“Stage Zero” - the importance of preparation
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
With any meditation practice, it’s important to do a certain amount of preparation in order to help things go well. But all too often, this preparation is seen as an optional extra and is not done thoroughly, or at all. That’s a bad idea.
Imagine you’re baking a cake, and you want it fast. You want results. You want to get straight to the eating stage with as little time spent on fussing around with ingredients as possible. So you throw some flour and eggs and sugar into a cake tin (Hey! Who’s got time for measuring!) and slam it in the oven. Oh, the gas isn’t lit. Okay, let’s just turn it up full now so that it cooks faster. Yum! Looking forward to your cake? I thought not.
If you want to get certain results (whether a delicious cake or a calmer, clearer mind) you have to set up the right conditions for that to happen. This is an important Buddhist principle called “conditionality,” which states, in part, that if you want x, you have to provide the conditions that allow x to arise. There are no short cuts.
The preparation that we do in meditation is the stage of setting up our postures, deepening our awareness of our bodies, and relaxing as deeply as we can. This preparation is essential if we want to provide the conditions for the arising of a calmer, clearer, less stressed, more peaceful mind.
I call this preparation “Stage Zero” to emphasize that it’s not an optional extra. Setting up the right conditions for your meditation practice to go well is an essential and integral part of your meditation practice.
In a way it would be much better if we called Stage Zero “Stage One” instead. That way there would be less of a tendency to think that you can drop the preparation and just plunge into the practice. Unfortunately, that would be rather confusing, since the stage of counting after the out breath is universally known as Stage One.
Comments
Comment from Jeff308
Time: March 17, 2007, 12:45 pm
I am in Atlanta, Ga. And I am a beginner. Can you suggest any individuals or centers in the Atlanta area?
Comment from Bodhipaksa
Time: May 28, 2007, 9:01 am
A quick search of Google showed that many kinds of Buddhist meditation are available in Atlanta. I’d suggest finding an Insight meditation or Zen group, but it all depends on what kind of meditation most interests you. There’s an online meditation meetup group that you may find helpful.
Comment from Dawna
Time: June 19, 2008, 4:27 pm
I literally make cake that way. :P
Comment from Luca
Time: August 8, 2008, 5:50 am
Hello there,
I am an unexperienced beginner who is using your (now maybe quite old, but fantastic) book “Wildmind” for introduction to meditation. On page 65, you made reference to an AudioFile (mob_0) which offered guidance for a simple form (stage 0) of the Mindfulness of Breathing.
I could not find it on the site, though. Is there any way I can get it? I will understand if it has been permanently removed.
Thank you anyway for your wonderful books and spectacular site! :)
Luca
Comment from Bodhipaksa
Time: August 8, 2008, 12:52 pm
Hi Luca,
I thought we’d put up redirects to all the new locations, but that was one we missed when we redesigned the site. The new location is http://www.wildmind.org/posture/bodyawareness.
And many thanks for the kind comments on the book and the site.
With metta,
Bodhipaksa
Write a comment