Day 6 and Day 7

Day 6

I forgot to write a blog entry yesterday. Having to keep up with these blog posts is becoming rather difficult. After meditating, I usually go take a shower and eat my dinner. Only after that do I start on my homework. Except I always forget that writing a blog entry everyday is also a part of my homework. Last night, the fact that I had to write a post completely escaped me.

Getting back on topic, day 6 (yesterday) it rained, a lot. Lately the weather has been rather random, so I have to try and wiggle in my meditation between times when it isn't raining. But yesterday it rained non-stop after I got home, so I decided to try and meditate inside. I had meditated inside before, but that was when nobody was home yet. Today, my neighbor was mowing his lawn and my mom was cooking in the kitchen. I was also facing out into the living room where I could see everyone doing their everyday thing. The excessive noise combined with the visual disturbances, meant that I was constantly distracted and couldn't 'concentrate' on meditating. This coaxed me to go do some research on where one should meditate. I had just assumed that all you had to do was find a quite and calm place. But I've learned that besides being harmonious and tranquil, the space you meditate in should be comfortable, uncluttered, and spiritually nurturing, although it isn't necessary. Also, if you're going to meditate indoors, make sure to reduce as much ambient noise as possible, and meditate either while facing a wall, or with your eyes half-closed . I think the best advice I learned after researching today was that tip about closing your eyes. The natural human tendency is to focus on something if it comes into their immediate vision. Therefore, if you close your eyes, you can't get distracted by something moving into your vision. Just remember to not completely close your eyes, or you might end up falling asleep.




Day 7

Today is the end of week, and it has become much more easier to meditate. I'm able to keep my back straight without having to think about it and I'm concentrating on my breathing for the entire time, with my mind getting distracted maybe once or twice. I can feel that I've improved my ability to do zazen, and I'm quite proud about that. Despite this improvement, I still feel like my goal to become more aware of myself and the world around me hasn't been sufficiently reached. While I am concentrated on my breathing while doing zazen, I'm still relatively aware of whats around me. I can hear the water filter of the aquarium running and the the soft drone of the air conditioner, but I try not to let myself get distracted by them. However, even though I'm aware of these things, I want to try take it even further. A couple of days ago, while I was meditating, I wasn't being mindful of the environment around me, and because of that, I hadn't realized that the curry my dad left on the stove was burning. In fact, I didn't even know he put something on the stove. If it wasn't for my sister, who knows what would've happened. All of this makes me feel like I need to put more effort into my goal. Throughout this whole week I've gotten caught up with the idea of doing zazen, and making sure I'm doing it correct. The only thing I haven't been paying attention to was my goal. So I feel like I need to continue doing zazen for the next week to really see if meditation can enable me to become more aware of myself and the the world around me.

Day 5

My aikido sensei always tells me that what we do during zazen can and should be applied in our daily lives. When doing zazen, keeping your back straight and maintaining deep breathing all helps to clear your mind and unify mind and body. But these basics can also be utilized outside of meditation. For example, when most people walk, the're not really thinking about walking. They're usually thinking about where they came from and regretting decisions they've already made. If you walk while thinking about the place you just left, you become unaware of the world around you and it's easier for you to get injured. You can't focusing on what's ahead of you if you're attached to thoughts like, a math question you should've done right, or that presentation that could've gone better. If you instead only focus on where you are going and on the actually act of walking, you become aware of the world around you, and you can avoid injury much more easier. Letting go of events that happened in the past, that you can't change anyways, allows you to concentrate on what's ahead and needs to be done. Not focusing on walking is the same as not focusing while driving. If you get distracted while driving, the likelihood of a crash is increased. The same idea can be applied to walking.

So while trying to stay on topic with this post, my goal for today's zazen session was to sit up straight the entire time and focus on my breathing, making sure I let go of any distracting thoughts. Overall, I felt like I sufficiently met my goal. Whenever I thought of something along the lines of, "I wonder what's for dinner?" or, "What should I write for my next post?" I just let it go and refocused on how I was breathing, feeling the air pass through my nostrils down my throat. In addition to doing zazen, I've gradually began to integrate the principles of Aikido training and meditation into my daily life. Tomorrow in my classes I will do my best to sit up straight, pay attention, and not slouch or put my head on my table.

Day 4

Today marks the half way point in my week of exploration through meditation. And despite having only meditated for half a week, I can tell you that I've become slightly more calm and aware of myself. Now, it might be that I haven't had a lot of homework this week, but I still feel less stressed and I seem to not worry as much about things that need to get done. I'm not letting myself worry about the minute details in my life. Nor am I After every zazen session, I feel calm and relaxed and when I start to do my homework for the night, I'm not thinking about what the faster way to do it would be, or what I'm going to do after my homework. All I'm focusing on is the work that is in front of me, and not letting anything else distract me. As I sit here writing this entry, my dad is going back and forth between the Discovery channel and the National Geographic channel, while my mom is also watching one of her Korean dramas. However, I'm not letting myself get distracted by it. Also, even though I sitting here writing this blog entry, I'm still aware of the fact that both of the TVs in my house are one. I'm concentrating on writing this entry, but I'm still aware of the fact that my sister just opened the refrigerator to probably get some dessert.

I mentioned in my first post that my goal is to try and become more aware of myself and the world around me through meditation. Now, I want to say that this awareness and calmness came from meditating, but I don't know for sure. However, what I do know is that if I want to meet my goal, I'll have to take my meditation more seriously.

Day 3

Yesterday, I mentioned that one of the first steps to good meditation, is to find a comfortable sitting style/position. So today I'll take the time to write about the different sitting positions in zazen.

There are 4 primary ways of sitting zazen, lotus, burmese, seiza, and chair. The classic sitting position is called full lotus. This position requires a certain degree of flexibility in the hips and legs. In this position, you cross your legs, just like how you would sit cross legged, except you put each foot on the opposite thigh. This makes this particular position very stable and solid. If you aren't flexible enough to sit in the standard full lotus position, you can instead sit in the half-lotus position. In this position, only one foot in up on the thigh. This is still a very stable position to sit in. Despite being a stable sitting position, you may feel awkward sitting like that. If that is the case, then I'd recommend finding a different sitting position.

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The second, position is called the Burmese position. The burmese position is probably the easiest and simplest position to sit in. In this position, the legs are flat on the ground, not crossed over each other, but bent so that the foot of one leg is tucked between the thigh and calf of the leg that is in front. This is a good position to try out if you're not very flexible. For both this and the lotus positions, it is recommended that you sit on a zafu, though you can instead sit on a folded blanket if that is more comfortable. The primary purpose of the zafu is to help make meditating comfortable and help to encourage maintaining a straight posture.



The third seiza position, named so because you sit in seiza, a traditional Japanese sitting position where you sit in an upright kneeling position. The seiza position can be done several ways, but the only difference between the different ways is the object which you use to aid you in your meditation. You can sit seiza with a zafu placed between your buttocks and legs, without a zafu, using your feet as a naturally cushion, and even using a rectangular stool, tucking you feet under the seat.



The fourth zazen position is called the chair position. Yea, that's right, the chair position. It's name says it all. Basically you do zazen while sitting in a chair. If you want, you can use a zafu the help cushion your buttocks, or if your chair is curved, a zafu can help ensure you maintain a straight posture.



So knowing that I would be writing a blog post about the different zazen position, I decided to try meditate in a different position today. I had decided to sit in the seiza position, where you put a zafu between your buttocks and feet. Now let me tell, I'm never doing that again. Sitting in seiza was excruciating. Not only did my feet fall asleep sooner than when I sit in full lotus, but before my feet even fell asleep, the pain from hyperextending my feet was killing me. I was extremely distracted and my concentration wasn't on the meditation, but on suppressing my pain. But honestly, if you find sitting in seiza more comfortable than sitting in let's say lotus, then by all means sit in seiza. I can't emphasize this enough, the first step to successfully being able to meditate is to pick a position that is comfortable and fits your preference.

Day 2

Unfortunately there was a storm last night (so I couldn't meditate either) and my house lost power. No power, no internet, no posting, so I'll post two entries today. Today's first post will be about how to properly do Zen meditation. Zen is a school of Buddhism that focuses on enlightenment and self-realization. Zen meditation, or zazen, is the core practice used to reach these goals. Zazen is a type a meditation that focuses on uniting the mind and body, and in order to attain self unity, one must properly sit.

Some tips for beginners:
• Sit in a place where distractions are at a minimum. You want to find a place to sit that is relatively peaceful and tranquil.
• Sitting on a soft pillow (also called a zafu), causes your behind to become raised, and allows your knees to touch the ground. This becomes a very stable base for zazen.
• Find a sitting technique that is comfortable to you. I'll write a post about sitting postures later.
• Imagine that your spine is a metal rod stuck in the ground. By maintaining a straight posture, the diaphragm is allowed to move freely, allowing deep breathing (inhale short, exhale long) through the nose.
• Although your breathing should not be forced, pay attention to it. Breath from your hara, or center
• Let go of all distracting thoughts. An easy way to do this is just focus on your breathing. Count your breaths and focus on each breath as they pass the inside of your nostrils.
• And last but not least, just find a good 15-30 minutes to just sit. After meditating, you will feel refreshed and any anxiety or stress that you accumulated will be forgotten.

Zazen is a Japanese word. The "Za" means to sit, and "zen" means to meditate or concentrate. But zazen means more than just sitting and meditating. Zazen is about being able to settle your mind to a state of clarity, so you can see everything in this world as it is. Zazen should be a very calming practice.

Day 1

As soon as a finished that last post, I quickly went to the hill behind my house. It's very quiet and serene and away from all the noise of daily living. I quickly got into sitting position and just sat, meditating. I would like to briefly pause and talk about my previous encounters with zen meditation. As I mentioned before, I take an Aikido class, every Saturday from 8:30 to 11:30. But for 30 minutes of each class, we did zazen, or zen meditation. When I was a little kid I used to hate having to do zazen, mainly because it hurt and legs and it was really boring. But as I got older, I began to appreciate zazen more and more, and began looking forward to it. During the 30 minutes of zazen I'm able to just sit, relax, and calm myself down. For those 30 minutes, I try not to think of anything, because if I do, my mind begins to wander and I end up thinking about homework and school and I just end up getting stressed. If I just sit and focus on my breathing and posture, I feel at peace with myself (this is the main reason why I've decided to try meditate more often).

So during this first session of self-regulated meditation my goal was to just sit properly and maintain good breathing and good posture (will try go over what is "good" tomorrow or day after). I must say that I was able to maintain relatively good posture, but I lost focus on my breathing, and my mind wandered to my homework. Hopefully I'll be able to keep my mind under control and train it to not wander and stay focused.

Welcome to my blog

Hello, and welcome to my blog. This blog will be about my experience living with meditation. For the next week, I will meditate for 20 min – 30 min everyday. After each meditation session, I will document how the meditating has affected my daily life. In addition to meditation, I will try to integrate the principles of meditation into my daily life. Besides just blogging about my meditation sessions, I will also write posts that talk about meditation. I'll write about how to meditate, its principles, the Buddhism philosophy behind, and much more.

I've decided to do this because I want to try become more aware of who I am, and of the world around me. I want to see if meditation does in fact have a positive affect on my life, and if it does, in what way. I've meditated before in the Aikido class I attend every week, and I'm always eager to spend 30 minutes of class to meditate. But I want to see if I can try take this further and meditate on a daily basis. Because I do actually enjoy meditating sometimes, the other goal of this endeavor is to show whoever decides to read this blog what meditation can do for them. I hope that I'll be able to maybe inspire and encourage someone to try meditate themselves. Hopefully you'll be able take something out of my week of living with meditation.