David Johnson

Motivation & Dedication

This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.

If you are joining the meditation sessions, you’ll know that just before the sitting starts I suggest that we sit for a moment and reflect on our reason for being there. In saying that I mean what is our motivation, our intention, our goal in deciding to spend a part of our day sitting in meditation? Something is bringing us to the meditation cushion. What is it?

At the end of the meditation, before getting up and resuming our day, I invite us to reflect back on the motivation that we set ourselves at the beginning of the meditation, and in our own way dedicate any benefits that we have received through meditation to the accomplishment of that motivation. You might feel that the benefits are intangible, maybe even questionable? However, we have spent time meditating instead of doing something else. We are building that habit of meditation for ourselves. We are building that muscle of meditation, taking that one step further in our practice. There is benefit alone in that. It is that idea of Familiarization that I spoke about two days ago.

By creating this moment to sit and reflect, we are creating a gap between daily life and our meditation. I am not suggesting that we will not receive benefit if we do not do this, but from my experience giving myself time to reflect on my motivation and dedicating the benefits, cements the practice that little bit deeper in me and helps me to take an awareness of the practice into my life.

Meditation is a marathon not a sprint

This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.

We live in a world of quick results (a lot of the time). Flick a switch and the light goes on. Look at the speed and capability of the device that you are reading this on.

Meditation is not the place to go for swift results. The results will come but they’ll take time. Meditation teaches me patience and acceptance of myself as I look at my mind, wanting it to be at peace with the world and seeing it struggle at times. An insight comes from one sitting and is gone within five minutes of getting up. It is not embedded into my being. So I go back to the practice.

This is one reason why I said a couple of days back to beware of judging your meditation sessions good or bad. Just stick with the practice. Be patient, and the results will come.

Familiarization

This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.

My background in meditation comes via the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, specifically the Gelug-pa tradition, which I have been practicing for 30 years now. Although I have complimented my Tibetan practice with studies of other spiritual traditions and philosophies, my center and focus is the Gelug-pa tradition. In speaking about meditation I like to strip the conversation of Buddhist material while keeping the essence of what is useful to a wider audience regarding the practice of meditation.

With this in mind I find it useful to reflect on the Tibetan word for meditation, göm. Göm means ‘to familiarize’. Where I see meditation leading us comes out of this word göm.

Within the context of meditation we are looking to familiarize ourselves with our mind, to get to know it better, to spend time with our mind, to learn to be with and not react to difficult states of mind, and ultimately to transform our mind. The transformation here comes with familiarizing ourselves and developing positive states of mind - love, compassion, patience, generosity, and the like.

Frequency - how often and for how long?

This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.

For me this is a question of quality over quantity. There are no awards in the meditation world for gritting your teeth and trying to sit for as long or as often as you can.

Build slowly and steadily.

If you sit for longer than you are truly comfortable with the danger is that in time you will develop an aversion to meditation. You look at your meditation cushion, you even just think of your meditation cushion and aversion to meditation starts to arise. Meditation starts to be associated with discomfort, mental and physical.

Scheduling & how long for:

• Find a time or times in the day that work for you.
• Times that fit into your wider life schedule.
• Early morning is a good time, when the mind is settled and the world is waking up. However, if that is not a good time for you, that’s fine.
• Better to sit for a short time everyday/every other day/etc, than grit your teeth and sit for an hour one day and never again for a week or two.
• What do I mean by short time? In essence I mean a time that is comfortable for you. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever you are easily comfortable with. No rights or wrongs here. You will know what works for you. Use that. You can increase it in your own time with experience, if you want to.

In the same way that we can all have good and bad days, you will still have meditations that feel comfortable and others that feel difficult. However, by making your schedule workable for you, you will be able to handle the ups and downs.

As I said above, build slowly and steadily.

To compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be running through May on YouTube and are now archived on YouTube, I am posting what I call a daily ‘Meditation Nudge’.

These short posts will offer a meditation instruction or practical meditation tip. I am posting them on my Micro.blog site. If you bookmark this page and refresh it each day, you can read the latest post. I hope to have them up mid to late morning (Hawaii time) each day. As of this post, I have just posted the third nudge.

If you want to find out more, I’d love to hear from you. Just click here.

Meditation Timer

This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.

A practical piece today.

I learnt to meditate before electronic aids were available. Well, some electronic timers were becoming available, but they didn’t work for me. Yes, I could have set an alarm clock for 15 minutes hence, but I found the sound rather jarring and so I didn’t use them. Instead I would do one of two things,

1. sit until it felt like long enough,
2. have a clock just in sight if I looked up and catch a glance at it occasionally to see how long I had been sitting.

However,

• ‘1.' didn’t feel right. My mind could very easily tell me when it had had enough as it looked for a way out of the mental gymnastics.
• ‘2.' put an added distraction in my head, “was ‘x’ minutes up yet?"

With our smart phones being able to hold apps, there are now many dedicated Timers or specifically Meditation Timers to be found. I recommend finding a timer because then you can set it for how long that you wish to meditate for and then just focus on your meditation. The nagging voice might come up, “how much longer do I have to sit for?" but that is just the mind distracting you. Note that distraction and come back to the object of meditation.

Here are some apps that I recommend (all iPhone),

• Samsara - This is the app that I use in the YouTube sessions. It has a number of options for customization. However, I have dialed it back to some simple settings. I use it in the YouTube sessions as it sounds a gong at the beginning and end of the sessions. I find the gong sounds comfortable. It also will work if you turn the display off to save the phone’s battery.
• Simple Meditation Timer - This is probably my favourite in that it is bare bones and just works. Set your time, press the button, a gong rings ‘x’ minutes later. I don’t use it on the YouTube videos as it does not have a starting gong. Like Samsara you can turn off the display and it will still work.
• Simple Zazen Timer - Another bare bones app. This has a higher pitched gong sound that might appeal better to some. I don’t use it as the screen has to be left on while the timer is counting down.
• And of course there is the countdown timer on the iPhone itself. I just don’t like the ringer sounds that come with that and so do not use it.

If you are using a phone to host your timer, I do recommend putting your phone into Airplane mode before sitting. That way you won’t be distracted by phone calls, text, notifications and the like.

If you do choose to use a smart phone timer, I do recommend finding one that will work easily for you and for which the sounds are comfortable to you. Ultimately you want something that you can just forget about so that you can just get on with your meditation.

Beware of finding the right timer becoming a more important project than your meditation!

Beware of looking for good and bad meditations

This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.

Whatever my meditation practice is, from my experience it is very easy to have judgements of how well I am doing. I can set arbitrary goals for myself based upon what I feel I should be aiming for, with the judge of whether I meet those goals being myself.

The problem with this arrangement is that both the self-imposed goals and the judgements of whether I have met them, is very subjective. In setting them up I drop into a duality of win or loose. There is a sense of aggression towards myself as to where I am at. This aggression can slip subtly into my daily life in my judgment of myself and others.

Instead, my invitation to you is to just follow the instruction of the meditation practice. Allow the wisdom and transformation to come out of the practice. Don’t go looking for answers, don’t go looking for insights, don’t go looking for anything. Just do the practice. Just follow the instruction.

The Meditation Posture

This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.

First and foremost, be comfortable. If you are not comfortable, the body will be screaming, you will be distracted and at worst be put off the idea of meditation completely. Be comfortable.

Below I will run through the seven point posture as I was taught it:

1. Sitting - Traditionally this is taught as the Lotus posture. If this is just not possible (I can’t maintain it!), one can sit in the half lotus, cross legged, kneeling (using a stool or cushions under your bum), or on a chair (feet on the floor).
2. Hands - Either place your hands palm downwards on your thighs. Or with the palms upwards, right hand resting in the left hand and the two thumbs touching. The thumbs can be used to gauge your meditation. If you are trying too hard, they will tend to press together. If they drift apart, your mind is probably distracted.
3. Back - The back should be straight but not rigid. As if your spine was like a stack of coins. If you are in a chair, do not lean back into the chair for support. That can make you drowsy.
4. Shoulders - Level and not slumped.
5. Head - Up with the chin slightly lowered and the jaw resting naturally, slightly open.
6. Tongue on the palate - The tongue rests on the palate behind the top front teeth. This helps to stop the build up of saliva while keeping the mouth moist.
7. Eyes - I was taught to keep the eyes open, with a soft gaze two or three feet in front of you, down the bridge of the nose. Meditation is an internal focus, not external. Some prefer to close the eyes (I sometimes do), just be careful not to fall asleep.

If at anytime you find yourself in a lot of discomfort, adjust your position and come back to the meditation.

Update on December 17, 2020: I have now moved the videos from YouTube to my YouTube page.

Following the daily meditation sessions through April, I have decided to continue the meditations through May, just with fewer sessions. During May I will host two sessions a week, Monday and Thursday. They will be held live at 1:00pm Hawaiian time (to help - 3 hours behind the US West coast, 6 hours behind the East coast, 11 hours behind the UK, and 22 hours behind New Zealand). All videos will be archived on YouTube for later watching, as are the April sessions.

On the days between the meditations I plan to post short reminders about aspects of meditation on this page of my Micro.blog site. Just bookmark this page.

If there is sufficient interest and I can work things out logistically at home, I might have a meditation day, having three live meditation sessions (morning, lunchtime and late afternoon). Please let me know if you are interested in this and I will look into the logistics. Here are my contact details.

For more details, including April’s meditations, please visit my YouTube page. Otherwise, I hope to see you this coming Monday, May 4 for the first meditation session of the May series.

With the April meditation series now over. The question came up for me as to “what next?”

I set up the April series not only as a class for those who wanted to learn more about meditation, but also as a resource for people struggling with the stay-at-home order. Through meditating individuals can start to build tools for themselves to work with their minds, quite often the source of these struggles.

I enjoyed running the series, and it was well received.

May Stay-at-Home

Then I heard the announcement that here on Maui the stay-at-home order will carry on through Maui (with some staggered openings). Similarly such appeared to be the case across the country, indeed the world.

Meditation sessions

So along with some interest from those already sitting, I decided to run a May series of meditations. There will be less weekly sessions, but the continuity will be complimented by some regular (daily?) posts about meditation on my Micro.blog site. Maybe also a day of sitting?

More details can be found here. I hope that you are able to join me in meditation during May.

If you want to find out more, I’d love to hear from you. Just click here.

Update on December 18, 2022: I have now archived the videos on my YouTube page.

After 3½ weeks, in 45 minutes I will streaming my last daily April meditation session. Please do join me on my YouTube page.

I have enjoyed doing this through April and because of interest will be running further meditation sessions through May. Details to follow. 🧘🏼‍♂️

Update on December 18, 2022: I have now archived the video on my YouTube page.

Just a reminder that I am offering a daily meditation through April. You can either join me at 1:00pm Hawaii time or all videos are archived (daily streams can take 12hours+ to upload 😳) so you can watch in your own time. Just visit my YouTube page. 🧘🏼‍♂️

Update on December 18, 2022: I have now archived the video on my YouTube page.

For those who joined the first Self-Isolating Meditation Sessions today, I apologize for the loss of sound at the end of the session.

I have figured out the problem and I hopefully will be good to go for tomorrow.

I have now removed this session from my YouTube page and added an Introduction video (YouTube video link).

Starting tomorrow, Tuesday, April 7, I shall be offering a free virtual meditation session each day, probably through April. The intention is to give me and hopefully you a break during your day, a time to come back to yourself in a world of self-isolation.

Details on how to join me or watch later are in the invitation below. No experience is required, just a wish to stop, breathe, be with yourself and let the world carry on without you for a few minutes.

I hope that you will join me.

The Invitation

Dear Friends,

I am writing to let you know of a daily meditation session that I will be offering during this time of self-isolation. My plan right now is offer it until the end of April, but that is open to change. My aim is to show up each day, and at the same time I am aware that life might happen to make that impossible. I shall try and inform everyone if I know ahead of time that I cannot make it.

Why am I doing this?

• Friends asked me if I would offer some meditation instruction.
• I find that living this life of self-isolation with family, for me some days are good, some days are a struggle. The answer to this for me is to make some time where I can reset and come back to myself. This daily, midday meditation I hope will serve that purpose for me and for you.

Logistics

• The first session will be streamed live on Tuesday, April 7th at 1:00pm Hawaii time (4:00pm PST / 7:00pm EST / 12:00pm New Zealand / 12:00AM UK).
• I will look to be online 5 minutes before the top of the hour.
• No meditation experience is required to take part in these sessions.
• The whole session will last no more than 20 minutes, with meditation about 10 minutes (don’t worry if that sounds too long, I will have you covered).
• You can be at home, in your office, in your pajamas, in a suit. My only suggestion (if possible) is to find a quiet place to sit comfortably (and not be driving).
• As I will be using YouTube to stream the sessions (see tech details below), they will be recorded and can be watched later if you cannot make the live time.
• As I will be at home I hope and will ask for no interruptions, I cannot guarantee that as life happens around me.

Technical Details

I have decided to use YouTube to live stream the meditation sessions (These are now archived on my YouTube page, details below). This will be my first time using this platform to stream videos. I have spent time experimenting with it, but I do ask that you bear with me as I get use to YouTube’s intricacies. Here is what you need to know:

• Click on this link to be taken to my YouTube page, where the YouTube videos are now archived.
• You will see a thumbnail link to the next scheduled video (take a look now), click on that and the video will start at the designated time(ish) - providing I hit “Go” at the right time).
• Recordings of all past sessions will be available on my YouTube Channel.
• Comments and chat will be disabled for the videos, at least that is the plan so that we can concentrate on meditation. If you have any questions or comments (put anything out there as I want this to work for people), contact me if you have my contact details, otherwise there will be available via my YouTube channel (click on the About tab).

Have I missed anything? Is something unclear? Please get in touch.

Please pass this onto anyone else who you think might be interested.

Thank you for your interest in these meditation sessions. I looking forward to seeing you there.

Stay safe. Be well.

David.

If you want to find out more, I’d love to hear from you. Just click here.

I mentioned in my last blog entry how I live overlooking the Hana Highway in Maui. It is one of the major attractions for visitors to the island, to drive the two hour journey out to the town of Hana that sits at the far end of this road. Actually the two hour pin is from the town of Paia. Depending on where you are staying on island, the journey could be closer to three hours one way - and, “yes” you can stay in Hana.

Sometimes when I am driving home, following a car containing a family or persons visiting Maui, I wonder how they are seeing the road and its surrounding scenery? For them, each bend in the road will be revealing a vista that they have not seen before. Views that for me I see pretty much every day, will be a first occurrence for them. Are they seeing more than me? Am I missing anything in my easy to drop into complacency of seeing these scenes so regularly?

Bristol

I remember years ago walking through the city of Bristol in England where I grew up and looking up at the tops of the buildings that I was passing by. Aside from the more modern buildings that have gone up in my lifetime, I cannot pin point when buildings around Bristol were built? However, suffice to say that many of the larger buildings in the city centre are old and have details carved into their walls that can easily be missed if you are just walking along, head down, focused on where your next meeting is or something that is bothering you.

So what made me look up on that day I am not sure, but look up I did and saw details in those buildings that I had not noticed before. Buildings that I knew well, that I passed regularly, but took their presence so much for granted that I found myself actually not really knowing them.

What do we see?

This experience got me thinking,

• “What are we truly aware of in the world around us?"
• “What do we see and what do we miss?"

Awareness

Meditation practice opens our senses to the world around us. As I build on my practice, I start to become aware of aspects of myself - how I think, how I act - that before I was not aware of. This is not always easy. I might be exposed to a behavioural pattern that I have chosen not to look at, or was simply completely unaware of. With this comes the opportunity to grow in myself as I start to make friends with and integrate this new awareness.

In the same way that my awareness of myself grows, so does my awareness of the world around me. As I start to notice aspects of myself, the good and not so good, so do I also become aware of those around me - how they are acting and how I am reacting to them! As an American Buddhist monk once said when asked what he had gained from his meditation practice, he replied,

I know that I get angry.

Sadly that is not something that we are all aware of all of the time.

The Post-meditation Practice

The effect on me is that as my awareness grows, so does the world around me, or should I say my awareness of the world around me.

All of this takes time and effort. Time in that one should not go looking for the change, but notice it slowly making its presence felt in your life as your practice of meditation grows. Effort not only in the effort that I make in my meditation practice, but also in the effort that I make in my post-meditation practice, my daily life.

My time away from the meditation cushion feeds my formal practice to the degree that I make an effort to be aware, to notice things. So as I walk the streets of Bristol I look around, see what is there. Or I strive to maintain an awareness of my emotions as I move through the day, keeping them in check if they are going to cause me to act in a way that does not serve me.

Back to the Hana Highway

Or as I drive home along the Hana Highway, while keeping an eye on the road, I notice the world around me and do not become complacent in my familiarity.

Where are you being complacent in your awareness of the world around you?

If you want to find out more, I’d love to hear from you. Just click here.

There is a Tibetan saying that just as every valley has its own language so every teacher has his own doctrine.
~ Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism

While this saying contains many exaggerations, it speaks to the variety of Buddhist traditions within old Tibet. In the same way meditation is not just a handful of techniques, but rather a multiplicity of methods that have evolved over the millennia as those who have used meditation have found the need and want for that development. Indeed that development continues until this day.

Meditations development

Meditation is not the purview of any one tradition or philosophy. It can be practiced by someone following a spiritual belief or none. And what that meditation practice might be, possibly even within a single tradition, can be different from one person to the next. The different mediation practices have arisen out of the needs and dispositions of the individuals who practice it.

Some things that meditation might be used to develop and work with include, but are in no way limited to,

• Relaxation
• Quietening the mind
• Developing compassion
• Developing patience
• Connecting with God
• Seeing the humanity in everyone
• Walking meditation
• Achieving better focus

The toolkit

Through learning meditation it is possible to develop a toolkit of techniques for working on the mind, whether that is a single technique or many. This is a toolkit that you can carry with you at all times. No one need know that you are carrying the toolkit, but when the need arises to apply a certain technique - to calm yourself down, to bring you back into the the present, to develop your compassion, to be more patient - you can reach into your toolbox and apply that meditation method, quietly and to yourself.

On the cushion and in practice

Our formal meditation sessions have their place, they are important, very important. It is there that we get to focus on the practice that we wish to develop in an environment that we control and is (hopefully) undisturbed. But our life is lived out in the wider world, and if your patience, compassion, or focus stay on the cushion, they are of not much use to you. Indeed then we might question the usefulness of our meditation practice aside offering us a quiet place to be.

So with the benefit of our formal meditation practice, we step out into the world and use the tools that we have developed in that place where the rubber meets the road.

The toolkit’s contents

There are no prizes for how full that toolkit is. What is important is the quality of the tools within it and how often you reach in to use them. In my opinion it is better to have one tool that you regularly use and develop, than have a catalogue of tools that occasionally see the light of day.

And you will find that your formal practice will feed off the efforts that you make in your post meditation practice and vice versa.

Your toolkit

What’s in your meditation toolkit? Are those tools getting some good use, or could they do with a bit of cleaning up?

If you want to find out more, I’d love to hear from you. Just click here.

I sometimes say that having goals is a dangerous place to be when you are starting a meditation practice. Why is that?

What I am not saying

I am not suggesting that you should cast aside all of the reasons that you decided to start meditation. That would be ridiculous. The reasons that you started asking questions about meditation or sought out meditation instruction, are the motivating factors that will drive your initial forays into meditation. They are important and need to be respected and nurtured.

What I am saying

Let’s say that you want to learn how to meditate so that you have peace of mind. That is a quite legitimate reason to start a practice. At the same time one can start having preconceptions as to what peace of mind looks like. What you will be able to do and not do, or how you should feel when you will attain peace of mind. Even the idea of “when you will attain” can be fraught with problems - you are holding the possibility of being able to identify when you get there, and also suggesting that it is a permanent state of mind. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but you are holding an image that you have created for yourself of a state of mind that you have not experienced yet.

And another loaded question, “how long will it take me to get there?” Once you have a timestamp on how long you will need to meditate to attain what you wish to attain, it feeds into your ideas of what it will look like, what you need to do and when you can stop (as if stopping is even an option).

With these goals in mind you are in some ways setting yourself up for failure, or at least frustration if these goals allude you, as they almost certainly will.

From my experience, the path of meditation is not linear. With steady practice there will be progress, but the path is over very mixed terrain full of bumps and smooth ground, valleys and peaks, fast roads and long treks through deserts.

So what to do?

That is a question that probably warrants a longer answer than this piece will give, but here are some pointers.

• There are many different meditation instructions. Spend some time searching out a practice which works for you.
• Just follow that practice. Just follow the instruction.
• As you start to see results in your practice, your faith in that practice will increase - what you read or heard worked for you, so you go back to it and try it again. That’s what I mean by faith.
• When you are struggling in your practice, stick with the instruction. Practice it.
• Don’t use the struggle time to decide to move onto a different practice. That struggle time is when you probably need to make a bigger commitment to the instruction. Double down and stick with it.
  • At these times, having a teacher with whom you can discuss your struggles can be helpful. Someone who has travelled that road before.
  • If a teacher is not possible, try a friend who is also meditating, or refer to a book.
• Don’t set yourself timelines for achievements or goals. Just follow the instruction.
  • Meditation is for the long haul. It is a marathon not a sprint. It is for a lifetime.

Reframing your goal

Reframing your goal as a motivation is probably better. Hold that goal as your motivation for wishing to engage in meditation. That motivation will drive your practice and stay with you throughout. It will probably also develop and mature as your meditation practice correspondingly does as well. Just do not mistake that motivation as a goal.

If you want to find out more, I’d love to hear from you. Just click here.