More important than exercise, is meditation. That is, sit still and work at keeping your mind still for ten minutes. Why? Because it gives you a type of aid you use every minute. I don’t know of anyway to verify that you need the aid or that you aren’t getting it without meditation. If you feel balanced and calm and loving and reasonably happy, you might be the sort of person who does what is needed by your mind already.
What is it that you do? Sit in the lotus position (cross-legged on the floor) or sit up in a chair or lie on the floor. Keep your eyes on something neutral like a wall or the rug or the sky. Breathe slowly and pay attention to your out-breath and your in-breath.
I have written about this activity before but I keep seeing how valuable it really is and I get enthused all over again.
Three authors are very good on the nature of meditation and its effects:
Jack Kornfield – The Wise Heart
Jon Kabat-Zinn – Coming to Our Senses
Daniel J. Siegel – The Mindful Brain
All three authors have other books so if your local library has one, it might be worth looking at, no matter what title it is. (For those with a Kindle, all three of the books mentioned are available in Kindle format.)
However, “Buddhist Practice on Western Ground” by Harvey Aronson has been ringing my bell lately. Aronson is a psychotherapist who practices in the Houston area but he is also an experienced student and translator of Buddhist thought. The book is about the strong cultural differences between Asian societies and the American one. After I wrote the other day, I read a little of Western Ground. It is especially about individualism, anger and identity, three areas where current Eastern and American thought differ. (This Aronson book is only available in paper.)
We tend to think we must each learn to stand on our own two feet, that anger and vigilance for our liberty and rights is important, and knowing and growing the self is important for wisdom and happiness. Asian thought tends to emphasize that all people are connected and dependent on each other, the anger is a mistake and a sign of poor thinking and strong fear, and that there really is no such thing as a self, that it is just an illusion.
These are complex topics that may or may not strike you as dumb or as interesting. The point I want to make is that Siegel above seems right in his (to me) weird idea that meditating gives your own mind and body the sort of love, attention and harmony that a child gets from the best moments of love from its mother. Both Kornfield, a PhD psychologist and strong Buddhist scholar, and Aronson show that quiet meditation allows the mind to face and understand its real thoughts and feelings in a helpful, healthy way similar to, but sometimes better than, the Western approach of talking to a doctor.
