National bestselling author and teacher Steve Hagen strips away the cultural and religious jargon surrounding meditation and provides an accessible and thorough manual for newcomers and experienced practitioners alike. Inside you will find: Simple practices to avoid needlessly complicating meditation - Where most of us get stuck in meditation—and how to get unstuck - A unique focus on meditation not simply as a spiritual technique, but as a way of living “I wish I had found such a book when I began meditating.” - Stephen Levine author of A Gradual Awakening “A lucid, no-frills introduction to Buddhist meditation …[and] a timely reminder of what meditation is all about.” - Stephen Batchelor, author of Buddhism without Beliefs “A brief and wonderfully accessible primer on meditation...” - Publishers Weekly National bestselling author and teacher Steve Hagen strips away the cultural and religious jargon surrounding meditation and provides an accessible and thorough manual for newcomers and experienced practitioners alike. Inside you will find: Simple practices to avoid needlessly complicating meditation - Where most of us get stuck in meditation—and how to get unstuck - A unique focus on meditation not simply as a spiritual technique, but as a way of living Steve Hagen is a Zen priest, a longtime teacher of Buddhism, and the author of the bestselling Buddhism Plain and Simple and Buddhism Is Not What You Think . Hagen began studying Buddhism in 1967. In 1975 he became a student of Dainin Katagiri Roshi, and in 1979 he was ordained a Zen priest. Steve lives in Minneapolis, where he lectures, teaches meditation, and writes. He is currently head teacher at Dharma Field Meditation and Learning Center in Minneapolis. Meditation Now or Never By Steve Hagen HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright ©2007 Steve Hagen All right reserved. ISBN: 9780061143298 Chapter One It's About Coming Back Meditation is very simple. Yet it requires time, energy, determination, and discipline. Most people think of meditation as a special, relaxed state of mind—one that we maintain for extended periods of time and, with practice, stray from only occasionally. Meditation, however, as we'll first discuss it in this book, is quite another matter. In meditation, we are aware of the frequent wandering of our mind and bring it back, over and over, to the movement of the breath, to the posture of the body, and to itself. We repeatedly return to body, mind, and breath. This activity, though simple, is not easy. It takes diligence to return again and again to what is taking place, without falling into distraction or agitation or mental dullness. We are all human beings with human minds. Whether we acknowledge it or not, the human mind is busy and scattered much of the time. It tends to drift off a great deal, often creating difficulty for ourselves and for others in the process. Our minds all have a profound ability to package Reality into conceptual models—mental representations of Reality.This conceptualizing mind is a great treasure. Our great art, music, literature, and invention, as well as the scientific exploration of the Earth and space beyond, are, in part, creations of this wonderful, incredible capacity of the human mind to package, process, and represent Reality. Yet we easily get entangled in our conceptualizing minds—in beliefs, ideas, daydreams, and opinions. And we easily lose sight of the distinction between Reality and our ideas about Reality. In the process we miss the true, vibrant life being lived in this very moment, right here . As a result of our not recognizing this, we suffer. Meditation is to leave the clamorous mishmash of our conjured-up world and return to the simple and still clarity of here and now . The distracted mind can be likened to a very shallow river. With rocks, mounds of sand, and plants gathering at the bottom, the water passing over the riverbed creates ripples and vibrations. Our mental obstructions don't allow the experience of this moment to flow through, and we suffer turbulence, confusion, and instability. In contrast, a mind that is calm and aware, that isn't disturbed by passing images, is like a deep river where the water runs smoothly and steadily. The riverbed far below does not disturb the water. In such a mind there is no grasping, and its activity just flows through tranquilly. The undisciplined mind is easily agitated, nervous, wanting, fearful, preoccupied, distracted, scattered, and confused. In meditation we can begin to see just how busy and distracted our minds really are. We can learn to observe, without judgment, how our minds constantly go this way and that, lunging toward the things we want, and away from the things we loathe and fear. We also begin to see the pain and dissatisfaction that is none other than this leaning mind. And we return to this moment, where sanity, patience, confidence, and openness await—again and again, over and over. This isn