Sit still for ten minutes
Same time each day. Upright, breathing normally, following the breath, and when you notice you have wandered off, come back. That is the whole instruction and it is not a secret.
23 · Meditation
Why this page will not teach you
Not because it is secret. Because in this tradition meditation is not a technique you apply, and the missing piece is not something a web page can supply.
You can find guided meditations in thirty seconds. This site has none, and a refusal is only honest if it explains itself, so here is the reasoning and here is what to do instead.
First
It is not the thing the word usually means
In English, meditation has come to mean calming down and paying attention to the present moment. That exists here and it is roughly a quarter of the subject.
Buddhist meditation alternates between two kinds, and the Geluk tradition leans hard on the one Westerners least expect.
Stabilizing meditation settles the mind on a single object and holds it there. This is the one people picture.
Discerning meditation, usually called analytical, does something else entirely: it uses reasoning to work step by step towards a particular state of mind. You are not emptying your head. You are arguing yourself into a conclusion and then holding it.
For insight into the nature of things, the Geluk position is to do analytical meditation from the beginning, not after years of quiet. Which is why this school looks the way it does: the debate courtyard is not a break from meditation, it is training for it.
The actual reason
You have to know exactly what you are generating
Here is the requirement, stated in the tradition's own terms. To meditate effectively you have to know, with precision and decisiveness, the exact state of mind you are trying to generate. What to focus on. What the focal object is, in detail. How the mind should relate to it. What will help it develop and what will hinder it. What to do with it once you have it. And what it is supposed to eliminate.
Read that list again and notice what it is not. It is not sit down and see what happens. It is a specification, and the specification is the teaching. Without it a person sitting cross-legged is doing something, but not this.
That is the whole argument. A web page can give you the posture. It cannot watch you for a year and tell you that what you think is concentration is dullness, that what you think is insight is a mood, or that the object you have been holding is not the one you were given. A teacher can, and in this tradition that correction is the instruction.
There is an ordering point too. Vipashyana, insight, is developed on the foundation of shamatha, stabilization. Taking them out of order is one of the commonest ways for solitary practice to go quietly nowhere.
Meanwhile
Five things you can do on your own, starting today
None of these needs anybody's permission, none of them can go wrong, and all of them are what a teacher would have you doing in the first year anyway.
Watch one thing in your own mind
Pick anger, or wanting, or boredom. For a month, just catch it happening. Do not try to fix it. Noticing is the skill, and it is the one everything else is built on.
Read, slowly, one book
The reading list is short on purpose. Finish one before buying another.
Be useful to somebody every day
Small and specific. In this tradition that is not a nice extra alongside practice. It is practice, and it is the part that is never restricted.
Go and look
A centre, a temple, a talk. Say you are new. What happens at a teaching covers what you will walk into.
Then
How to check a teacher, and how long to spend on it
The tradition is far more suspicious of teachers than its reputation suggests. The instruction is to examine a prospective teacher against the qualities set out in the lamrim, and it says plainly that fame and a large following are not a substitute for doing that.
Mahayana disciples traditionally checked a lama for as long as twelve years before accepting him.
And then, characteristically, the same tradition warns about the opposite failure: spend too long looking and checking, and nothing happens in this life at all. The precious human rebirth finishes with the checking complete and nothing accomplished. Both halves are meant seriously.
01
Where did they study, for how long, and with whom?
A real answer is specific and checkable. Titles and ranks explains what the words in that answer mean, and what a Geshe actually is explains what one of them costs.
02
Do they encourage you to question them?
His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been explicit that a student may question a teacher's advice. A teacher who treats questioning as a lack of faith has answered you.
03
Is money a condition of access?
Teachings in this tradition are not sold. A centre asking for costs is normal; a teacher gating instruction behind payment is not.
04
Are you being moved quickly towards vows or empowerments?
Speed is the warning sign. Nothing in this tradition is urgent.
05
Are students discouraged from studying elsewhere, or from leaving?
The answer to that one is never ambiguous.
Where to go
This is the part that is not hard
Find a Centre lists 138 FPMT centres, monasteries and projects in 34 countries, with addresses. Most run a beginners' course and most of the people in the room on any given night are not Buddhist.
If there is nothing near you, structured courses run online, and the Wider World page lists the archives where a very large amount of this material is free to read.
One last thing. Nothing above is a claim that meditating on your own is harmful or forbidden. Sit for ten minutes a day, starting tonight. The claim is narrower and it is this: what this tradition means by meditation is a specific set of states with specific objects and specific corrections, and that is taught by a person, not by a page.
If you are starting from nothing, Start Here is the page before this one. Terms are in the Lexicon, and Claims to be careful of covers what to do if a teacher starts making promises.
Sources
References
The account of what meditation is, and the requirement that one must know precisely the state being generated, are taken from Geluk-sourced explanations rather than asserted. The advice on examining a teacher, including both the twelve years and the warning against checking forever, comes from the tradition’s own teachers.
- 1What Is Meditation?Study Buddhism
That Buddhist meditation alternates two types, discerning (analytical) and stabilizing, and that discerning meditation uses reasoning to work step by step towards a positive state.
- 2Meditation: Main PointsStudy Buddhism
That to meditate effectively one must know with precision and decisiveness the exact state of mind to be generated: the focal object, how the mind relates to it, what helps, what hinders, and what it eliminates. This is the argument for a teacher stated in the tradition's own terms.
- 3Meditation States That Are Discerning or StabilizingStudy Buddhism
The distinction between discerning and stabilizing meditation in detail.
- 4Shamatha and Vipashyana: General PresentationStudy Buddhism
That vipashyana is achieved on the foundation of shamatha, and the order of the two.
- 5Checking the GuruLama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
That a prospective teacher should be examined against the qualities set out in the lamrim, that fame and a large following are not a substitute for that examination, that Mahayana disciples would traditionally check a lama for as long as twelve years, and the counter-warning that checking indefinitely wastes the life you were trying to use.
- 6How to Find a TeacherLama Zopa Rinpoche, Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
Practical advice on finding a qualified teacher.
- 7The Dalai Lama on questioning the advice of the guruShambhala Publications
Examining a teacher before accepting them, and the limits of guru devotion for ordinary practitioners.
- 8The Dalai Lama: Reliance on a TeacherShambhala Publications
The twelve-year mutual examination of teacher and student before the relationship is entered.
- 9The Gelug Monastic Education SystemStudy Buddhism
The five great treatises, the sequence of study, and the structure of the Geshe degree.
- 10Centres, projects and servicesFPMT
The directory of 138 centres in 34 countries, transcribed country by country.
Every factual claim on this page rests on one of the sources above. Links open in a new tab. The full list for the whole site, and the standard this site holds itself to, is on the sources page.