'My first meditation' - by Lorry Levy

I can remember it well. I had been to a few meditation classes before, but this was my first taste of meditation at one the London Kadampa centres. I went along with my elder brother who had been attending the classes for a few months. I was a little dubious at first but he reassured me that the people were very friendly and that nothing weird was going happen. Thankfully on this occasion my brother’s advice was sound.

Once we had settled down, I remember feeling a bit uncomfortable. Everyone else seemed quite content to just sit and wait for the teacher to arrive but I didn’t know what to do with myself. Much like anything else in life it was just that I'd never attended a meditation class at one of the Kadampa centres before, but once the teacher arrived my nervousness quickly passed.

She introduced herself – a Buddhist nun and a practitioner for the past 10 years. She explained that in today’s class we would be considering the benefits of meditation. But before that, we would engage in a breathing meditation, which she explained, “…would calm our busy minds” or not as I was soon to find out.

As soon as the teacher said, "Okay, I'd like you to focus on the sensation of your breath…" I proceeded to follow just about every thought apart from the one saying, "Just follow your breath!" I thought about my day at work, what I had to do tomorrow and whether or not I'd get my hands on one of those tasty bagels after the class. Actually, most of my time was spent thinking about the bagels.

The teacher gave us occasional words of guidance, encouraging us to ignore distracting thoughts. She said, "… regard them as bubbles, rising and falling in the ocean of your mind" and it helped for a while, but before long my mind was racing once more, doing everything but focusing on my breath. By the time I had finally started to focus my mind – about 10 minutes later – the teacher said, “Please relax your concentration and arise from meditation”. “Oh well,” I thought, “…at least I didn’t fall asleep.” Before the class my brother explained that meditating when you’re tired is a bit tricky and that I should be careful not to doze off during the class. Thanks bro!

After the meditation, the teacher gave an interesting talk on the benefits of meditation. It was all very clearly explained and I remember thinking it made a lot of sense. I felt quite enthused and couldn’t wait to have another go. Then she gave us the good news - we would now get another opportunity to meditate. This time, based upon the benefits covered in the talk, the object of our meditation would be generating the wish to practice. This, she explained, would help us to find the motivation to do some more meditation before next week's class. "Great!" I thought, "This time I'll get it right".

Sure enough, with the help of the teacher's skilful guidance, my meditation was actually quite successful. I was actually meditating – fantastic! I was really enjoying it and felt a clear sense of stillness in my mind. It was very calming and peaceful. I remember thinking, "I've got the hang of this already" and I started to think about telling my friends how great it was, and how I could do this on the train to work in the morning and ... my mind was off again.

Two years later, my approach to meditation is a little more levelheaded. Sometimes my meditation goes well and I find it relatively easy to focus my mind. At other times its not so easy and distractions are more difficult to avoid. On one level it doesn't really concern me. The main difference now is that I am far more aware of the distracting thoughts when they arise. Even if I spend the whole session trying to find the object of meditation, getting distracted and then pulling my mind back again, at least I'm developing my concentration and generating a feeling of inner peace.

What I enjoy most about the meditation classes is having the opportunity to meditate on the subject of the teacher’s talk. These meditations tend to focus on subjects such as, “The freedom of inner peace”, “How to be happy” and “Developing a mind of loving compassion”. It’s nice to come to the class with an open mind and to go home with some skilful methods to put into practice in my daily life.

Oh and the bagels! How could I forget about the bagels?

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