You must master the correct methods.

Meditation is a health and fitness method. Sit cross-legged with your eyes closed, adjust the breath in and out, place your hands in a certain position, and don't think about anything. Meditation is also called "sitting cross-legged" or "sitting quietly". A basic practice method in Taoism. It is called "meditation" or "meditation" in Buddhism and is a compulsory practice in Zen Buddhism. Sitting cross-legged is divided into natural lotus, double lotus, and single lotus. Meditation can not only maintain health and prolong life, but also open up wisdom and increase wisdom. In Chinese martial arts practice, meditation is also a way to cultivate internal strength, cultivate your mind, and enhance your willpower. The characteristic of meditation is "quietness". "Being still for a long time will make you calm, and moving for a long time will make you tired." Therefore, after meditation, you should move your muscles and bones, such as boxing, sword dancing, shuttlecock kicking, self-massage, etc., to achieve "combination of movement and stillness".

Points of posture

1. Put your feet in lotus position

First place the left foot on the right leg, then place the right foot on the left foot, which is called Vajrasana. First place your right foot on your left leg, then place your left foot on your right foot, and say Ruyi Sitting. You can sit in either position, or alternate between them when your legs hurt. If double disk is not possible, use single disk.

Because some people cannot sit in lotus position for the time being, when they sit in single lotus, the lower leg is placed very far inside. When the upper leg is put up, the knees are hanging in the air. In fact, this is not a normal practice. posture, because the upper leg is hanging in the air, it is easy for the lower leg to become unstable when crossing the legs. First of all, it should be noted that the entire human body is just like the Liuhe Pagoda. It is stable and stable, layer by layer from bottom to top. This is very critical.

Some people suspect that sitting cross-legged and meditating is not only harmful to human health, but may even cause disease due to the compression of the blood vessels in the feet. Therefore, after sitting for a long time, there will be soreness and numbness. This is a misunderstanding. In fact, human health is closely related to legs and feet. Ancient Chinese Taoist medical theory believes that "the essence arises from the soles of the feet", which is a difficult truth. Sit cross-legged and bend your knees. If you feel soreness and numbness in your feet and legs, it means that the nerves and blood vessels in your feet and legs are not smooth, and it proves that you have potential health problems. When you reach a certain stage of sitting, you will be so angry that your buttocks can no longer sink, and your brain nerves will become tense invisibly, and you will feel unable to sit still. If the qi passes from the buttocks to the thighs and knees, one by one, you will experience pain, itching, numbness, swelling, cold, and heat. Finally, once the qi passes, the pain and numbness will be cured. The two feet of the human body are like the forks of a ginseng, so coiling the two feet is equivalent to curling a ginseng or pine branch into a knot, so that its hair-generating ability will no longer be dispersed to the outside; returning to the root and cultivating its origin, so Make itself more robust. Therefore, crossing the feet and bending the knees is not only harmless to human health, but also is absolutely beneficial and harmless to health and longevity starting from appropriate exercises. It is mentioned in the "Nei Jing" that the baby's Qi is in the legs. When people reach middle age, the strength of their legs weakens, and the activity of their legs also decreases. They like to sit on the sofa and often rest their legs. In old age, it is even more unimaginable that sitting on the sofa is not enough. You have to have your legs on the table, because the human body begins to age from the bottom of the feet, and human death also proceeds gradually, starting from the feet and going up.

2. Straight spine

When people meditate, the key is to keep the spine vertical. The buttocks should be padded with a two- to three-inch high cushion, which is sloping downward from the root of the thigh to the knee. Let the two knees touch the ground as a support point. The knees should not be suspended in the air. You should feel that the center of gravity is stable, without leaning forward or backward. Feeling is the principle. Then wrap your legs, wrap your waist, and wrap the Fengchi point on your back. When the weather is cold, some people still need to wrap their heads. The upper body should be naturally upright, without leaning forward or backward. The Baihui point and the Huiyin point should be in a vertical line, but be sure to relax naturally. It should be noted that looseness will make the Qi flow smoothly and the meridians will be smooth; stiffness will cause Qi stagnation and hinder the circulation of Qi and blood. Only by relaxing the whole body internally and externally can conditions be created for tranquility. The posture of the buttocks is slightly tilted back and outwards. Viewed from the side, the entire spine is in a position similar to the middle of the buttocks and legs. Sitting like a tower, it is very well-proportioned. Some people like to lean against the back wall when meditating, so that when their bodies lean back, they cannot look like a tower. The sitting posture of the body is not vertical, but diagonally straight, leaning forward, which means that the tailbone is suspended in the air.

The special feature of human body practice is that the human body is mostly upright, with straight latitude and longitude vibrating with the heaven and earth, and the meridians have regular patterns to follow and are not completely disordered. Therefore, it is not possible to feel the pulse of animals because their pulses are disordered. If the body is straight and not tilted, then the upper stem of the Governor Vessel will be clear and clear, and the lower Kun will be cultivated and stored. It will rise and fall in a regular manner.

3. Shoulder openness

The shoulders should relax and sag, but do not raise your chest. When a meditator meditates, he raises his hands slightly, swings his shoulders back slightly, and his shoulders and armpits are empty inside. Viewed from the outside, the shoulders are a parallel line; viewed from the back, the shoulders are round.

4. Form a mudra with your hands under the navel

Put your left hand under your right hand, touch your thumbs together randomly and intentionally, and place them under your navel.

5. The head is in a neutral position

The head is in a neutral position, the chin is slightly lowered forward, the back of the head is slightly retracted, and the movement of the two large arteries on the left and right sides of the neck is slightly suppressed. . The most critical point is that if the head is tilted and the waist cannot form a hollow straight line, then it is most likely to become drowsy. Living between heaven and earth, oneself is a spiritual creature between heaven and earth. Because of the tilt of the center line, the righteous energy of heaven and earth cannot fall on you.

6. Close your eyes slightly

When meditating, fix your eyes first, and then slowly half-close your eyes. Close your eyes without drooping. Keep your eyes fixed, and you will see a bright light. , is in line with the rules. If you look down, you will definitely not be able to gain concentration. You will just sit and rest. The eyes are slightly open, seeming to be closed and open, as if they are half-open and half-closed, as if they are turning a blind eye. His eyes randomly determined the position seven or eight feet in front of the seat, or about one foot, one or two feet. For people who usually work with their eyes, it is better to close their eyes at the beginning of meditation. The eyes can see one meter in front of you, which is the most standard. If you look too far away, you will raise your neck a bit, and if you look too close, you will look down a bit, so a distance of one meter is the most appropriate. You have to feel that the nose and the belly button form a line.

When ordinary people meditate, whether they open or close their eyes, they look down and their eyes are wrong. He sank into ignorance, and his mind became even more confused. If the eyes seem to be looking downward, the optic nerve in the back of the brain will be pulled downwards, affecting the brain, which will lead to no peace and purity. So whether you open your eyes or close your eyes, the eyeballs should look straight. It doesn't matter if the eyelids are closed, the eyeballs will also look straight. It is flat, neither upward nor downward, and then the eyelids are closed, and the eyeballs are straight, not downward, downward, or upward, flat, and the eyeballs are still looking forward, and then they stop looking.

When looking at anything in the world, you should be relaxed and not serious, especially your eyes should be able to see things. Most people should look at flowers and scenery, and look at the flowers with their eyes. Go to the top, wrong. The scenery in Hangzhou is so beautiful. When you go out to see the scenery, let the scenery come into your eyes. When you look at flowers, you need to get the spirit of the flowers into my eyes. When you look at the mountains and rivers, you need to get the spirit of the mountains and rivers into my eyes. , Don't put your spirit on mountains, rivers, or flowers. It is of no use and it will not benefit you. When meditating, close your eyes and don’t look hard.

7. Licking the upper palate with the tongue

Licking the front half of the tongue slightly against the upper palate is like the state of a baby sleeping soundly before teeth have grown. This is called "bridging" in Buddhism. What bridge to build? There are 365 major acupuncture points in the human body, which correspond to one revolution of the earth and the sun. It takes 365 days for the earth to revolve around the sun. The number 9 is the largest and the number 9 is the true number. Therefore, each acupuncture point on the human body should be filled with 9 mouthfuls of true energy. There are twelve hours in a day, one hour and six quarters of an hour, and each quarter of an hour lasts twenty minutes, that is, every twenty minutes is one building. When a person sits in meditation and his six sense organs are quiet and his mind is neither scattered nor lethargic, he can generate a breath of true energy every quarter of an hour. When the true qi is transformed, it travels up Baihui from the Du Channel and then down to the mouth. It will turn into a mouthful of clear and sweet body fluid (saliva). Swallowing this mouthful of body fluid is better than taking a stick of ginseng, and it replenishes the four parts of the body. The five elements, five internal organs, and six internal organs promote hundreds of meridians and thousands of meridians.

This is when we reach a certain state through Kung Fu, a sweet liquid comes down from the pituitary gland from the top of the head, which is commonly known as "nectar initiation", Lu Chunyang's poem There is "white clouds reaching the top, nectar spreading over Sumeru" to express this state. At this time, the swallowing method should be used to swallow the body fluid into the abdomen. That is, keep the tongue on the roof of the mouth without moving, straighten the tongue, suck the body fluid to the base of the tongue, and when you want to spit it out, swallow it. By swallowing it in this way, it can directly enter the Ren channel and turn into Yin essence. It is a shortcut to creating essence and a wonderful way to keep fit.

If there is a lot of body fluid, it means your body is effective. If there is no jade fluid, it means it is scattered or comatose, and it will not have much effect. For example, if a person's thoughts are distracted for a day, his mouth will be dry all day long. When a person sleeps for a whole day, his mouth is also dry. Only when the mind is neither distracted nor lethargic can the true energy be transformed. When you first sit in meditation, before entering into true concentration, if your mind is not distracted or lethargic, you can dissolve a mouthful of jade liquid in a quarter of an hour.

Meditating method

Heart and Earth Dharma door

When sitting down, use the Vajra practice method, that is, move your lips slightly to recite the mantra without making any sound. Because chanting the mantra aloud hurts the Qi, while silently chanting the mantra hurts the blood. When we practice Dharma, we must first pay attention to our body and not damage it, so we must protect our body while meditating and practicing. But when you sit until your seeds are churning, your heart is upset, and you can't sit still, or when you sit until you fall asleep and have random dreams, you should recite mantras out loud to get rid of those chaotic thoughts and sleep demons before you can enter samadhi. When you don't encounter this kind of situation, you can still recite the mantra using Vajra Holding method.

The speed of reciting the mantra is 10 to 12 times per minute. When reciting, you must listen to the mantra with your heart, that is, go through your heart one word at a time, instead of reciting it with your mouth or mindlessly. You must use your ears to listen to the mantra sound coming from your heart, and hear it clearly. Only in this way can you catch the delusional thoughts. Don't move and gradually fall into concentration.

Our six sense organs—eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind—among them, the mind root is like a monkey that is used to moving around. It is difficult to keep it quiet and motionless, but it is difficult to control it. If you move, you will not be able to enter concentration, develop wisdom and achieve enlightenment. Therefore, Mahasthamaprapta Bodhisattva teaches us that when we recite the Buddha's name, we must "take in all six roots and have pure thoughts one after another." That is to say, when reciting the Buddha's name, you must sincerely use the holy name "Amitabha" to capture your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind, and tell them not to move, so that you can enter samadhi safely. Among these six roots, the mind and ears are the most difficult to capture. The root of the eye can be captured by closing the eyes and not looking at anything; the root of the tongue (tongue) can be captured by chanting the mantra with the mouth; the root of the nose can be captured by the nose without smelling any odor; the root of the body can be captured without the body touching the external environment. But human ears are the most sensitive. They can hear sounds far away, and they can also hear sounds from a big mountain. The noise outside will make you upset. As for the mind, it is more difficult to capture it. If you don't let it move, thoughts will jump out of your heart involuntarily. Why? This is a habit that has lasted for many lifetimes. Once it gets used to it, it cannot stop. This is called "mindfulness" in Buddhist scriptures. It is also the first of the five pervasive mental factors mentioned by Faxiang Sect, namely, intention, contact, feeling, thought, and thought. It exists in the eight consciousnesses and is moving all the time, flowing like water. That’s why it’s called “flow of birth and death.” It’s very subtle, but we can’t see it at ordinary times.

Some people say: "If we don't practice the Dharma or meditate, we don't have thoughts, but when we practice the Dharma and meditate, we have thoughts. Is it because we practice the Dharma badly that we have thoughts?"

No. This is because you are usually distracted and cannot see your thoughts moving around. Once your mind calms down a bit, you will see your thoughts moving around. What to do? How to put an end to delusional thoughts? The only way is to use the ears to tap the mind. To recite the mantra, you need to read it word by word from your heart and hear it clearly with your ears, so that you can follow the law. Therefore, the main point of meditation is to "hear with the mind and ears", to stop the delusional thoughts and enter concentration. Otherwise, if you are sitting here, chanting mantras or Buddha's names, but thinking about all kinds of things in your mind, you will not be able to enter concentration. You must listen to it with your heart and ears, and meditate with all your heart.

However, the most important thing is the emptiness in the heart. Cultivation is about jumping out of the Three Realms and not being in the Five Elements, so you have to let go of everything before you can enter the Tao. Lay people have one more obstacle than monks. They have a family and have many troubles. Things like donkeys are not gone yet, things like horses come again. There are so many things.

So, we must always be vigilant and see through these things. They are all fake and cannot be obtained. Only if you don’t love it in your heart can you afford to be rude.

You must also remember to observe it at all times while walking, living, sitting, and lying down, in order to be in harmony with the great road.

Six Key Points

Let Everything Go

What’s the use of being attached to worldly things and not letting go? Everything in this world is a combination of causes and conditions and has no substance. It is like a fleeting cloud, empty but not real. You cannot ask for it or take it away. Even your own body is fake and cannot be retained or obtained. You can only imagine the things outside your body. Therefore, recognizing things as true and holding on to them is a foolish thing that is not worthy of a smile from an enlightened person. Learning Buddhism and cultivating Taoism is a career of great wisdom and great wisdom, and it is not something that people with small faculties and small wisdom can do. To become enlightened, you must first see through everything. Only by meditating with all your heart can you achieve concentration and enlightenment. If you are thinking about this or that, or wandering around with random thoughts, that's the end of it. You must let go of everything and act like a dead person.

Thinking with the heart and hearing with the ears

This is the key to cultivating the secret of the heart. It is very important for entering concentration and enlightenment, so I remind everyone again and again to practice it without any compromise. People are used to having delusional thoughts, and they do not listen attentively to the voice of reciting the mantra, and capture the root of the mind. If the delusional thoughts cannot stop, how can they enter concentration and become enlightened if the delusional thoughts do not stop? Therefore, it is necessary to read with the mind and hear with the ears, recite each word from the heart, and hear it clearly with the ears. Only then can the mind be restrained from wandering thoughts and gradually enter into concentration.

As soon as you think of it, you will wake up

When the thought comes, you must be able to see it. If you can't see it, it will run away. Therefore, you should wake up as soon as you think of it, neither wandering with it nor being unable to suppress it, just ignore it, raise your righteous thoughts, and recite the mantra wholeheartedly, and the false thoughts will naturally disappear and you can enter tranquility.

Meditate on time

Sit on time every day. Once you develop the habit, it will be easier to enter meditation. It is best to meditate in the morning, preferably early in the morning. When sitting, do not be in a hurry to enter samadhi. Sit calmly and calmly with a normal mind. Recite the mantra calmly and unhurriedly. You do not ask for enlightenment or miraculous powers. The thought of entering samadhi, enlightenment, developing supernatural powers, etc. is a delusional mind. Together with these thoughts, it blocks the door to self-enlightenment, and not only does it prevent enlightenment, but it also prevents one from entering samadhi.

Observe after sitting down

Extend the stillness skills in meditation to daily use, and use them calmly while walking, standing, sitting, and lying down; observe closely and closely, Everything is without abiding, neither letting the realm pull me away nor wandering with delusions.

Broad-mindedness

A monk should not be small-minded and must be magnanimous to accommodate everything. Even if others treat me badly, I will treat them better, without any love, evil, or Concepts of like and dislike. Do all the good deeds according to the circumstances, and be free and easy at all times and everywhere. There is no worry about gain or loss, and no thought of success or failure. This is the greatest magical power.

Remember these six points and practice according to them, and you will definitely be able to open up your true nature and realize your Buddha nature. Do these six points and work tirelessly to ensure that you can fully realize Bodhi and achieve great achievements!

Notes

1. Begin to meditate and abstain from eating fishy, ??meaty, spicy food. Food that is covered with fishy meat will have a heavy and turbid taste. If you eat it, the acquired qi will become thick and difficult to suppress. Spicy food has a frivolous nature, and eating it will cause the innate Qi to disperse but not gather. Those who are wise should not eat fishy, ??meaty or spicy food, and only eat light vegetarian meals to eliminate the original taste. Don't eat too much, as overeating will hurt your mind. If you don’t eat too much, you will be hungry. If you are too hungry, your Qi will be damaged. You must know the way of eating in this festival.

2. Shaking the heart while sitting quietly will cause the Qi to disperse. If you cultivate a little bit of Jing Qi Shen, it will not only be leaked from the marital life, but also from the six roots. Seeing too much with the eyes is a kind of "leakage", hearing too much with the ears is also a kind of "leakage", and speaking too much with the mouth is a kind of "leakage"! All six will leak. Why is it emphasized that as a practitioner, the first step is to close the six sense organs? When the six roots are closed, the essence, energy, and spirit will automatically enter the Ren and Du channels and return to the central channel.

3. Smile while meditating.

4. When sitting quietly and thinking, you can focus on counting your breaths, not counting the inhalations, only counting the outbreaths. When you count the out-breaths, you release everything, including your own life, all worries and illnesses, following the out-breaths. Especially if you catch a cold or get sick, or if tumors or cancers develop in your body, it will go out together with the breath, and it will be empty when it goes out. Count your breaths like this and your body will immediately feel relaxed.

In the Taoist "Yin Fu Jing", there is an important formula - "The control of birds lies in Qi". That is to say, practitioners have many delusional thoughts and cannot concentrate their thoughts because your Qi is scattered. If Qi is disturbed, the mind will be confused. Therefore, when practicing meditation, it is recommended to practice Qi first. The practitioner uses his mind to guard his breathing and regulates his breathing, so that his mind will naturally no longer be distracted. Many people in society still have physical problems after practicing for many years. The reason is that the breath in their bodies is not well regulated. There is also a wise saying in Taoism: "The mysterious pearl of heaven and earth is the root of all qi." From this sentence, we can see the importance of Qi. No matter how strong a person's body is, if the Qi in the body is not regulated, a serious illness will come. It can be said that with the cooperation of body and mind, breath can undergo thousands of changes.

The first type: count from one to ten, then count backward from ten to one, repeat this process until there are only numbers and no other distracting thoughts when breathing. (1, 2, 3...10, 9, 8...2, 1...).

The second type: Counting from one to two... until the end, there are no distracting thoughts and delusions, there are no errors in the numbers, and the coordination of the mind and the breathing is the first step. success.

(1, 2, 3, 4...99, 100...1, 2, 3,...99, 100).

One thing must be noted: the mind should not follow the breath into the body, nor should it follow the breath out of the body. The mind should only be aware of the breath in the area around the tip of the nose.

The process of counting and the breathing experience of the wind element are divided into three levels: wind → breath → breath. At the beginning, the breathing is rough, which is called wind. After calmness, the breathing is thin, which is called Qi. Going one step further, the body and mind are peaceful. You can only feel your inner breathing but cannot hear the sound of breathing. This is breathing. When it comes to resting, stop counting and just get into it. When sitting quietly for several breaths, breathe naturally, relax your body, and turn your ears to listen to your breathing. If you are practicing in a noisy place and cannot hear breathing, use your senses to listen.

5. One meal a day can help you meditate and enter concentration. After noon, yang energy decreases and yin energy rises. Eating food will aggravate the yin energy. In the morning, it is heavenly food, at noon, it is Buddha food, and in the evening, it is ghost food. Eating after noon will cause garbage to accumulate in the stomach and large and small intestines. Therefore, not eating after noon is the best way to cleanse the intestines. Because the small intestine and the heart are the exterior and interior of each other, a clear intestine will lead to a clear heart. Eating too much or eating after noon will block the meridians. If the meridians are blocked, the body will be tired and sleepy, and the mind will be blocked. If the mind is blocked, the Tao will be wasted. If you eat dinner between 5 and 7 o'clock, the kidney meridian will be blocked, and the life gate fire will not be able to rise, forming filthy essence, which will encourage love. Then, between 7 and 9 o'clock, the pericardial meridian that stores the eighth consciousness will be blocked, and the heart will not be cleared. Evil atmosphere around. Over time, the heart that resides in it cannot control the gods, and the brain and thinking are controlled by the evil energy in the pericardium. Then, from 9 to 11 a.m., the three burners and all the pulses are blocked, and from 11 to 3 a.m., the gallbladder and liver are under heavy burden, and the detoxification and blood transfusion functions are reduced. In severe cases, it will affect sleep. At Yin o'clock in the morning of the next day, the yang energy is not easy to rise. At Mao o'clock, it is difficult to eliminate the turbidity accumulated in the intestines, forming toxins in the body and entering the blood and organs. At the time of the best absorption of nutrients at Chen o'clock and Si o'clock, there is no thought of eating. A vicious cycle is formed. At noon, the heart is heavily burdened and the intersection of yin and yang is unfavorable.

6. Will meditating lead to obsession? Some people are afraid of going crazy while sitting in meditation. Haha, to be honest, most people are not qualified to reach the state that can make you go crazy. The most we can experience is hallucinations that make you feel trance-like (like dreaming during sleep). These are just childish, so don’t take them seriously.

Generally, people who are new to meditating often find that their thoughts are very messy, and they are even more irritable and restless than when they are not meditating. Therefore, they become more panicked and think that they should not "meditate". ", or adding legends from martial arts novels and folk myths, I am afraid that "sitting in meditation" will "go too far." In fact, these are all unreasonable. They are placed on one's own head and misunderstood, creating a psychological shadow. Speaking of sitting still, it is a very ridiculous thing. At the same time, it also exposes the great weakness of human intelligence. A person's life needs rest. This is a fact that everyone knows and is an undeniable truth.

But when a person starts to practice taking a rest from a sitting position, it will cause a lot of fuss and fuss about the so-called "That's monasticism! It's meditation! It's discouraged and world-weary! It's obsessive!" and so on. concept.

In fact, the state of sleeping and resting is lying down; the practice of sitting and resting is just the sitting posture, which is different from sleeping. The reason why these many nouns and concepts are added is that people have heard rumors that are not true, or they use fragmentary knowledge that is passed down incorrectly, and they are just made up of psychological curiosity or psychological fear. What does it have to do with the practice of meditation itself?