I introduced my wife to meditation last night.
I said: Sit straight, close your eyes, breathe through your nose, push your tongue against the top of your mouth gently. Relax with each out-breath. Breath naturally.
I said: Notice your thoughts. Don’t judge them. Come back to the object of meditation.
I said: Don’t expect anything to happen. Meditation is not to give you any pleasant/weird experiences. Meditation is for nothing. Meditate to realize that you can sit quietly and still in the face of thoughts and external circumstances demanding your reaction.
This is about as much as a I have learned about meditation so far.
My meditation is not going great. I wake up too late to sit in the mornings. In the evenings, I’m very sleepy. Again, I work out too much at the gym. And I eat too little. From tomorrow I will setup the alarm for 5 am each morning so I can get at least a half an hour of a good meditation while my mind and body are still well rested and fresh.
I’m reading “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Marquez. What an excellent read! And watching the history of the Buendia family unfolding (with all its dramas, dilemmas, sadness and joy) is like watching life in fast forward. Nothing is permanent, everything is bound to end. Present moment always overwrites the past.
This quote stuck with me. I don’t know why.
She looked toward the courtyard, obeying a habit of her solitude, and then she saw Jose Arcadio Buendia, soaking wet and sad in the rain and much older than when he had died.
Bad At Being Still 