Which type of meditation is easiest to learn as a beginner and why, what are the main differences: Loving-kindness meditation, progressive relaxation, mindfulness meditation, breath awareness meditation, kundalini, Zen, or Transcendental Meditation?

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Keep it simple. Don’t introduce unnecessary clutter. Methods are clutter. There is only you, and your mind. You have to get to know your mind. How do you do this? By watching it of course! How can you understand the mind’s behavior if you don’t pay attention to it?

Your mind is like a curious two year old. Blink and it’s gone, off to explore somewhere it knows it really shouldn’t be. You have to keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t wander off into traffic.

So do that. Sit, close your eyes, and watch your mind. Watch it get bored, watch it bring up that TV show you watched last night. Watch it wonder whether Harry really deserved that slap that Sally gave him. Watch…

Oh shoot, you forgot you were supposed to be watching and your mind wandered off! How long were you asleep for, while sitting there when you were supposed to be watching? Fifteen seconds? A whole minute? It’s interesting isn’t it? This process of watching, then forgetting you’re supposed to be watching.

Watch your mind become interested in something, then watch the interest slowly subside. Watch how the interest causes emotion to bubble up, watch twinges of anger and fear color your thought.

It’s really an amazing thing, this mind, right? You never knew what depth, how something you live with every day, that forms the core of your existence, can be this weird and fascinating. Oh crap, I was supposed to be watching!

Man this sucks! Why won’t my mind just remember and stay put! Why does it have to wander all over the place all the time? Emotion wells up. You can’t bear to be sitting there any more.

So get up. And try to remember to do it again tomorrow. Have a little faith. Meditation is like lifting weights or learning an instrument. You get better with practice.

Eventually you’ll get to a point where sitting down and watching the mind isn’t as difficult. You may also not find it interesting. This is when you might introduce a technique. In the beginning, just let it be simple. You. Watching your mind.

It really doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that. And even the complicated techniques are, in the end, just different variations on the same basic form.