How to meditation

Obstacles to Meditation

As with every other learned skill, people have differing aptitudes for meditation; make progress in an apparently endless series of breakthroughs, plateaus, and reversals; and can experience repeated episodes of triumph and failure in rapid succession. Any given meditation session might be influenced by how comfortable the body is, how much sleep one has had recently, the overall state of health, the temperature in the room, whether one has a problem on the mind or is working through some emotional issues—all sorts of factors. An interesting feature of the traditional Buddhist understanding of meditation is that it is always influenced by one’s overall ethical behavior. The ability of the mind to concentrate is directly hampered by such acts as deliberately harming living creatures, taking what has not been given, speaking untruthfully or harshly, misbehaving sexually, or taking intoxicants of various kinds. Thus, the ethical precepts of Buddhism are a matter of great practical importance, rather than mere moral injunction. But if one is relatively free of the remorse and emotional turmoil that can come from unhealthy behavior, it is reasonable to expect significant progress in the enterprise of unifying and concentrating the mind such that it can remain steadily upon a single object over multiple mind moments.
Buddhist psychology identifies five primary obstacles to meditation, known appropriately as the five hindrances. The first of these is sense desire, or the impulse of the senses to seek out their objects. It is as if the eye wants to see forms, the ear is eager to hear sounds, and so on for the other senses, including the mind liking to think the thoughts that please it in one way or another. We are so used to having our senses connect with their corresponding object that a considerable habit energy is present in any given moment inclining the mind to “lean toward” or be attracted to their habitual forms of stimulation.

2) Long-term, consistent meditation does seem to increase resiliency to stress.

Note that we’re not saying it necessarily reduces physiological and psychological reactions to threats and obstacles. But studies to date do suggest that meditation helps mind and body bounce back from stress and stressful situations.

For example, practicing meditation lessens the inflammatory response in people exposed to psychological stressors, particularly for long-term meditators. According to neuroscience research, mindfulness practices dampen activity in our amygdala and increase the connections between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. Both of these parts of the brain help us to be less reactive to stressors and to recover better from stress when we experience it.

As Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson write in their book, Altered Traits, “These changes are trait-like: They appear not simply during the explicit instruction to perceive the stressful stimuli mindfully, but even in the ‘baseline’ state” for longer-term meditators, which supports the possibility that mindfulness changes our ability to handle stress in a better, more sustainable way.”