Adopt altruism as a ‘selfish’ motivation, recognizing that genuinely helping others and contributing to their well-being is a powerful and reliable path to your own happiness and fulfillment, as the Dalai Lama suggests.
Actively engage in training your mind to move away from unhelpful patterns like greed, hatred, and confusion, and towards beneficial qualities such as happiness, calm, patience, generosity, and compassion for greater inner peace.
Engage in actual acts of kindness and compassion in your daily life, as meditation alone is not sufficient to become a better person; it is a helpful tool that supports and enables real-world kind behavior.
When facing overwhelming fear or grief, actively invoke and cultivate compassion through prayer, visualization, or seeking its energy, as it is a powerful means to endure and purify intense emotional states.
Cultivate happiness and love in your mind to naturally enhance concentration, rather than forcing focus through strenuous effort, because a happy mind naturally collects itself and settles more easily.
Refrain from a ‘bearing down’ or forceful approach in your meditation practice, as this can lead to suffering and agitation rather than genuine calm and concentration.
View personal trauma and past experiences as ‘just a story’ or ‘one chapter,’ understanding that your identity is more expansive than your suffering and that these experiences are a constellation of memory and emotion.
Recognize that difficult experiences, metaphorically referred to as ‘mud,’ are essential for growth and transformation, as ’no mud, no lotus’ implies that challenges are necessary for profound development.
Employ meditation as a ‘microscope’ to look beyond the surface level of your stories and experiences, penetrating deeper to see them as transient constellations of memory and emotion rather than solid, fixed realities.
If meditation is personally beneficial and showing positive effects in your own mind, continue practicing it regardless of external scientific debates, as your direct experience is the ultimate measure of its value for you.
If you encounter profound psychological difficulties during intensive meditation that exceed the available support, seek external help beyond traditional meditation practices to address underlying trauma and fundamental issues.
Use meditation as one tool among several to improve focus, acknowledging that while it can help rewire the brain for attention regulation, it is not a miraculous standalone cure.
Enhance your focus by actively bringing interest, curiosity, and investigation to whatever you are doing or experiencing, as this mental factor can be harnessed to your benefit.
If your job is ‘dead boring’ and causes unhappiness, investigate the possibility of safely switching careers to find more fulfilling work, while ensuring family financial stability remains the top priority.
Approach meditation as a process of ‘purification’ to clear away mental delusions and obscurations, which helps reveal your innate enlightened nature.
If experiencing disassociation or instability from intense meditation, consider grounding practices such as eating solid foods or engaging in physical activities like running to restore a sense of solidity and connection to the body.
Be aware that meditation practice can lead to plateaus where progress feels stalled, indicating a need to explore deeper layers of purification or different approaches to continue growing.
Actively work to identify and break negative generational patterns of behavior or belief systems that have been passed down in your family, contributing to your own and future generations’ well-being.
Explore the integration of ancient medicine practices (such as Amazonian shamanism) with Buddhist wisdom to create a holistic path for healing, understanding, and personal development.
Use traditional psychotherapy to gain understanding of your trauma and patterns, but recognize that meditation and spiritual practices may be necessary for deeper liberation from suffering.
Cultivate the intention of Bodhicitta daily, dedicating your moments, life, and day to the benefit of others, as this can be a profound source of happiness and purpose.
Consult the book ‘Focus’ by Daniel Goleman to glean actionable advice and insights on improving concentration and attention.