iMEDITATION

What obstacles do you face with during meditation?

The biggest obstacle for me is tuning out noise.  It is not always possible to meditate in a silent atmosphere.  Distracting thoughts, I also have to let those go.

Karen Chaffee at 01:59AM on Apr 25, 2009

The biggest obstacle for me is tuning out noise.  It is not always possible to meditate in a silent atmosphere.  Distracting thoughts, I also have to let those go.

Have you tried the guided meditation on this site?  Sound is the second meditation object that we place our attention on . At first our mind is still going into past and future so we have to bring it back to allow it to settle in the present moment first .Sound is one aspect of the present moment.

Another aspect of the present moment is the body. It is a very tangible and coarse meditation object that's why it is a good place to place our attention on at the beginning. When we begin, awareness is not strong enough to stay with a subtle meditation object .  Only after awareness is strengthened and the mind quiets down enough do we place attention on a more subtle meditation object like sound, and then breath.

After placing attention on the body for a while (3-4 minutes or so)  , we then direct our attention to a more subtle object of meditation , namely sound:

" Give our full attention to whatever is here to be heard, sounds and the silence in between.  Sounds near and sounds far.  Allowing them to be just as they are, moment to moment.  Being in touch with hearing.  Notice if we have any judgement or evaluation of the sounds we are hearing.  Whether some we find pleasing,others not.  Whether some we wish to be louder others absent all together. Just letting whatever sounds to be here just as they are. And notice the silence between them.  Bringing attention back to sounds whenever it gets carried away."

At the beginning body and sound are like an anchor that keep us from being pulled into the past and future by our thoughts. After that maybe a few thoughts remain, we just watch them like watching something external, just like watching sounds. When that too becomes settled, attention is still enough to stay with the breath.That's a good time to move our awareness to the breath.