How To Meditate

This is primarily in-depth instructions on the "noting" style of meditation I recommend, although there is much that applies to any form of meditation.  I also have a simple one page description of some simple forms of meditation that would be a good foundational set of practices in A Simple Way to Start.

If you feel that maybe this noting approach isn't really your thing, but you'd like to know more about meditation, a highly recommended and largely non-dogmatic book that can give you a good feel for the territory is Mindfulness in Plain English, by the monk Bhante Gunaratana.  Also, the 45 minute audio of basic instructions given by the nun Andrea Fella is a great introduction.  Those are great resources for learning an unstructured style of meditation.

The noting style is sometimes called the Mahasi or Burmese style, after the monk that developed it.  This style is more or less the main style of mindfulness or vipassana that is taught in southeast Asian Theravada Buddhist communities.

An abbreviated version of this style is to

notice what is roughly predominate in awareness and label it, about once per second, as either "seeing", "hearing", "feeling", or "thinking", or "don't know".

The last page below (Mahasi Style Noting) contains links to audio that explains the style.

• Meditation Overview
• The Easy Way - Do Nothing - letting go
• Why Use the Noting Style?
• Intro to Noting and Meditation
• First Stage - Basic Noting
• Second Stage - More Detailed Noting
• Third Stage - Grasping and Resistance
• General Theory
• Getting In Touch With Emotions
• Alternative Noting
• Getting It Done - there is gold here
• Mahasi Style Noting - and additional resources

Other instruction oriented articles

Personal instruction