If you have a healthy, peaceful mind, your perception of the world reflects that. You make informed decisions and can appreciate the goodness in your life and the lives of those around you. Meditation leads to a healthy, peaceful mind. It is something anyone can do, any time, any moment. To see what meditation can do for you, you just need to try it. Don’t imagine that you can’t!

Mind and Body Work Together

Mind and body are very different, but they definitely affect each other. We’re well aware of how important it is to take care of our bodies—we look and feel better—but it’s easy to forget that taking care of our minds is also very important.

With meditation, we can benefit our overall health by training in letting go of negative thoughts and encouraging more positive thinking. This will decrease stress and anxiety and give us a clearer mind. A clear mind leads to more discernment so that we make fewer mistakes and better decisions. With better decision-making, we have fewer regrets, and this positively impacts our overall well-being.

Well-being is an innate quality of mind, but the way we look at things clearly affects our entire physical and mental environment. When we’re absorbed in distractions, the innate well-being of mind gets lost or somehow restricted. We need to make an effort to uncover the well-being and goodness that are there already. For us, this effort is meditation, pure and simple. Meditation gives the mind space to recognize just how much knowledge is already there. And when there is clarity in the mind meditation also helps develop a healthy body.

Mind has the ability to know things. That is how mind is defined: something that is conscious and can know an object. But our minds don’t work well when they’re disturbed. Being distracted by overlapping thoughts and emotions is like asking our minds to “do this, but do something else first, but before that please think about this.” Our minds get frustrated and cannot focus. When we meditate, we focus on one thing at a time and our minds become relaxed. Our minds need time and space if they’re going to function as well as they can.

Importance of the Mind

Whatever we do – whether we are thinking, speaking or acting – brings either benefit or harm to ourselves and others.

Among thinking, speaking and acting, the most important thing is what we think. If we take good care of mind and thoughts, our verbal and physical actions will follow. When we meditate, we’re working with the mind, putting effort into making mind calm and clear. We’re making the mind more aware so that when there’s a problem, we won’t be as adversely affected or react in such unhelpful ways. Of course, we’ll always have feelings, but when the mind is disturbed, even small problems feel more magnified and unworkable than when we remain calm. From that small disturbance our minds create all sorts of bigger problems. Initially, we’re just uncomfortable with something, then that discomfort leads to seeing things negatively and benign things and situations can begin to feel harmful. Thinking a situation is worse than it is, we may become agitated, which then affects our discernment and actions.

It’s already a great help if we can avoid making problems that already exist even worse, but it’s the opposite of what usually happens. By taking care of the mind with meditation, we protect it. By the same token, our speech and actions are also protected, preventing us from saying or doing things we may regret. This is how we find ourselves in a much better position to help ourselves and others.

Motivation to Meditate

We can motivate ourselves to practice by remembering that dissatisfaction and negative emotions are contagious – by their very nature, they tend to harm others. As the saying goes, misery loves company. It is even more important to remind ourselves that good intentions and feelings are also contagious in just the same way. Just think of others. Even a small gesture of kindness has a ripple effect. If you smile at somebody, they’re touched and smile back at you.

Benefiting others starts with good intentions and taking care of our minds. And taking good care of our minds starts with meditation.

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Is it possible that many of the difficulties in our lives come from our reluctance or our inability to let go? Whether we’re aware of it or not, our minds are constantly roaming and zeroing in on what we want to acquire and what we want to avoid. There’s a lot of wanting and needing and very little respite. We rehash the past—the traumas and conquests, irritations and pleasures and project into the future. Even though our habitual way of functioning is exhausting, we don’t seem to realize that it doesn’t have to be this way. In truth, freedom is within our reach—it is present right here, right now. We can discover this freedom through meditation practices that ground us in the here and now, give us space to recognize our habitual grasping, and help us train in and master the art of letting go.

According to the Buddha’s teachings, clinging and attachment lead to suffering, whereas letting go of these leads to freedom. The Buddha talked a lot about suffering in terms of its nature, causes, and remedies. And though every living being wants to avoid it, fighting or rejecting suffering usually creates more of it. Some pain and discomfort can be alleviated, but not all of it. Discernment allows us to determine what we can avoid and what we can’t. Understanding this spares us a great deal of anguish because when we accept the things and situations we can’t escape, we stop struggling; when we accept the pain and discomfort—emotional, physical, spiritual that can’t be avoided, proactively, the mind can be at ease. This is letting go.

To help deal with the ups and downs of life, people often seek advice from psychologists and others who have an intellectual understanding of how the mind works. There is some benefit in this, but there may also be a tendency to look for a culprit to blame. It’s much easier to blame others. From a psychological perspective, it’s easy to point fingers at one’s parents for all of one’s woes. In ancient times, spirits and ghosts were the culprits; nowadays it’s the parents. In some ways, the process is similar: just different ways to blame rather than take responsibility for one’s own actions and state of mind.

The Buddha taught that suffering arises as a result of causes and conditions coming together in a certain way. Once the groundwork has been laid, certain results are inevitable. Plant an apple seed, given the right causes and conditions, one day it will become a tree and bear apples, not figs. This truth, the law of cause and effect, also means that we can plant the seeds of future happiness.

Of course, everyone wants to let go of pain and suffering, but letting go of their root cause—attachment—is another story. Why would we want to let go of attachment to pleasant things? Generally speaking, the desire for pleasant things is based either on the memory of something similar that we enjoyed and want to experience again or a projection of the pleasure we think a certain thing or situation will bring us. That’s our habitual functioning, and it’s difficult for us to recognize and distance ourselves from the usual reactions of clinging and rejecting. When we follow these tendencies, we’re somewhere in the past, a daydream or the future. We’re anywhere but in the present moment.

Can meditation help with letting go? Of course it can, and it does. Every time we choose not to follow and elaborate on a thought or an emotion when we practice, every time we choose to remain in the fullness and freedom of the present, we’re learning to let go. Meditation teaches us that letting go is possible, and not only is it possible, it is a great relief.

Letting go on the cushion when we meditate is a powerful practice. What about letting go when faced with potentially hurtful or harmful real-life situations? Of course, if there’s a potential for physical harm, we do our best to escape. But if the aggression is verbal or emotional, our very willingness to be hurt plays a big role and even if we don’t realize it, we may be helping our aggressors to make things even worse for us. If we decide not to allow others to hurt us, if we don’t give them that space, it takes away much of their power. This too is letting go—letting go of reactions and feelings that reinforce our discomfort.

Another choice we have concerns our expectations. When we choose to let go of certain expectations such as the ideal of a perfect life and accept that grieving, loss and disappointment are a natural part of every existence, it’s much easier to accept life’s inevitable challenges and difficulties. Life is a series of ups and downs; fully accepting this is a very powerful practice for reducing suffering. Accepting the truth is not passive or weak—it’s an active endeavor. It takes effort to simply be real and move on. Changing expectations is a key component of the practice of letting go. Perhaps we could start with letting go of our ideas of getting better at meditation.

Practically speaking, how do we go about this? We might start by identifying the gap between what we want and what is actually going on. This requires a willingness to bring hidden expectations and desires to light. When we meditate, whatever form of practice we choose, we give ourselves space to recognize what’s playing out in the mindstream without grasping or judging, and go back to the practice—simply observing the breath. This is how Buddhists train in letting go, and this is what prepares us for the real work of everyday life.

Based on oral teachings given by Trungram Gyalwa

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Compassion is the foundation of all goodness. It’s beyond culture, beyond language, beyond religion, beyond time, and beyond space. It’s also beyond humanity because other species demonstrate this quality as well. No matter how fierce and aggressive some of them may be towards other species, they are compassionate and loving to their own young. Every being that has sentience—that is, awareness and feelings—has the ability to care for and about others.

What is compassion? It’s a very strong, positive emotion or attitude where there is a longing for happiness and for freedom from pain, suffering, fear, and danger. This translates as the wish that all who desire harmony, safety, and protection will find them. Our wish for the well-being of all beings includes ourselves: that’s self-compassion. Not only is compassion a very important part of our practice, it’s an important attribute for all humanity. It’s so very basic.

Compassion is naturally hardwired into every one of us. That’s good news! We already have it! It’s not a foreign thing—we know it, we can feel it. We don’t have to look outside for it—it’s there within us. Not only do we have it, we have ability to extend, expand, and cultivate it. That’s great! There are no real barriers to compassion.

Recognizing this opens the door to genuine self-acceptance. We recognize we are fundamentally good because we are fundamentally compassionate. We like compassion. We like good things. We like happiness. We don’t like suffering. We naturally lean towards goodness and happiness and distance ourselves from the bad things. This demonstrates that the fundamental nature of every being is good. Not only that, we humans have the ability to take mindful action and expand our compassion: we can make good into better, and better into best.

As positive as all of this is, we have a lot of challenges at the same time. The challenges come from our concepts—not from the heart, but from the brain. Our brain is trained according to what we receive, experience, and learn from our environment. As young children we were very open, weren’t we? We were very pure. Then, as we gained more experiences in life, difficulties arose. Maybe people weren’t honest with us or they cheated us. Once we’ve had challenging experiences like these we become more and more careful; we close parts of ourselves off. This is how the environment changes us as human beings. A lack of trust is not naturally within us. What’s naturally born within is the goodness of our hearts. So how do we dissolve the barriers to self-compassion and compassion for others when we’ve lost trust and developed a sense of fear?

Fear is a big thing for everyone. There’s a general misconception about compassion and lovingkindness, a sort of assumption that these are qualities for weak people. If you’re compassionate, people will take advantage of you and at the end you’ll lose. It’s as if there was a fear of kindness. But we all have fears, and they have nothing to do with compassion or kindness! We have insecurities and fears based on not being able to predict the future, or about being attacked by others, losing things, losing our reputations, and so on. And where does this feeling of fear come from? It comes from a strong sense of “I,” of self, doesn’t it? We have put too much importance on the self. And that self-importance is the reason we have all of these fear-related problems.

What can help us overcome this? Is there anything that facilitates releasing fear? Nothing helps more than compassion. Compassion is the concern for others’ well-being—you cannot have compassion without having empathy for others. Others are more visible to you; you’re no longer ignoring them and their difficulties. The more you think about others, the more that disproportionate importance of self is reduced. When you don’t care as much about the self, you have less fear and less self-judgment. Your fears may not be eradicated completely, but they’re not that important anymore.

This is why compassion is the best antidote to fear; otherwise there’s really no end to it. It’s the opposite of the popular misconception that lovingkindness and compassion are signs of weakness. Compassion is actually very, very powerful because it is the cure for fear—the one force that can subdue the biggest tyrant, the biggest problem that threatens to dominate our lives. So that, in a nutshell, is the direct connection between compassion and fear.

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Here are 10 tips on meditation that will enable you to experience its peaceful and joyful benefits.

1. Just do it

Meditation is something that anyone can do at anytime and anywhere.

Don’t think that you can’t meditate. If you are concerned that you don’t understand what it’s about, don’t worry—nobody does in the beginning! Just jump in—the moment you do, you will open the door to all of the benefits of meditation.

2. Build a habit

An easy meditation tip is to make meditation a habit by doing it often on a regular basis—daily if possible.

Many of us procrastinate and find excuses not to practice. If we feel a need to get a lot of other things done before meditating, it’s really just a delay tactic. Building a good meditation habit requires effort and consistency. It’s like going to the gym—at first it may seem forced and artificial, but in time it becomes a natural and essential part of our daily routine.

3. Keep it simple

Don’t worry so much about whether you’re doing it right or not.

Lots of thoughts will naturally arise in your mind, which can feel overwhelming. Don’t get discouraged. Let them flow by without judgment or getting caught up in the storylines. Just keep it simple by continually returning to the breath.

4. Keep it short

One of the best meditation tips is to commit to short meditation sessions and then gradually increase.

If we are too ambitious at the beginning and try to do 45 minute sessions, there’s a good chance we’ll get discouraged and quit. It’s better to meditate for short periods each day to create stability and a consistent habit. We can even start with one or two minutes and gradually increase to 10 minutes.

5. Meditate in the morning

Start your day by meditating first thing in the morning.

When we wake up we feel refreshed. We aren’t thinking about too much yet or worrying about all the things we need to do today. If we do a short practice first thing in morning, we’re likely to succeed in meditating on a regular basis. And the positive benefits from that morning meditation will stay with us throughout the day.

6. Don’t worry about progress

It’s hard to predict how your mindfulness practice will evolve.

You might meditate consistently and not think anything is happening, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t progressing. Progress is like our growth when we’re children—it’s so gradual and close to us that it’s hard to discern. Likewise, we are too close to our own minds to see meditation progress in the beginning. But, unpredictably, there will be moments when we’ll notice a healthy, spacious shift in our minds.

7. Get meditation instruction

Progress is also connected with learning the art of meditation.

There are helpful twists and tweaks we can apply to our meditation technique that can make a big difference in our practice. Seek guidance from experienced meditation instructors and trusted sources.

8. Remember the benefits

The benefits of meditation are numerous, but if I had to express them in only one word it would be: joy.

This joy is not an emotional high but is rather something very grounded that stimulates our compassion, love, and caring for others. Meditation also provides us with the courage to look at things in a positive way, even during the most difficult times. And it creates resiliency, which is important for people who are dealing with a lot of stress or hardships.

9. Be realistic

Meditation is not magic—it doesn’t remove all the difficulties from our lives and doesn’t guarantee we will be successful in all our endeavors.

We live in this world and have to face the reality of it, complete with all the challenges, ups and downs. When we are up, everything may feel fine, but it is when we’re down that we really need help. The resiliency we gain from meditation is what enables us to bounce back from the lows. We can expand this to meditation in daily life.

10. Just do it – again and again

Yes this is the same as #1 but bears repeating. This is the best meditation tip I can offer–just keep doing it.

Our minds are always with us. There are many benefits to working with the mind. If our minds are peaceful, our perceptions of the world change. We will have a much healthier, more positive view of life. We see things more clearly, which enables better decision making. We appreciate the good things we have and the good things others enjoy. All of this goodness will naturally contribute to our happiness, success, and ability to bring about positive change.

This article was adapted from Trungram Gyalwa‘s Mind Talk “The Benefits of Meditation.” Read more about choosing the best meditation practice for you with our free eBook.

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