How to meditate

in 2016:
A complete guide

Note: This is a long post,

almost e-book length, but if
you decide to read it through,
youll get all tips on how to
meditate properly you need to
establish a long-term
meditation practice.

2015 was a packed year for

me. I worked hard at my day
job as the CMO of a start-up,
Kerry and I got pregnant again
even as Leela became a
walking, talking hurricane, I
launched The Seeker as a
bestseller in India while
editingTHE YOGA OF MAXS

my first international novel to

be published by Random
House in 2016. All good stuff
but a lot of it at once. Through
all of this, knowing how to
meditate for 30 minutes in the
morning and evening helped
me keep my sanity. Really.
Without meditation, Id

probably be a nervous mess

but for the most part, I felt
reasonably calm and unhurried
through the year. Thats why
Ive developed some strong
views on how to meditate and
meditations benefits and
often take offense (a gentle
Buddhist offense!) to some of

popular avatars. Why, for

instance, are most meditation
teachers slender, dreadlocked
hippies with loose, flowing
clothes who talk about
feeling your vibrations,
finding your energy fields
and letting go rather than
serious seekers whove burnt

asking Who am I?, Why was

the world created?, What lies
behind the predictable cycle of
birth and death?, and other
such questions again and again
to the silent, uncaring universe,
eventually finding their only
answer in meditation? One new
age guru f

offers a meditation-of-themonth if I sign up for her

program kind of like an icecream of the month club,
another sells a $299
Bluetooth enabled
meditation headband to
connect me with my head
chakra, and so on. Im sure

hyperbole but my
experience with meditation
has been far simpler so I
wanted to share tips on how
to meditate properly with
people whore first entering
the bewildering mindfulness
marketplace

First off, here are my

experiences with
meditation.

Call it past lives (which I

believe in due to very
scientific reasonsa subject
for another post) or just
innate inclination; Ive been
pulled to Eastern mysticism
since my engineering college
days. The pull intensified
during B-School and I didmy

meditationcourse then. But

Ive truly learnt how to
meditate in the last five years,
much of it duringKerry and my
year offwhere we did multiple
Vipassana courses in Italy and
India,a month long Hatha Yoga
Teachers training in Madurai,
and lived in a village high

the Himalayas for a few

months pretty much in silence.
What prompted the deep dive?
Honestly, I was just sick of how
superficial my life was. Id go
to office and try to muster up
enthusiasm to gain a couple of
market share points for the
brands I led as a Director for

a consumer products company.

The stuff that occupied friends
and familyhouses,
restaurants, kids schools etc.
felt completely insignificant to
me. More importantly, I was
deeply frustrated by how
inconsistent I was, one
moment I was reading the

and the Bhagwad Gita, the

next moment I was worried
about being promoted from
Director to Senior Director at
work or mulling over someone
who hadnt shown me full
respect at a dinner and other
BS like that. Seeing my mother
die from cancer and having a

very visceral understanding

of how short and futile life
was had something to do with
it or perhaps it was just living
in New York. I dont fully
understand. All I know was I
wanted to truly silence my
chaotic mind and thats what
we set out to do in our

2012. Since then, Ive

meditated every day,
sometimes for 30 minutes,
sometime for much longer,
and have had enough
discernible changes in my life
that I think I know how to
meditate and that meditation
works.

Now, lets define

meditation.
Again, this is something
clouded in a lot of hyperbole
but if you readThe Yoga
Sutras of PatanjaliorThe
Dhammapadaor any other

ancient Buddhist or Yogic

text, a very clear definition
emerges. Meditation is the
complete dissolution of your
sense of self. In true
meditation, your intellect,
your ego, your chattering
mind, your whole concept of
I am is extinguished

Brahman, the universal

consciousness, according to
yoga-vedanta,shunyataor
nothingness, according to
Buddhism,Tao, according to
Taoism, and a million other
concepts, all pointing to the
same indefinable, absolute
reality (vs. our limited

Call it what you will, Im with

the Buddha when he asks us to
first reach that point of
complete dissolution, the
liberation from the prison of
our hapless thoughts, before
worrying about what happens
after.

How do you reconcile

meditation with ambition?
If dissolving the self is the goal,
then isnt it counter to ones
ambition to grow through
working, living etc.? Will I lose
my edge?

Actually, no. Meditation isnt

teaching you not to work.
Rather youre learning to
becomejust a medium for your
work to express itself. With
your mind no longer possessed
by a thousand petty thoughts
about yourself, what you like,
what you dislike etc., your

happens through you not

because of you. Or in the
words of the oft-quoted
Bhagavad Gita imperative, you
work full-heartedly without
personal attachment to the
results of the work.

Does meditation truly

work?
Barely for the 1st six months.
Then, you start noticing small
changes and in about three
years, youll be a completely
different person. Here are
some tangible things thatve
changed for me since I learnt

Sleep: Pre meditation, I was

an anxious sleeper whod lose
sleep in stressful times.
Literally. I couldnt sleep for
days after going through the
break-up of a six year old
relationship. Id toss and turn
all night before important
presentations at work.

You could find me jogging often

at midnight. Now, I sleep a
deep, dreamless sleep for
seven hours straight the
moment I finish meditating for
thirty minutes at night. I could
lose all my money (or worse
lose all my writing since Im
terrible at

backing up regularly) and I

wouldnt lose a second of
sleep.

Honesty: This one is a hard

one to explain. Ive never been
dishonest per-se but I was used
to cutting corners, mostly in
petty, laughable ways. For
instance, Id stand in the
Business Class line in an
airport if the Economy Class

crowded and say Im a

platinum member of Star
Alliance or something like
that. Less than saving time, it
was about the thrill of beating
the system, a phenomenon
Ive seen with many of us who
grew up in the developing
world. Now, I cant

anymore. Everything that

doesnt seem radically honest
feels wrong. Not by any
deliberate intention, its just a
spontaneous choice from
within.

Patience: By far, the biggest

one. If I dont meditate for
even a day, I can see an
immediate difference in how
my thoughts start rushing. As a
result, I interrupt people, finish
their sentences, judge them as
slow and incompetent, and in

all round insufferable. I dont

turn into an angel with
meditation but Im better. Just
a little. And its not just
emotional patience, it
pervades every aspect of life.
Earlier, for instance, any kind
of noise would bother me. Id
be impatient with

people snoring in a hostel

dorm room or the noise of
trucks or trams outside my
window while traveling
(shameful for a committed
budget traveler like me). Now,
my mind just notes, a loud
sound. And I turn around and
go back to sleep.

Diet/Weight/Energy: Within a
year of starting meditation, I
quit alcohol and caffeine and
became a vegetarian. As a
result,Ive lost twenty
poundsand doubled my
energy. Im not saying this is
the right thing to do. If
aPaleo diet or two glasses of

a day works for you, thats

great. All these diet changes
happened spontaneously
without any active attempt on
my side. These choices came

from within me because they

felt right for my body and my
mind; the habits quit me rather
than me quitting them, as it
were.

How to meditate: the

complete guide.
I have very strong views on
how to mediate mainly
because almost all the advice I
read on the Internet when I
was first trying to to learn
meditation was wrong.

Or rather incomplete. Im a
rational soul. I dont want to be
told to repeatSo Humwhen I
breathe or mutter some
secret personal mantra
which means nothing to me.
Nor do I fully comprehend
wishy-washy instructions like

present and let go. The

ashrams in India werent more
helpful because they all had
special instructions taught by
their patron Gurus, most of
whom in all honesty didnt
strike me as particularly
enlightened. Or maybe I just
wasnt ready as a student for

teacher to arrive. So eventually

I learned by reading everything
from the yoga sutras to
Vedanta to Zen Buddhism and
vipassana text and meditating
for hours on my own. Slowly, it
began to work. The concepts
became clearer and my life
began to change. We each

have to go through our own

experimentation but if you
want to save months of
spinning in circles, this is a
summary of what Ive learnt.
First off, there are only two
broad meditation approaches

Concentration-based
meditation. Awareness-based
meditation, popularly called
mindfulness.

And in 99% of cases,I strongly

recommend starting with a
concentration-based
approachand slowly it will
evolve by itself to an
awareness-based approach.
First, you dissolve your sense
of self byconcentration on
an external object. As you

this approach, your mind will

become more and more onepointed and as a result
youllbecome increasingly
aware when the familiar
scattering of thoughts start to
occur. To have this awareness
at every moment of the day, to
be able to distinguish between

the subject (you) and the

object (the constant flux of
thoughts) spontaneously rather
than getting sucked into the
maze of your thoughts, is the
goal of awareness based
meditationand of life itself

How to meditate: Begin

your concentration-based
meditation today.
Step 1: Select your object of
concentration.
Step 2: Select your point of
concentration.
Step 3: Start meditating.

How to choose your object of

concentration
The three most common
objects are:

Your breath. An image:

Anything you feel some affinity
for. For instance, Im a big fan
of the Buddha so concentrating
on his image worked for me in
the beginning. My friend is a
musician who concentrates on
his guitar.

A mantra: You dont need a Guru

to give you a magic collection of
words. Mentally repeating any
word or set of words that make
sense for youOm, Buddha,
Amenwill do the trick.There
are a variety of other objects
chakras, deities, vision boards,
fabric patterns etc. Just

you are using an object as an

aid to shift focus away from
yourself and your thoughts.
The nature of the object is
immaterial; anything that can
hold your attention for some
length of time works.

How to choose your point of

concentration.
A point of concentration will
help improve your focus by
zoning it into a smaller area.
Some recommendations
depending on your object of
concentration:

If you choose your breath: The

area between your upper lips
and the tip of your nostrils. Or
the contraction and extension
of your chest during inhalation
and exhalation.

If you choose an image:

Visualize the image in the third
eye (your forehead between
the two eyes) or in your heart.
The former works better if
youre more
intellectual/analytical, the
latter if you consider yourself
more emotional.

If you choose a mantra: If

youre saying it aloud, focus on
your lips. If youre repeating it
mentally, again focus on either
your heart or the space
between your eyes.

How to meditate Posture: The

only two characteristics of a
good meditation pose are
sthira (a pose of attention) and
sukha (a pose of comfort).

If youre sitting cross-legged on

the floor and your mind is
screaming in agony, then its
not a good pose for you
because its not sukha. On the
other hand, if youre lying on
the bed attempting to
meditate, thatll likely not work
as well

since its not sthira. So choose

anything, sitting on a chair,
sitting on the bed withyour
legs stretched, or sitting on a
cushion on the floor, anything

that allows you to be both

comfortable and attentive. Id
just recommend keeping your
spine erect for attentiveness
and your hips at an elevation
to your knees for comfort.

Meditate: Close your eyes to

avoid all distractions,
straighten your spine, and
concentrate on your chosen
object at the point of
concentration. Youre
meditating.

Time: 30 mins/morning, 30
minutes/night. Everyday. In six
months, youll see noticeable
changes on all the dimensions I
mentioned above. Any lesser
and youll be attempting to get
into a state of meditation vs.
meditating.

Obstacles: Too many to list.

Therell be some external ones
your kids waking up early, a
late night at workbut mostly
your mind plays havoc. He said
that, uf

she failed me, they dont

understand me, I hate him, she
loves me, many branched and
endless are the thoughts of the
unsteady mind. Dont give up.
Its going to get better soon.

This is what will happen

next
Your meditation will evolve by
itself. In about six months or a
year, my mind went from
concentrating on the Buddhas
image to his qualities

of determination and
compassion by itself as my
thoughts became subtler. Soon
enough, the image dissolved
completely and I started to
drift into a more awarenessbased meditation.

Now I dont meditate as much

as just sit without a timer,
without any alarm, just devoid
of thought, and I automatically
know when thirty minutes are
up and its time to get up.

How to meditate: What is

awareness-based
meditation (also called
mindfulness)?
In awareness-based
meditation, you dont force
your mind to concentrate on
any external object. You just
observe reality as is.

A thought emerges. You note it

arise, then you note it pass
away. Soon, you become more
and more aware of this
constant arising and passing of
thoughts and a realization
dawns deep within you that the
whole interplay of thoughts,
ideas, I am this, I am that,

insubstantial, constantly in
flux. As a result, you give less
and less importance to it and
dont grasp onto every
thought, every desire that
arises in the mind. This is true
meditation because youre
slowly dissolving all concepts
of yourself, which is the

I dont recommend awarenessbased meditation if youre just

starting out. The mind has to
be trained to go from scattered
to one-pointed before you
teach it how to become
completely devoid of thought.
But if youre in a hurry to start,
here are the steps to begin

Sit still, focusing very lightly on

your breath, emptying your
mind of thoughts.The moment
you get distracted and random
thoughts start to emerge, just
note them. Now Im angry
because Im

remembering what Mary said

at lunch. Now Im worried
Michael just doesnt get the
basics of that project. In your
act of noting, theyll start to
disappear.

New thoughts will arise. Keep

noting them and theyll pass
away too. If the mind is
exceptionally chaotic, just
bring your attention back to
the breath lightly and repeat
Step 2 above.

Thats it. The effects of

awareness-based meditation
last well beyond the thirty
minutes of meditation because
youre training your mind to
stay unaffected by the millions
of thoughts and distractions
that assail you every minute of
the day.

Running is not meditation

unless youre zoned into
concentrating on just one
object, be it your right foot
pounding the pavement, or
your breath going in and out of
your nose, to the exclusion of
everything else.

If youre just thoughtless

because all your psychic
energy is going into the act of
running, thats great but its
not meditation because youre
not willfully training your mind
to become one-pointed or
aware. Thats why the effect

The same holds true for

swimming, dancing, reading,
writing or any other activity
where you lose yourself for a
period of time.

Unless youre consciously

training your mind to focus on
a singular microscopic activity
(concentration based
meditation) or to not react to
the flurry of thoughts coming
and going (awareness based
meditation), you arent

Lastly, whats the point of

all this? Im happy,
productive, peaceful, why
do I need to learn how to
meditate?

Have you ever felt a strange

emptiness, as if something
indefinable was missing from
your grasp even in moments of
great achievement?

If yes, meditation is right for

you. I wont delve into
mysticism in this post (lets
meet for a cup of tea in New
York for that) but meditation
originated because early
pioneers of the spirit realized
that mans soul cries for the
infinite in a finite world, thats

nothing in the world of people

and objects ever truly satisfies
us. We all live two lives. The
happy, smiling pictures with I
feel blessed messages we
post on Facebook and our own
private mental torture
chambers. Recognize your
reality for what it is and

meditation can bring your two

lives closer in 2016. And Ill be
genuinely happy if this guide
can be of some use in that
quest. Good luck and dont
forget to drop a note in the
comments below to let me
know if this was helpful or if
any part needs more

PS: 2016 looks to be another

packed year for me with a new
book, a new baby, a new
business, and maybe a move
to a new country. Ill continue
to meditate to keep things
simple. Sign up here so we can
keep each other honest!

For more details

Visit us @
http://www.karanbajaj.com/