Integrating Meditation into Everyday Life: Living Fully
Meditation is often practiced apart from everyday life. In this essay, I provide a spiritual toolbox that helps to integrate meditation into everyday life.
What is meditation? To many people, meditation means sitting meditation. However, meditation is not restricted to sitting. It can happen in any position and any activity. So, what is meditation in the widest sense? In a booklet What is Meditation?, Osho gives 38 answers. I list here some of them:
Meditation is:
playful
non-doing
witnessing
silence
freedom
a cleansing
awareness
fun
understanding
relaxation
oneness
in the present
coming home
etc.
Although these answers may appear very different, fundamentally they have much in common. They involve liberation from the tyranny of the thinking mind, the obsession with thoughts that are often recurrent and thus don’t allow us to rest, to relax, to be in silence. Although the thinking mind can be very useful, it prevents us from being fully in the present since it ruminates often about the past or future. Furthermore,it obscures oneness since, like language, it implies duality and fragments. It reinforces separation such as a separate self or ego. In contrast, meditation can unsolidify the ego and lead to ego transcendence: becoming aware that we are one with the universe. This transcendence can eliminate or reduce suffering, especially psychological suffering, which appears to be rooted in separation that creates conflict.
One could also say that meditation in the deepest sense is just another word for being fully alive. Techniques are useful to overcome the obstacles that prevent us from being fully alive. Techniques may be needed to remove the tyranny of the mind. Thus, techniques can open the door to meditation in the deepest sense. But meditation in the deepest sense is beyond techniques.
Concentration is not a good technique for meditation. Although some meditation teachers emphasize concentration, it can become an obstacle to meditation because it requires effort and effort can lead to tension that inhibits the opening to the infinite. Concentration has its uses, but it is not a door to meditation in the deepest universal sense. Relaxation, instead of concentration, can be a better door (see Osho: Meditation: The First and Last Freedom, pp. 225-227). Relaxation can open infinite spaciousness. Some spiritual teachers consider spaciousness the hallmark of meditation. It can be liberating.
Besides relaxation, the following techniques, spiritual tools, can be integrated into activities of everyday life so that eventually meditation in its deepest sense becomes a way of life, which means becoming fully alive, living life, not thinking life, not being blinded by dreams, beliefs, philosophies, ideologies, etc. You will have to decide which of the following techniques are useful and appropriate for you.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness involves observation or witnessing: we witness our thoughts, emotions, and feelings (body sensations). Witnessing creates a distance between the witness and the witnessed. The witness is like the watcher on the hill. Remaining detached, the witness does not identify with the witnessed. Hence, witnessing implies disidentification: I am not this: I am not my thoughts, emotions, and feelings. Thoughts, emotions, and feelings arise in me; but I am much more than any thought, emotion, or feeling. Yet most people get tapped in identifications. They say: I am an activist, a liberal, a conservative, a Christian, a Buddhist, etc., etc. But they are far more than just that. Being an activist, a liberal, a conservative, etc. are traits. We may have a religion, but what we really are is more than a religion. What we really are is beyond words and thoughts. Therefore, Korzybski concluded that whatever you say you are, you are not. You are the unspeakable, the unnamable, the mysterious.
Besides identification with thoughts, most people get also trapped in their emotions. They say: I am angry, furious, sad, depressed, etc. They forget that these emotions arise in them. What they really are is beyond emotions. Hence, in mindfulness we realize that we are not our emotions. We recognize them and witness how they transform and pass.
Most people also get trapped in feelings (body sensations), especially when they are painful as in illness. However, again we are more than a pain that arises in us. We are not it. The Indian sage Ramana Maharshi had severe pain in his body, yet a smile on his face. Somebody asked him: How can you smile with so much pain in your body? He said: I am not my body. Of course, he had a body, but he was not identified with it. He knew that he was more than his body.
Gurdjieff said: Identification is the only sin. Mindfulness is a practice of disidentification: In any situation, we can say I am not this. Having this awareness can be immensely helpful in many difficult situations in which we may get trapped in our thoughts, emotions, and feelings because we identify with them.
Nowadays, mindfulness is especially relevant and important because in our culture identification and reference to one's identiy has become fashionable. As a result, many people have become trapped in their so-called identity such as skin colour, sexual orientation, religion, etc. We have a skin colour, a sexual orientation, a religion, but they are not our identity; they are only traits, aspects of our nature that is much more encompassing. To single out one trait or aspect distorts what we really are, which is much more profound than any trait or aspect. Mindfulness can help us to avoid the identify trap and to overcome the identity myth (see, for example, Mounk, Y. 2023. The Identity Trap and Swift, D. 2022. The Identity Myth).
Although witnessing though mindfulness helps us to surpass the identification with our thoughts, emotions, and feelings, it implies a dualism, the dualism of the witness and the witnessed. However, if we recognize that the witnessed arises in the witness, that the witnessed and the witness are one, we transcend this dualism, and thus we also go beyond mindfulness that is based on witnessing consciousness: the distinction of the witness and the witnessed. In contrast to witnessing consciousness, the transcendence of the witness/witnessed distinction leads to unity consciousness (see Stephan Bodian: Beyond Mindfulness).
The following meditation techniques can be used to go beyond mindfulness. However, if situations become too overwhelming, one might revert to mindfulness, emphasizing that we are not what appears so overwhelmingly threatening.
Breathing
Breathing can be done with unity consciousness or witnessing consciousness (mindfulness). Using mindfulness, we are mindful of our breathing, we observe each breath coming in and going out. Such breathing creates an awareness of the ground of life. However, as all mindfulness meditation, it implies a dualism of the witness and the witnessed. To overcome this dualism, we do not witness the breathing, we become the breathing, we are the breathing. Being the breathing opens the door to the infinite. Thus, breathing can become a bridge to the universe. Or, more accurately, it can reveal that we are always one with the universe, although most of the time, we may not be aware of it. But we may practice conscious breathing at any instant during daily life, especially in difficult situations when we tend to get trapped in the illusion of a separate self that leads to suffering. In stressful situations you may breathe out the stress. Eckart Tolle considers breathing “The most powerful spiritual practice for daily life.”
In one single breath, we may experience life, death, and eternity: life in the in-breath, death (which is a letting go) in the out-breath, and eternity in the gap between in-breath and out-breath or between out-breath and in-breath. Since this gap is very short, it may be easily overlooked. We may, however, intentionally prolong it, as it is done, for example, in certain Yogic breathing techniques.
We may also abruptly stop breathing, which stops unwelcome thoughts, emotions, and feelings.
In Tonglen, a Tibetan technique, we breathe suffering into our heart where we transform it into happiness. It may be our own suffering or the suffering of others.
We may breathe into any organ that needs healing. Or we may practice whole-body breathing by breathing into all pores of our body simultaneously or progressively by starting with the feet and then moving up the body.
Mahamudra of Tibetan Buddhism distinguishes seven levels of breathing at the tip of the nostril (see CD #11 in Reginald Ray: Mahamudra for the Modern World. 33 CDs. Sounds True). As an introduction, the first four levels focus on an alertness of breathing. At the fifth level we place our attention inside the breath, dissolving into the interior of the breath. At the sixth level, with our attention inside the breath, we expand into the universe. Eventually we feel that our breath is in the universe and that the universe is breathing us. At the seventh level we try to understand the boundlessness of breathing and experience the stillness underlying the breath. Breathing at any one of these levels may be practiced at any instant in daily life.
Gibberish
If the preceding techniques do not help you to overcome the tyranny of the thinking mind, if, against your will, thoughts continue to pursue you, you may practice gibberish: you make nonsense sounds, either alone or if possible in a group. As you continue uttering such sounds, the thinking mind becomes so confused that it capitulates and you will be free of thoughts. You will arrive in a peaceful silence.
Gibberish, although it appears totally crazy to outsiders and, in a way, it is crazy from the point of view of the thinking mind, is also called no-mind meditation (see Osho: Meditation: The First and Last Freedom, pp. 51-52).
Laughing
Like Gibberish, laughing can instantly liberate us from the tyranny of the thinking mind. For this reason, it has been said that laughter is a shortcut to Nirvana. “When you really laugh, for those few moments you are in a deep meditative state… If you really laugh thinking stops. If you are still thinking, laughter will be just so-so, lagging behind it. It will be a crippled laughter” (Bhagwan Shree Rashneesh (Osho): The Book, Series II, p. 111). “If you laugh you will be able to love. If you can laugh you will be able to relax. Laughter relaxes like nothing else” (ibid., p. 112).
Some people can laugh without any reason. But for most people humour and jokes are helpful, which underlines their importance for well-being and meditation. It seems that “the whole of life is a great cosmic joke. It is not a serious phenomenon - take it seriously and you will go on missing it. It is understood only through laughter” (ibid., p. 112). Why is life a cosmic joke? Because we keep looking and searching for what we are already – the universe. Nothing is missing in the universe, but in our deluded mind, we keep looking for something to make us whole and happy.
“If we can laugh about ourselves and our own situation, that is already a good dose of emptiness [boundlessness] because it breaks up the solidity, the seriousness, and the claustrophobic narrow-mindedness of our usual behaviour” (Karl Brunnhölzl: The Heart Attack Sutra. A new Commentary on the Heart Sutra, p. 89). In other words, laughter may be window to the infinite, to our deepest home, the universe.
Because of its many beneficial effects, for a long time, laughter has been called the best medicine – and it is free!
Smiling
Even smiling can have a deeply beneficial effect. It relaxes the muscles of our face and body, which leads to peace and a meditative state. The Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh emphasized the spiritual aspects of smiling. He wrote: “When I see someone smile, I know immediately that he or she is dwelling in awareness” (Thich Nhat Hanh: Peace is Every Step, p. 7).
Dancing and Movement
Being totally absorbed by dancing leads to a meditative state, the ego disappears, the dancer disappears in the dance, that is, the dancer becomes the dance. Duality disappears. Even in old age, one can still dance. If the body is too weak, one can sit down and dance with one’s hands.
One may begin dancing with shaking or just practice shaking. Movements such as Qigong can be incorporated into daily life. Even a few simple movements can make a difference reminding us of our true home, which is the universe. Many relaxation techniques can help us in this respect. Even standing in a relaxed open posture can create a feeling of being connected to heaven and earth through the extension of the central channel in both directions.
Stopping Techniques
Abruptly stopping activities can also stop our thoughts, emotions, and feelings. Stop and just be.
One stopping technique is to stop abruptly our breathing.
Another stopping technique is to stop abruptly all movement. For example, while walking, we suddenly stop completely. This way the continuity that was going on in the mind becomes disrupted and we are freed from the tyranny of the mind.
When there is an overwhelming impulse such as a desire or anger, stop abruptly. Don’t think about stopping. Just stop very abruptly. It can open up new and profound vistas, a new state of being.
The Ultimate Stopping Technique: Stop the search such as the search for enlightenment.
“Keep Quiet.
Don’t stir a thought from the mind.
Then you will know,
Who you really Are”
(Poonja (Papaji). ThIS. P. 95.
“On three accounts, searching and practice are foolishness and misleading… First, it creates a searcher” (ibid., p. 96) which implies a separation of the self. Second, the search creates a distraction: “The Truth is only Here and Now, but the search says it is tomorrow” (ibid.). Third, the search “creates an object to be found… and then attain that which you think you are searching for” (ibid., p. 97). But an object implies a conceptualization that removes you from the Ultimate.
Using the Senses for Meditation
Normally, our sensory experience implies thought and language: concepts that we name. Thus, we create objects on which we impose concepts and names. For example, we see a “bird,” hear a “gong,” taste an “orange,” smell a “flower,” touch a “stone.” This way we fragment the world into sense-objects. It is, however, possible to experience pure sensing that does not impose thought and language, concepts and names. Such pure sensing can open the doors to infinity. It requires a conceptual and linguistic cleansing. William Blake was aware of this when he wrote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.” In fact, there would be no longer “things,” because “things” are created though conceptualizations and naming. Without concepts and names “things” cease to exist, and thus we can experience boundlessness, infinity, which in Buddhism is often referred to as emptiness, which means that things have no separate existence: they are one with the universe. To experience this oneness, we have to immerse ourselves completely in the sensory experience that is devoid of concepts and names. In this immersion disappears not only the separation of the sensory “objects,” but also the separation of the observer and the observed, which leads to a state of being of wholeness and unity, also referred to as unity consciousness, but I would prefer to simply refer to nonduality.
With this understanding, cleansing, silence, and oneness can open the door to meditation. It can happen in any instant in daily life. Now let us examine all of our senses.
Vision
How can vision or sight become a door to the infinite? Through attention, by being very attentive to an object. The mind wants to move on and on. But if we stay with the object, we break the desire of the mind to move on and thus we break the tyranny of the mind. We transcend the mind. We can practice this with any object we encounter in everyday life. However, at first it may be helpful to select an object you like such as a candle, a flower, a crystal, a Buddha statue, etc. You could even visualize an object. Do not impose any concepts or thoughts on the object. Thus make it objectless. Merge with it totally and lovingly in a relaxed alertness. So you are not thinking about the object. You feel the object with your heart. You become one with the object and thus you transcend also the ego, the finite self.
Another way to open the door to the infinite is through sky gazing. Look at the blue sky and merge with it completely. Inhale the sky and exhale into the sky. This can be done in any instant when we can see the blue sky or a patch of the blue sky. I often practice it while waiting at a red traffic light.
Or with a friend or lover you may practice eye gazing, looking into his or her eyes so intensely until you can see through them into infinity. Not many people seem comfortable with this practice, but if it is acceptable, it can lead to the mystery of infinity.
Looking backward: Instead of looking at objects, let them look at you. For example, while walking in nature, let the trees or flowers look at you. This way you do not project anything into your perceptions. Instead you open up to what there is, which may lead to an experience of the infinite.
Hearing
Hearing can also be a door to the infinite. For example, hearing the sound of a bell. As it fades, it may lead us into infinity. The same may happen with many different sounds we encounter in everyday life.
Singing or chanting or even humming can transport us into the infinite. For example, chanting a mantra can be powerful. But any sound has the potential to open the door to the infinite.
Listening to music can also open the door to the infinite.
Tasting
While eating, merge complexly with the food. While drinking, merge completely with the drink.
Smelling
Smelling such as smelling the fragrance of a flower or you favourite perfume can also open the door to the infinite.
Touching
Touch can also lead you into the infinite. For example, touch yourself or someone else like your lover and see what happens if you refrain from imposing any thought or language. It might open the door to the infinite. Touch any object such as a tree and the same might happen.
Feeling the touch of water in a shower or bath or while swimming can also lead to transcendence.
Thich Nhat Hanh recommends hugging meditation to deeply connect (Thich Nhat Hanh: Peace is Every Step, p. 85). Even a handshake may transform you if it is deeply felt. See Thich Nhat Hanh’s book for many other ways to integrate meditation into everyday life.
“Touching eyeballs like a feather” (A Shiva Meditation, explained in Osho: The Book of Secrets, p. 891,). Just close your eyes, touch them lightly with the palm of your hands and focus on the third eye. Thus, your thoughts will stop instantly. “You will be washed away completely…You will not feel that you are. You will feel simply the cosmos is… the entity that you have always been, the ego, will not be there” (ibid., p. 891). Focusing on the third eye helps to transcend the duality of our two eyes.
Extrasensory Perception (ESP)
In ESP such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition (beyond space and time) we experience non-local reality directly. Thus, we go beyond the limited separate self.
The Thinking Mind
The thinking mind is necessary and useful to orient ourselves in the manifest world of objects. However, it can get easily trapped in this world of objects. In fact, it creates these objects: thought coupled with language fragments the world into this and that. It creates duality such as the duality of good and bad, beautiful and ugly, desirable and undesirable, love and hate. One aim of meditation is to lead us beyond duality, to experience and be oneness, nonduality, to free us from the tyranny of the thinking mind that fragments the world. Nonetheless, the thinking mind may help us to integrate meditation into everyday life. It seems impossible. Yet a closer inspection of thought and language leads us to a more profound understanding.
A thought often appears very solid and persistent. But if we consider the whole lifespan of a thought this solidity and persistence softens or disappears. A thought arises out of nowhere, stays for some time and then disappears into nowhere as clouds appear and disappear in the sky. Furthermore, like clouds, thoughts have no sharp boundaries; they appear boundless. Upon closer inspection, the thinker of thoughts also appears boundless: there is no sharp boundary between the thinker and his or her environment; they are closely interconnected. For this reason, Buddhists refer to no-self, which means that there is no separate self. Reference to no-self is not a denial of the self or ego, it only places it in a more comprehensive perspective. Similarly, the recognition of the boundlessness of thoughts is not a denial of thoughts but emphasizes the openness, the non-solidity of thoughts and their impermanence, which leads to a vaster perspective that can be liberating because it frees us from the compulsive obsession with thoughts. Unfortunately, most people seem to be imprisoned in their thoughts most of the time, which creates much suffering.
Like thoughts, language, which is coupled with thinking, can also imprison us. However, a closer inspection of language reveals it as an abstraction from reality. Abstraction means selection. Thus, language represents only a selection of some features of reality, not reality itself. Reality itself remains unspeakable, unnameable, mysterious. Language cannot capture it. Therefore: “Whatever you might say something “is”, it is not” (Korzybski). What you might say, is only an abstraction (selection) from reality, not reality itself. Language can be compared with a map, and a map is not the territory, as Korzybski has emphasized. A map represents some aspects of the territory, but not the territory itself, which is much more than what can be represented in any map. For example, a map of Canada represents only some aspects of Canada, but not the whole intricate territory. The linguistic description of a sunset represents some aspects of it, but not all of it. Therefore, many people recognized that the territory of reality is beyond words. Words, although useful, are very limited. Yet so often we get imprisoned in words. Meditation can help to free us from this prison as it can help to liberate us from the tyranny of thoughts.
There are at least two ways to free us from the tyranny of thoughts. By witnessing them, we can create a distance and recognize that we are not our thoughts: we are only the witness of our thoughts (see the section on Mindfulness). An alternative to this witnessing approach, we find in the tantric approach, where we embrace our thoughts and emotions, and by doing so we recognize their boundlessness and impermanence which can lead to liberation. This approach is practiced, for example, in Mahamudra, one of the most advanced Tibetan meditation practices (see Reginald Ray: Mahamudra for the Modern World, 33 CDs, Sounds True). Mahamudra addresses also the klesas, which are called sticky thoughts and emotions such as anger, fear, paranoia that can be very deep-seated. The reader should be warned that although Mahamudra is a very powerful approach, when the meditator becomes overwhelmed by the sheer force of thoughts and emotions, he or she might have to revert to the witnessing approach.
One way to free yourself of the tyranny of thoughts and emotions is to ask yourself: “What is here right now if there is no problem to solve?” (Loch Kelly: Shift into Freedom, p. 28). “In this practice, you’ll discover that you can shift out of your mistaken identity in a moment… When you make this shift and discover awake awareness as the ground of Being, you’ll have fewer troubles and can more easily solve daily challenges” (ibid.).
As pointed out above, being aware that whatever you express through language is removed from reality because language represents an abstraction (selection) from reality. Thus, if you say: I am sad, or I am angry, or I am fearful, this is not what you really are. It is only an aspect of your reality. So, you would have to say: I am sad, etc., or I am angry, etc., or I am fearful, etc. But often we forget the etc. and become trapped in an unrealistic identification. Besides the etc, Korzybski developed other devices (“extensional devises”) to overcome the imprisonment in language (see also Kodish, S.P. and Kodish, B.I.: Drive yourself Sane, which is an excellent and easy to read exposition of Korzybski’s insight and approach).
Another way to transcend limitations of language is to experience words as sound, not as their meaning (see Osho: The Book of Secrets, pp. 349-357) or to focus on the gaps between words.
In general, move from the head (thinking and talking) to the heart (love and compassion) and to the belly (ground of being). For example, look at a flower or a person without comments by the thinking mind. Don’t say: This flower or person is beautiful or ugly or whatever. Simply look without interference of the thinking mind. Mind is an interpreter, which is fine, but limited. To free yourself from the limitation, just look (see also the section on Vision).
Focussing on the heart can invoke loving -kindness meditation (see below) and the tonglen practice explained above.
Focussing on the belly grounds us in reality.
Ultimately, we need an integration of head, heart, and belly, in other words, the recognition of form and emptiness (boundlessness), and that, as spelled out in the Heart Sutra, form is emptiness and emptiness is form (see, for example, Karl Brunnhölzl: The Heart Attack Sutra. A New Commentary on the Heart Sutra). In concrete situations of everyday life this means that any thought, emotion, or feeling (sensation) is empty (boundless), which leads to the recognition that “You are the Universe” (Chopra, D. and Kafatos, M.: You are the Universe. Discovering Your Cosmic Self and Why it Matters). This is the liberation of the little self (ego) and ends suffering. It has been said that the goal of meditation is to end suffering (or at least reduce It). Thus, whatever makes you suffer, be aware that it is empty (boundless). This way you are not identified with it. And this disidentification needs to be total. As long as it is only in the mind, it cannot completely end suffering.
Self-Inquiry
Self-inquiry may begin with the question: Who am I? It is important to realize that this question is a thought: I think who am I? Then we may ask: Who has this thought? Where does it come from? Again, this is another thought. Anything that can be put into words is a thought. To go beyond thoughts, we have to look deeply into the I, the source from which thoughts arise. This looking must be nonconceptual: thoughtless looking, just being in the mystery of life (for a detailed description of the process of self-inquiry see Angelo DiLullo. 2021. Awake, pp.378-402, 434-447). We can carry the awareness of just being into any situation of everyday life, but we have to watch out that we don’t think about being, which is alright, but does not lead us to the source beyond thought and language.
Light Meditation
Remember yourself as light, which means re-member light, experience yourself as light (see Osho: The Book of Secrets, p. 699). You can do this any time during the day, especially in trying situations light will transform you and liberate you. You will feel light and lightness.
Darkness Meditation
In most religions and spiritual traditions light triumphed over darkness. However, in the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) darkness is considered more profound than light: “the gateway to all understanding” (Stephen Mitchell’s translation), “the door of all mysteries” (Sabbadini’s translation). Light comes out of darkness, even in Genesis of the Bible. If you love darkness, you are unafraid of death, which has been symbolized as darkness. Hence in darkness meditation, the fear of death has to be dropped. One way to practice darkness meditation is as follows: Sit in total darkness with your eyes open. Thus, forms disappear and oneness can be experienced. In everyday life, you may close your eyes to experience darkness, and when you open your eyes you may carry the darkness with you. This way, you will feel relaxed, you will not become angry when someone insults you, you will not be overwhelmed by sexual desire, etc. (see Osho: The Book of Secrets, pp. 721-728).
Cosmic Meditation
Sit silently, dropping all boundaries. “Feel expanded, become all-inclusive in that feeling: the sun rises in you, the stars move within you… Every night when you go to sleep, go with this expanded consciousness…In the morning…get out of the bed as the universe. And in the day also, as many times as you can, remember it” (Osho: The Everyday Meditator, p. 95).
Compassion-Based Meditation
Having compassion directs our attention to the object of compassion such as a person in pain. This way we may transcend ego-centricity and the separation between I and the other may disappear. In his book Awake (p. 155), Angelo DiLullo calls it unconditional love.
Loving-Kindness Meditation
This meditation is related to compassion-based meditation. It involves focusing on loving-kindness toward oneself or others.
Natural Meditation
Natural meditation has no technique. In his book Awake (p. 143), Angelo DiLullo described it as follows: “Let go of all agendas. Don’t try to do anything or make anything happen. Don’t try to manage your experience. Don’t judge…” In other words, allow the spontaneity of life, but be aware of it.
Non-Meditation
Non-meditation is related to natural meditation. It is meditation without thinking that one is meditating. It removes the preoccupation with goals of meditation such as concentration, clarity, and equanimity that are worthwhile goals but may interfere with effortless being. But awareness is necessaty so that one does not get lost in daydreaming but remains in the present moment whatever it presents.
Just Be
Stop the search; “simply Keep Quiet, and make no effort!” (H. W. L. Poonja (Papaji). 2016. This. Prose and Poetry of Dancing Emptiness, p. 46). Resist nothing.
