What is Meditation?

Hello, my name is Michelle.

Welcome to the Nature of Meditation podcast. Episode 2, titled What is Meditation? Recorded on the 5th of January 2025.

Let's start with a three-minute silent meditation practice to give ourselves time and space to arrive.

And tune in to your breathing. And as best you can, begin to relax. And I will let us know when it's time for the teaching meditation to begin.

We're coming to the end of this three-minute silent meditation practice.

There are many different forms of meditation. But in this podcast, the teachings are not intended to be an exhaustive description of meditation.

Just my current understanding of silent meditation practice. I'm going to be talking about silent meditation in a non-academic general way.

And I will repeat myself a few times, but say the same thing in slightly different ways, so that the teaching I'm trying to convey is made clear and can be easily understood.

In a nutshell, my understanding of meditation is resting your attention in your field of awareness without being affected by what you're experiencing in the moment, internally inside yourself or externally, outside of you in the environment.

So as far as I understand, the core of meditation is simply resting your attention on your moment to moment experience without being affected by your experience.

By affected, I mean without being absorbed by and absorbed in, or consumed by, or attached to any particular momentary experience. Meditation happens at the junctures of life where your senses meet an object, in an internal object, inside oneself, or an external object around you in the environment.

So, the object of your perception is not something to get stuck on or lost in.

Our perception, our sense perception meets and makes contact with a mental, emotional, sensorial, or physical object, giving rise to moments of awareness.

That is what meditation is.
And there is no need for that momentary experiential contact to have a lasting impact upon you.

So in meditation, we're not trying to achieve a certain state of being or state of consciousness.

We're not trying to get rid of our thoughts and emotions or rise above them.

We're simply being aware of our momentary experience, aware of what our sense perception is contacting and experiencing in the moment.

Aware of the experience of spaciousness around, beneath, above and below any and every experience.

For many people, this is not easy, because when you stop and become still and silent, you notice a lot of internal noise and agitation. So you become aware of internal activity.

And you can allow the activity, the mental, emotional, sensorial, biological activity.

And paradoxically, there's a holding space for whatever experience arises. And at the same time, a letting go.

One's capacity to hold space for whatever experience you may be having in any given moment.

Is equal to one's capacity to let go of any given momentary experience. So, the extent to which I can make space for my experience in my field of awareness.

The extent to which I can make space for it is the extent to which it will easily pass.

Is the extent to which I can let go of any experience in my field of awareness.

So there's a compassionate, non-judgmental, unconditional holding space, which naturally gives rise to a letting go and easing of the experience. That naturally falls away of its own accord.