Mind Training Meditation Techniques for Beginners
As a green hand practitioner, one may find it so hard to rest the mind in meditation—“Why does my mind always wander around here and there?” “Why can’t I take control of my mind?” This is because the three techniques of preliminary training—vigilance, mindfulness and conscientiousness—are missing, which actually are the best ways to introduce beginners to meditation.
It is not easy to rest our mind when we first approach meditation. We’d better train the mind first. To train the mind, three techniques are required—vigilance, mindfulness, and conscientiousness.
Before applying these three methods, we would find that our mind fluctuates quite easily, just like a naughty monkey or a wild horse, it cannot rest for even one instant. At first, we try to rest the mind, but after a while, it may be wandering everywhere. The mind is very easily distracted. Through these three techniques, it can be tamed gradually, and then it would be easy for us to focus the mind on any object.
For the first one, vigilance, it means continually checking the status of our body, speech and mind. Just as we do several tasks at the same time at work, we can simultaneously check the status of our three doors in daily actions:
What my mind is thinking of?
What I am talking about?
And what my body is doing?
That is just like a soldier who is monitoring the area within his duty, or like a horse’s owner checking on his horses in the stables. This is the technique of vigilance, which is very crucial in meditation.
The second method is mindfulness. It’s not enough for us to just be aware of the status of the three doors. We also need to apply the antidotes from our teachers, parents or the elders to deal with these negative states. Just like when finding the horse running away, we need to tie it to a fixed place with a rein.
The third one is called conscientiousness. It means that after having been aware that our three doors need some adoption of antidote, we need to be meticulous to prevent our mind from going astray and keep it staying in the correct state. This is called conscientiousness.
Indeed, these three methods are the best meditation techniques for new beginners.
