By Bob Zeglovitch
When you sit down to meditate, are you clear about what you will be practicing? This essential detail is very easy to overlook, even for very experienced meditators. Through habit, inattention, confusion, or doubt, you can find yourself on your meditation seat without really knowing what you are about. Is your intention to follow the breath, to count the breath, to practice some form of vipassana (there are many varieties, many objects of awareness to be mindful of), to engage in concentration practice, to practice metta, or to engage in just sitting? If you don’t have a clear sense of what your practice is before each session, then you will likely wind up practicing some form of confusion! It will be more probable that you will drift off, fall asleep, or hop from object to object of awareness
These blog entries are about the specific practice of just sitting. The point here is not to elevate one style over another (another practice may be more suitable for you)—but instead to emphasize the importance of being clear about what you happen to be practicing. If you take up or experiment with just sitting, you can remind yourself before you sit that this is what you intend to practice. You can also play with intentionally placing a particular aspect of just sitting “in the foreground.” You may discovery that it is helpful to begin a session of just sitting with a few minutes of “settling” (e.g., breath counting or following the breath) — another thing to be clear about at the outset of a session. You’ll then know what to return to when you wander off during meditation. If a teacher asks you what your practice is, you will be prepared to answer the question. You’ll be developing your practice with purpose.