FROM MEDITATOR.ORG

'Posture'

Meditation is as old as humans maybe even older.
It enables one to commune with all that one is, was and will be. Such
a claim may defy logic but then again meditation transcends mind and
defies logic.
In meditation the mind rests within its origin, the primordial and
uncreated. Meditation is indescribable but could be compared to a
journey to the source of one’s being. It enables one to become more
aware.

One may give to oneself a command such as: “be silent and know who
you are”.
Countless meditation techniques use a ‘meditation object’ to focus
on. These could be: a phrase, a mantra, a gesture or movement, a
symbol, an external object, the breath, the heartbeat, space, void
...to list but a few such objects. Such devices help to focus the
attention. This is the initial stage to any meditation: gathering
one’s attention.
However the real object of awareness is awareness itself and when
this mirroring happens one simply ceases to be all that one usually
believes that one is. If that condition is maintained with practice
over time Knowledge arises.

There are many pitfalls on this path and so one should try to check
one’s practice regularly with an experienced meditator or teacher. He
or she will check that your body posture is good and that you are
following the instructions of your meditation.

Meditation has been taught within the context of living oral
traditions responsible for passing on Knowledge from one generation
to the next. This oral aspect of the meditation tradition can never
be imparted to someone by some lifeless book or object no matter how
good or beautiful that is.
Having said this there is nothing wrong with trying to go it alone until a teacher appears. Afterall who taught the Buddha?

Meditation is a practice which need not be allied to any particular
religious tradition, although many choose to practice it within some
religious framework.
Meditation is not thinking.
It is a natural activity which happens when we ‘switch off’
our mundane conditioned mode of operation and may find ourselves
simply gazing at the flames of a fire or listening to the crashing of
waves on the sea shore, or sense the rustling of the leaves in the
trees, or feel the rising and fall of our breathing.

With practice one succeeds in being in the present instead of
daydreaming one self in the past or the future. Meditating is so
natural that one may wonder how one ever forgot how to do it in the
first place.

Simple does not mean simplistic. Rather than trying to give quick
answers to everything, as our habitual mind likes to do, at the root
of the desire to meditate there is the kernel of a desire to Know
more. It begins to grow when one takes an earnest and honest step
towards confronting the Unknown within oneself by doing one's
meditation practice.