Meditation Amsterdam - What is the use of a meditation teacher?
The topic of today is a question
that I'm still not fully able to answer for myself, but here are some thoughts
for Amsterdam Meditation!
I did not start meditating with a teacher, and in fact to this day I can probably count all my teacher meditation experiences with one hand. However that is not to say they were not valuable.
One of the tricky things to decide for yourself before considering a teacher, is whether you are better at learning on your own, or usually require instruction from someone else. Mind you this will also vary from topic to topic. For example in my case, I found I was really good at teaching myself to make art, but when it comes to learning a new language, I needed the instruction of someone else, especially since it is an interactive skill.
In the case of meditation, it is not an interactive skill and in principle you could learn it via some good books and videos without too much hassle. That said, and as Osho put it, meditation is a “knack” and you could save significant time and frustration being guided by someone who’s tried and failed before you.
You could argue that this is the big value of a teacher in any subject. The teacher can act like a time machine that helps you shortcut all the unnecessary experimentation, the back and forth and avoid early mistakes. Especially in the early stages of meditation, and due to much of the misinformation that surrounds it, the practitioner can find his or herself practicing something that is not meditation, or acquiring bad habits that might become difficult to eradicate later on, and only delay progress.
At some point during my first professional years I became totally consumed by triathlon and given my competitive nature, I wanted to rise up in the ranks as quickly as I could. But since I was competing with athletes that had been doing this for a while, and who’s aerobic and physical condition was superior, I figured the only way to beat them was to make sure my technique was absolutely flawless.
This by the way was not a brilliant idea of mine, I read it in some of the training books, and one of them by Terry Laughlin stated that “fitness is something that happens to you when you practice good technique”. Needless to say I worked on my technique day and night, fitness came and for a short while I did become a good triathlete, managing to outperform people who had been in that game for years.
Now before you accuse me of suggesting that meditation is some kind of competition and the objective is to get enlightened in less years than the Buddha, my example is more on the principle behind practicing well from the start.
Meditation is not something you can fake and there are no shortcuts than to spend significant time, on a regular basis, practicing diligently. But if you’re going to do that, and your mind is made up about it, you might as well be doing it in a well-informed manner. Otherwise the exercise will not only be useless but in most cases extremely frustrating. You will rob yourself of the amazing benefits that a meditative practice can bring, which will be the real loss.
Note that I just said “if your mind is made up”. In other words you might be approaching meditation after a life crisis or because you’ve had enough, or because you had a small glimpse of a “satori” experience that was ahead of your development, in which case you’re going all in. On the other hand you may have just come across meditation and are a bit curious about it, somewhat willing to give it a try but not yet all that interested or committed.
This matters because from my personal perspective, meditation is the core fundamental practice, and its benefits outweigh most anything that the external world can bring to you. But to someone who does not understand it, it can seem like it demands a lot of time and effort, and is quite boring.
Now, back to the teacher topic. If you have decided that the best way to begin meditating is to get the guidance of a teacher who will guide you on these starting stages, then the next question is what kind of teacher you want.
After all, if your teacher doesn’t feel like a good fit, or has been him/herself misinformed, you’re back to square one, or worse.
I mention good fit because, meditation is a very personal internal practice and you’re being guided in a journey that can be very intimate. It can also be incredibly mundane but to sit in a room with someone in complete silence is not your every day experience and at the very least you want to feel a good amount of comfort, and if rapport is there, all the better.
I myself have had experience of high degrees of resistance and distrust of a given meditation teacher (in a group setting), and had to make an effort to taking the vipassana approach, and meditating on the distrust, observing it openly and coming to terms with it, as opposed to resisting it and making it an obstacle to a “pleasant” meditation. But this was a technique I had already learned before, and was used if nothing else, as a kind of defense mechanism to making the most of a prepaid session that would have otherwise been disastrous.
In a future article I will probably go into more detail about some criteria to help you select a mediation teacher in the best possible way, but for now I wanted to help you consider the teacher route as an option to get you started in your journey.
One of the reasons I offer meditation in Amsterdam is to give people the advice I wish I had the first time I started looking into it. It’s not to say I’ve fumbled around a lot, since one of my things is always to get a few good books on any subject that grabs my attention. But (most of) the few selected sessions that I’ve had with teachers did prove very useful in consolidating my understanding of the discipline and often it is handy to have someone who you can ask direct questions that a book may have sparked.
To prepare for your first meditation session you need not do much. Funny enough you won’t be doing much during the session either! But it’s probably good to keep in mind that unlike other activities in which a teacher helps you acquire an objective skill, in meditation you’re learning a subjective skill, and one of supreme importace.
This is likely to make the learning process different than anything you’ve experienced before, with long periods of silence and only some minor feedback and exchanging experiences in between. This will vary depending on how intensely the teacher wants to guide you, but in general, prepare to be underwhelmed given the nature of this practice!
Namaste
Pablo
www.meditationamsterdam.com
I did not start meditating with a teacher, and in fact to this day I can probably count all my teacher meditation experiences with one hand. However that is not to say they were not valuable.
One of the tricky things to decide for yourself before considering a teacher, is whether you are better at learning on your own, or usually require instruction from someone else. Mind you this will also vary from topic to topic. For example in my case, I found I was really good at teaching myself to make art, but when it comes to learning a new language, I needed the instruction of someone else, especially since it is an interactive skill.
In the case of meditation, it is not an interactive skill and in principle you could learn it via some good books and videos without too much hassle. That said, and as Osho put it, meditation is a “knack” and you could save significant time and frustration being guided by someone who’s tried and failed before you.
You could argue that this is the big value of a teacher in any subject. The teacher can act like a time machine that helps you shortcut all the unnecessary experimentation, the back and forth and avoid early mistakes. Especially in the early stages of meditation, and due to much of the misinformation that surrounds it, the practitioner can find his or herself practicing something that is not meditation, or acquiring bad habits that might become difficult to eradicate later on, and only delay progress.
At some point during my first professional years I became totally consumed by triathlon and given my competitive nature, I wanted to rise up in the ranks as quickly as I could. But since I was competing with athletes that had been doing this for a while, and who’s aerobic and physical condition was superior, I figured the only way to beat them was to make sure my technique was absolutely flawless.
This by the way was not a brilliant idea of mine, I read it in some of the training books, and one of them by Terry Laughlin stated that “fitness is something that happens to you when you practice good technique”. Needless to say I worked on my technique day and night, fitness came and for a short while I did become a good triathlete, managing to outperform people who had been in that game for years.
Now before you accuse me of suggesting that meditation is some kind of competition and the objective is to get enlightened in less years than the Buddha, my example is more on the principle behind practicing well from the start.
Meditation is not something you can fake and there are no shortcuts than to spend significant time, on a regular basis, practicing diligently. But if you’re going to do that, and your mind is made up about it, you might as well be doing it in a well-informed manner. Otherwise the exercise will not only be useless but in most cases extremely frustrating. You will rob yourself of the amazing benefits that a meditative practice can bring, which will be the real loss.
Note that I just said “if your mind is made up”. In other words you might be approaching meditation after a life crisis or because you’ve had enough, or because you had a small glimpse of a “satori” experience that was ahead of your development, in which case you’re going all in. On the other hand you may have just come across meditation and are a bit curious about it, somewhat willing to give it a try but not yet all that interested or committed.
This matters because from my personal perspective, meditation is the core fundamental practice, and its benefits outweigh most anything that the external world can bring to you. But to someone who does not understand it, it can seem like it demands a lot of time and effort, and is quite boring.
Now, back to the teacher topic. If you have decided that the best way to begin meditating is to get the guidance of a teacher who will guide you on these starting stages, then the next question is what kind of teacher you want.
After all, if your teacher doesn’t feel like a good fit, or has been him/herself misinformed, you’re back to square one, or worse.
I mention good fit because, meditation is a very personal internal practice and you’re being guided in a journey that can be very intimate. It can also be incredibly mundane but to sit in a room with someone in complete silence is not your every day experience and at the very least you want to feel a good amount of comfort, and if rapport is there, all the better.
I myself have had experience of high degrees of resistance and distrust of a given meditation teacher (in a group setting), and had to make an effort to taking the vipassana approach, and meditating on the distrust, observing it openly and coming to terms with it, as opposed to resisting it and making it an obstacle to a “pleasant” meditation. But this was a technique I had already learned before, and was used if nothing else, as a kind of defense mechanism to making the most of a prepaid session that would have otherwise been disastrous.
In a future article I will probably go into more detail about some criteria to help you select a mediation teacher in the best possible way, but for now I wanted to help you consider the teacher route as an option to get you started in your journey.
One of the reasons I offer meditation in Amsterdam is to give people the advice I wish I had the first time I started looking into it. It’s not to say I’ve fumbled around a lot, since one of my things is always to get a few good books on any subject that grabs my attention. But (most of) the few selected sessions that I’ve had with teachers did prove very useful in consolidating my understanding of the discipline and often it is handy to have someone who you can ask direct questions that a book may have sparked.
To prepare for your first meditation session you need not do much. Funny enough you won’t be doing much during the session either! But it’s probably good to keep in mind that unlike other activities in which a teacher helps you acquire an objective skill, in meditation you’re learning a subjective skill, and one of supreme importace.
This is likely to make the learning process different than anything you’ve experienced before, with long periods of silence and only some minor feedback and exchanging experiences in between. This will vary depending on how intensely the teacher wants to guide you, but in general, prepare to be underwhelmed given the nature of this practice!
Namaste
Pablo
www.meditationamsterdam.com
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