Poll: Do you meditate?

It's not that what is in Mindfulness in Plain English keeps you avoiding painful experiences. It's that, that is the level of your practice right now. That's the distinction that Daniel Ingram made between concentration exercises and insight meditation. In the latter, you start by gaining access concentration to your object (breathing, or whatever), and then deliberately seek out one of the Three Fundemental Characteristics: things come and go (impermanence), they don't satisfy (suffering), and it isn't you (no self).

So for example, once you reach access concentration on breathing, you can see hone in on the specific physical sensations and try to find any part of it that is actually "permanent". You're looking for the transience of not only the inhale and the exhale, but also the transience of what appears to be solid neural signals are actually high-frequency sensations. Go deeper, and you start observing how these sensations trigger other, in kind of a cascade effect -- exactly what was mentioned in Chuang-Tzu on the wind blowing through the openings of the world.

I point this out because it's not that the teachings lead you to the practice, but rather, the teachings come from the practice. You are essentially "reverse engineering" the teaching with your personal practice. When I look around, I see how teachings from around the world derive from the insights realized (experienced) in practice. And since the practice is "experience reality, all of reality", then of course there is a commonality.

Heh, having said that, some teachings are easier to absorb than others, depending on where you think you are and who you think you are. I guess I want to leave open the possibility, to not to have strong attachment to the specific teachings themselves when you practice.

It bothers you? Awesome! That's a rejected shadow you can investigate through mindfulness investigation. I guarantee you, you will get results and realize insights if you get in touch with that feeling of being upset when someone says "you can't measure it, don't even try." :-D

There are a few athiest renderings of this practice (rather than teaching) floating around. It's not my cup of tea but I have seen them.

However, I will point this out. The point is to be. To experience all of reality: to stop avoiding the things you don't want to experience, and to let go of the things you want to go on forever.

When you say, "the religious aspects are a turnoff", those are fantastic shadows to investigate. And I don't mean, investigate them as in some sort of Socratic dialogue with yourself. I mean getting in touch with the feeling of being "turned off", locating the physical sensation that give rise to your mind's interpretation as the emotion of "turned off", and really watching it with your mind without blinking. These uncomfortable feelings are where you'll find the most intense insights about yourself. And it doesn't matter whether you yourself believe the religion, or whether the religious aspects are an illusion or not, because the feeling of being "turned off" is real for you. That's all that's needed to start.

I definitely had trouble sitting for long periods in the lotus or half-lotus position. Due to a year's worth of stretching, I'm easily able to get in to these positions, but my knees and back start to hurt after a while -- and this makes it difficult to concentrate on just the breath.

So, I've been experimenting with meditating while lying down. This is far more comfortable, but then I have to really fight falling asleep. Sometimes I've succeeded, other times I have fallen asleep. Eating a big meal right before doing any kind of meditation is not recommended if you want to stay awake!

Another tip is to make sure your cell phone is off and you have a "do not disturb" sign on your door. There's nothing more frustrating than finally achieving a deep meditative state and then being interrupted by some triviality.

In the last few days I've tried sitting in full lotus again, and have noticed that it's starting to get less painful -- though one of my legs does has gone totally numb after a while. I've been able to do about one hour of meditation in full lotus so far. The two and three hour meditations have all been while I was lying down.

I don't think I have any definative answers for you on how to work your way up to meditating for this long. I'm just a beginner myself. I think playing chess all my life has helped with my ability to conentrate. On the other hand, in my ordinary life I'm very prone to becoming bored and do a lot of task-switching (especially on the computer, where I spend way too much time), which has hurt my ability to concentrate.

I did find the technique of focusing just on my breath to be very useful. As described in "Mindfulness in Plain English", I try to focus on the feeling of my breath as it enters and leaves the tip of my nose. If other thoughts or feelings come up, I don't fight them, but try to return my attention to the feeling of my breath entering and leaving the tip of my nose.

I've found that this type of concentration is easier on some days than others. On some days I have a lot of thoughts racing through my mind. If I've seen an exciting movie, for instance, I might have a lot of images from that movie flashing through my mind, or I may be thinking of events that happened in that movie while I'm trying to meditate. That's frustrating, and those days tend to be less productive. On other days, however, I might not have a lot on my mind. Those are the days when I can focus on my breath for a long time.

About a thousand years ago, Tibet had a similar relationship with the teachings coming over the Himalaya from India. Now people in America have this Thing with elite Tibetan teachers. :-)

When we're long dead, I think we'll see a uniquely Western Buddhist tradition that grows beyond its adolescent pangs. I've already seen at least one new one, a fantastic practice that works fairly well.