Zen Blog

For beginners, finding a place to meditate without distraction is key.

Image by the Bureau of Land Management | http://bit.ly/2HBHoRa

Secluded meditation guides him who meditates.

In order to maximize the benefits of meditation, one must minimize external distractions by practicing in a secluded place. Once a practitioner advances and has achieved a higher level of meditation, there is no need to practice in a secluded place because the power of external distractions has dissipated. However, until one achieves that level of practice, seclusion is a good support for beginning meditators.

Related: The Buddha’s Original Teachings on Mindfulness 

Anxiety often involves feelings of separation and isolation, making it nearly impossible to be at ease and feel safe within your own flesh and being.

Reconciliation is the path to making peace with yourself and the world. Truly, to live and to die with a heart free of resentment, grudges, and ill will would be a crowning accomplishment in life. By practicing reconciliation meditation, you open the door to this possibility. 

This is a three-faceted practice. The first aspect is to direct reconciliation toward yourself, making peace with all of the ways in which you’ve felt deficient or inadequate. These feelings often accompany anxiety, with the sense of If only I weren’t so anxious. This can make it especially difficult to be at home and at peace with yourself. Reconciliation practice can build a bridge to truly experiencing that you’re enough just as you are. The second aspect is reconciliation toward those you’ve hurt. The third is reconciliation toward those who have hurt you. To be clear, this is a meditation practice, and all of the work of reconciliation is done within yourself. While the practice may eventually lead to outreach to others to make amends for ways in which you’ve hurt them, that’s a separate choice and not part of this practice. And, of course, although you always have the power to forgive those who have hurt you, you have no control over whether others will seek reconciliation with you. However, you can work within yourself, using this threefold practice, to open a hardened and anxious heart, affording yourself some of the deepest healing and freedom possible.

By choosing to tune in to how you perceive yourself and your interpersonal interactions, you’re breaking free from fixed ideas of who you are and what you can be.

By choosing to tune in to how you perceive yourself and your interpersonal interactions, you’re breaking free from fixed ideas of who you are and what you can be.                                           

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