Sitting in Silence

The testing we did on the app yielded us some very useful feedback. After reading the comments from our six beta-testers, I decided the app needs to more clearly express its point of view.

My original intent was to create an app that insisted people mantra meditate for 20 minutes at a time, and in silence.

In an effort to gain wider appeal, Chutika and I agreed to make the timer adjustable, but relaxing music and guided meditation keep the mind on the surface of awareness, which is inconsistent with the experience I am promoting.

I had originally tried to keep the instructional text in the app to a minimum, but what I settled on wasn't enough. People didn't really understand the app's point of view.

So for the last few days I have been condensing the instructions from my blog, emphasizing the value of 20 minute sessions and meditating in silence. I have also asked Chutika to set the timer at 20 minutes.

Not long after I learned Transcendental Meditation, I realized how TM is different than the method of Zen meditation I learned in the 1990s. Both are done in silence, but the practice of zazen involves focusing on the breath with eyes open. This makes it more difficult to achieve the transcendent brainwave states of higher consciousness. A friend once explained that Zen meditation is a tool for living in this world. The transcendent states are not unattainable, but they are harder to achieve consistently.

In contrast, when I do TM, I focus on a 'meaningless' word with my eyes closed. Without something to anchor me in this world, it is easier to transcend time and space in just 20 minutes. It is recommended by TM teachers that one should never meditate more than twice a day, unlike Zen monks who sit for hours at a time.

Using either method, meditating for 5 or 10 minutes at a time just isn't very useful. The brain needs time to 'power down' to the more powerful brainwave states, and 20 minutes seems to be a magic number. As Deepak Chopra says, 'After twenty minutes, something wonderful happens.'

Most studies on the effects of meditation are done on subjects who meditate for 15 to 30 minutes at a time. The subjects generally show measurable physical and functional changes in the brain if they practice daily, and regularly achieving transcendent brainwave states is the key factor in those changes.

If you think sitting in absolute silence for 20 minutes is a waste of time, and doing it twice a day is twice the waste, give me a chance to convince you otherwise.