Why Meditate?
Why meditate? It's a great question. Why do anything that we're doing? That's always something we should be considering - why are we doing what we're doing, and should we be doing it?
Before we can answer why we're doing things, or whether it's worth it or not, we have to first notice what we're doing. If we don't even notice and know what we're doing, then we can't ask or consider anything about it at all. If we don't notice, we're on autopilot, very robotic and impulsive, living through habit instead of with intention.
That's a great reason to meditate, to get out of autopilot living and back into guiding our actions with intention. You can read more about that on this page and also use the links below if you want to get right into meditating:
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Check out the Breath First Aid page to jump right in to some breath methods;
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See how to do Counting the Breaths, a very common breath meditation method;
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Read more about Posture;
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See what to do with your Eyes;
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Read about Why Breathing makes sense as a meditation method.
Zen meditation is a practice method that helps us notice what we're doing right now, this very moment, and which gives us a chance to live with intention, which is an essential ingredient for influencing our lives in the directions we want to go, rather than getting swept up with the currents of other people's plans and the world's influences.
Through the breath meditation methods described on this site, we are building a strength of concentration that we can then take with us away from sitting and into everyday life - into talking to our friends, playing with our children, driving, cooking, cleaning, exercise, into all the activities of everyday living.
This strength of attention that we build is an unwinding of our usual habit of being distracted into thoughts, in which we are often lost throughout the day. Attention to what we're doing, right now, in this very moment, is a new habit that we are building through meditation. And as the new habit strengthens and old habits weaken, there is the possibility of real transformation in the quality of how we experience everyday life.
Does it really work? There is no need to trust me or anyone else who tells you about it. The proof is in the doing. Try it yourself and see what happens. But you can't transform a lifetime of habitual distraction with a ten-minute meditation tomorrow morning. A lifetime of distraction takes effort and time to unwind from, so give it a real try - find ten or fifteen minutes to meditate each day for a few weeks, and then consider if things feel differently to you.
If you're too skeptical to even begin without some evidence into the potentially positive impacts of meditation, you can take a look at these articles:
