Opening to things as they are is what it really means to be still, to be quiet, to be in a state of meditation. When you no longer resist reality as it is, you could say that you are in a constant state of meditation. We’re not just talking about a moment of contemplation or peace, but rather a way of changing our relationship with life

The practice is this: make a quiet, mental one-word note of whatever you experience in each moment. Try to stay with the sensations of breathing, which may occur in many places, noting these quickly as “rising” (as many times as the sensations of the breath rising are experienced) and then “falling” in the same way. These are the fundamental insigh

Keep your focus loose, with just enough attention to hold the bare awareness of the object you’re looking at. Don’t try to make anything happen or try to force your mind to relax. Simply think, Okay, whatever happens, happens. This is meditation. This is what I’m doing. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that.

Like most people, I brought so much judgment to my experience. I believed that thoughts of anger, anxiety, fear, and so on that came and went throughout the day were bad or counterproductive—or at the very least inconsistent with natural peace! The teachings of the Buddha—and the lesson inherent in this exercise in non-meditation—is that if we allo