You do not need special equipment to meditate.
You need somewhere to sit, a little time, and a willingness to return tomorrow.
That is enough to begin.
The physical setting around meditation can still matter. A familiar place, a workable sitting posture and a few simple routines can remove some of the small obstacles that make regular practice harder than it needs to be. Cushions, incense, bells and books may support those conditions, but none of them creates meditation. The practice remains the sitting itself.
This Guide is intended to help you establish those basic conditions and undertake your first sitting practice without making the process more complicated than it needs to be.
Begin with a place to sit
One of the most useful decisions you can make at the beginning is simply to decide where you will practise.
You do not need a meditation room. You do not even need a permanent meditation corner.
Years ago, while staying with friends near a monastery in Seattle, I wondered how they managed to meditate together every evening in a very small house. When it was time to sit, they dimmed the living-room lights, covered the television and brought their cushions out from beneath the furniture. A normal patch of living-room floor became their place of practice. When they finished, the room returned to ordinary use.
What mattered was not the room. It was that they returned to the same place and used it for the same purpose.
If possible, choose somewhere that is:
- available to you regularly;
- reasonably free from unnecessary interruption;
- large enough for you to sit comfortably;
- protected enough that weather will not regularly prevent practice.
It does not have to be silent. Quietness is not something a room can provide completely. Nor does the place need to be particularly beautiful. You are establishing somewhere to practise, not designing a meditation display.
A consistent place is useful because it removes a decision. When the time comes to sit, you already know where to go.
Build a stable physical foundation
I often use Mount Fuji as an image for the physical posture of zazen. The mountain has a broad, stable base and rises naturally from it. Clouds move across its peak without the mountain needing to chase them away.
Your sitting posture works in much the same way. First establish the base. Then allow the upper body to rise from it.
Traditional zazen is usually practised sitting cross-legged on the floor, but there is no virtue in forcing your body into a position it cannot reasonably maintain.
The aim is a posture that is stable, balanced and sustainable.
Depending on your body, that may mean:
- a simple cross-legged or Burmese posture;
- quarter lotus;
- half lotus;
- kneeling in seiza;
- using a meditation stool;
- or sitting upright on a chair.
Full lotus is not a requirement for meditation. Neither is half lotus. Your posture is a practical support for practice, not a demonstration of flexibility.
If you sit on the floor
Raise the hips with one or more firm cushions so that you can establish a stable base. Ideally the knees settle toward the floor, forming a broad triangle with your seat.
The cushion should be high enough to reduce unnecessary strain but firm enough that you are not continually balancing on it.
You do not need a purpose-made meditation cushion to discover what works. At home I have practised for years using ordinary sofa cushions with a rug beneath my knees. Familiarity and stability matter more than whether something was sold as meditation equipment.
Experiment until you find a workable arrangement, then give your body time to become familiar with it.
If sitting cross-legged is difficult
Kneeling, using a stool or sitting on a chair are all legitimate practical alternatives.
If using a chair, sit upright rather than reclining into the backrest if your body allows it. Place the feet securely on the floor and find a position in which the body is supported without collapsing.
The important point is to find a position in which you can actually practise.
Zazen is not an endurance contest. Ordinary discomfort can accompany an unfamiliar posture, particularly at first, but severe or injurious pain is not evidence of better meditation.
Let the spine rise from the base
Once the lower body is stable, allow the spine to rise naturally.
A useful image is to imagine a piece of string gently lifting the crown of your head. The shoulders then hang beneath it rather than being used to hold the body rigidly upright.
Do not push the chest forward or force the lower back into position. If you are holding yourself upright through muscular effort, tension will eventually become the main object of your attention.
Think of the posture as upright rather than stiff.
Hands and eyes
Allow the hands to rest together naturally in the lap. In traditional Zen practice one hand rests within the other, with the shoulders and arms relaxed.
The eyes are normally kept partly open and directed downward at approximately a 45-degree angle. Let the vision soften rather than fixing your attention on anything in front of you.
Keeping the eyes partly open is useful because meditation is not an attempt to withdraw from the world. Completely closing the eyes can also make daydreaming and sleepiness considerably easier.
You are not trying to block experience. You are learning not to be carried away by everything that enters it.
Your first sit: five minutes is enough
There is no need to begin with twenty or thirty minutes.
When teaching beginners I normally start with a five-minute sit. The immediate task is simply to become familiar with the posture.
For your first sit:
- Establish your legs or feet so that you have a stable base.
- Allow the spine to rise by gently drawing the head upright.
- Relax the shoulders and place the hands together in the lap.
- Angle the eyes downward and allow them to soften.
- Remain there for five minutes.
At this stage you do not need to achieve anything.
You may suddenly notice how noisy the room is. Your legs may feel unfamiliar. Your shoulders may tense. Five minutes may seem surprisingly long.
That is useful information. You are learning how your body actually behaves when asked to become still.
A few common posture problems
If the first few sits are uncomfortable, make practical adjustments rather than assuming meditation is simply not for you.
- Tension across the shoulders: check whether you are lifting or holding them. Let them hang naturally beneath the upright head.
- A sore neck: check whether the head is projecting forward. Bring it gently back over the spine.
- Numb feet or legs: change the way the legs cross and check the position of the cushion. Avoid deliberately maintaining a position that is restricting circulation.
- Knees held high: try increasing the height beneath the hips rather than forcing the knees downward.
- Lower-back tension: make sure you are not using the back and abdominal muscles to hold yourself rigidly upright.
Even experienced practitioners settle their physical posture when they first sit down. Finding the body again is part of beginning each period of zazen.
Then bring attention to the breath
Once you can sit reasonably comfortably, begin to work with the breath.
The method I teach beginners is susokukan, or breath counting.
The breath is particularly useful because it does not need to be invented. It has been there from the first moment of your life and continues whether or not you pay attention to it.
Do not force the breath to become slower or deeper. Do not try to produce a special meditation breath.
Let the breath breathe.
Counting the breath
Place your attention on the natural movement of breathing.
As each exhalation begins, silently count:
One.
With the next exhalation:
Two.
Continue until ten, then return to one.
The counting is not there to make the practice complicated. It gives the mind one simple task and makes distraction easier to recognise.
When you become distracted
At some point you will realise that you are no longer counting the breath.
You may be planning dinner, replaying a conversation or wondering whether the noise outside is going to stop. Sometimes you may have followed a train of thought for quite a while before noticing.
When you notice, simply return to one.
Do not turn the distraction into another problem by becoming annoyed with yourself.
The recognition that you have wandered and the act of returning are part of the practice.
Many beginners are surprised by how active their minds appear once they start meditating. Meditation has not suddenly created all those thoughts. Becoming still has simply made them easier to notice.
Bring the physical and mental posture together
Once the basic posture and breath counting make sense separately, practise them together:
- Establish a stable base.
- Allow the head and spine to become upright.
- Relax the shoulders and settle the hands.
- Let the eyes rest downward.
- Allow the breath to move naturally.
- Count each exhalation silently from one to ten.
- When attention wanders, return to one.
Sit for five minutes.
Then do it again tomorrow.
Do not rush the sitting time
Consistency matters more than beginning with long periods of meditation.
In the courses from which A Guided Course in Zen Meditation developed, beginners commonly started at five minutes and gradually worked toward twenty minutes over a number of weeks.
That is a much more useful approach than forcing yourself through a long first session and making tomorrow’s sit something to dread.
If you eventually sit for longer periods, give the body reasonable opportunities to move. Even intensive monastery practice is broken by periods in which the legs can be stretched and by walking meditation.
Practice requires determination, but determination and unnecessary punishment are not the same thing.
Be patient
You have spent your entire life allowing the body and mind to behave in familiar ways. Do not expect them to immediately become still because you have decided to meditate.
Your posture will develop.
Your familiarity with the breath will develop.
Your ability to notice distraction will develop.
Practice develops through returning to it.
What equipment do you actually need?
Very little.
To begin today you need:
- A place: somewhere you can sit for a few minutes.
- A workable posture: on the floor, a cushion, stool or chair.
- Time: five minutes is enough to begin.
- A practice: settle the body, attend to the breath and return when distracted.
- Continuity: come back and sit again.
Everything beyond that is optional.
Where physical objects can help
Optional does not mean useless.
Repeated practice is affected by very ordinary things. If your sitting position is uncomfortable, you are less likely to return to it. If you have to rearrange half the house each evening, sitting becomes easier to postpone. If there is no clear transition between a busy day and practice, you may find yourself carrying that momentum straight onto the cushion.
Simple objects and routines can reduce some of this friction.
Cushions and supports
A suitable cushion, folded blanket or stool can help establish a stable sitting posture. Its value is entirely practical: it supports the body so that less attention needs to be spent continually correcting it.
Incense
Incense has long accompanied Buddhist and contemplative practice, but burning incense is not necessary in order to meditate.
At home its simplest function may be to mark a transition. Lighting incense can become a small, repeatable action that says: the activities that came before are finished; now I sit.
Over time the familiar scent may also become part of a consistent practice environment.
You can read more about incense in the Guides section.
Bells
In a meditation hall, bells provide clear signals for people practising together. At home they can perform the same modest function: marking the beginning and end of a period of sitting without requiring repeated attention to a clock.
The bell does not make the sitting more authentic. It is simply a useful signal.
You can read more about using bells in the Guides section.
Books and instruction
Written guidance can be particularly useful at the beginning because questions arise quickly: How should I sit? What do I do with my hands? Am I supposed to control my breathing? What do I do when my mind will not stop thinking?
A good guide should help resolve those questions and then send you back to practice.
This article draws from the opening instruction in my book A Guided Course in Zen Meditation, which develops the posture, breath-counting practice and subsequent stages of zazen in considerably greater depth.
If you prefer a prepared starting set
Nothing needs to be purchased in order to undertake the practice described in this Guide.
For people who would nevertheless prefer a simple prepared practice setting, the Way of Sitting Beginner’s Pack brings together:
- a signed copy of A Guided Course in Zen Meditation;
- boxed Sandalwood incense;
- Osmanthus incense;
- Blue Cloud incense;
- and an incense burner selected by you.
The purpose of the pack is not to supply “everything you need to meditate”. You already have what you need to begin.
It simply removes the uncertainty of selecting a few compatible practical supports separately.
Begin where you are
Preparation can become another way of postponing practice.
You do not need the perfect room.
You do not need the perfect cushion.
You do not need to become flexible enough for the lotus posture.
You do not need to feel calm before sitting down.
Find a place.
Establish a stable posture.
Give yourself five minutes.
Attend to one breath, then the next.
When the mind wanders, return.
Tomorrow, sit again.
That is enough to begin.
This Guide draws on the practical instruction in “How to Sit Zazen”, the opening chapter of Venerable Daiju Zenji’s
A Guided Course in Zen Meditation.