wants. What does the mind want? To get up and go somewhere else, anywhere else but here or now.

The business of the beginning meditator is to watch dispassionately. What's dispassionate? It means to not be involved, not take it personally, not fight with it, not get seduced or swept away by it, not try to control it. This is not about controlling. This is about allowing, accepting, and learning what is. What is? This is. This right here, right now.

Eckhart Tolle in the Power of Now says it is insanity to fight what is. First of all, it is much better to know what is, to see it, to become familiar with it. We spend our whole lives pursuing four habits that we would be wiser to let go of completely in meditation:

1. Attaching and clinging to pleasant experience
2. Being annoyed by and rejecting unpleasant experience
3. Fearing and resisting unpleasant experience (real or imagined)
4. Being confused, deluded, or unmindful about neutral experience

Greek Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom at Celsus

These three (four) are known as the Three Poisons (of the Heart/Mind): Greed, hatred/fear, and delusion.

There are three roots, but the second has two distinct expressions. We're full of lust, passion, desire (lobha), which is poorly translated as "greed." It's not greed but just the way the word is translated and close enough.

We're full of aversion, revulsion, anger (dosa), which is translated poorly as "hatred." It's not hate but just the way the word is translated and close enough.

We're full of wrong views, confusion, and hallucinations (moha), which is poorly translated as "delusion." It is delusion, ignorance, tenaciously holding views at variance with reality.

• (By the way, aversion or dosa expresses itself in two main ways, as hate or fear. Both want the thing to stop, to get away, to be apart from us. A mouse runs in the kitchen, and the man wants to kill it while the woman jumps on a chair screaming in fear. It's the same negative root of dosa. A person who does not express a lot of hate and anger and annoyance will usually express a lot of fear, worry, and anxiety. It's the same root coming out in different ways.)

Goddess Sophia with Owl, Sofia, Bulgaria

Now we will cultivate the opposing habits.

What are they? Nongreed, nonhatred, and nondelusion. 

What is nongreed? Generosity, letting go, and unselfishness (nonegocentric abiding).

What is nonhate? Altruistic loving kindness, compassion, happiness in others' happiness, and fearlessness (which may not quite be "bravery" but rather calmness in the face of disturbing, aversion-inspiring things, or non-shivering of the heart).

What is nondelusion? Wisdom, gnosis, knowledge, insight, Sophia, Saraswati, Khema, Sariputra.

Meditation is simple and impossible. We can't DO it, so let's NOT DO it. Let's let it be. Let's accept. Let the practice be accepting and allowing. Accepting and allowing what? This moment. There is only this, the infinite present (no past, no future, no goal, no have to, no should). There is only this. There is only this.

I will become a third-eye goddess all-knowing

Let's make space for it. It's our lives. Let's stand in the place where we are. Let's feel the feelings we feel -- but not cling to them, not claim them as ours, not try to take possession of what is not really ours, not reject nor hate nor fear. Let it be.

Then there will be the arising of wisdom. Then she will appear, Sophia/Sofia. Tell the Serpent it's arrived or awaken Kundalini in stages.