Set Your Meditation on Fire

Guest Contributor Lauren Benjamin

Invariably, when I tell someone that I’m going to do a silent, solitary, meditation retreat, their first reaction is, “I could never do that.”  In our society, the idea of going without our cell phone, computer, TV or contact with anyone over an extended period of time can seem intimidating.  I explain to people that the meditation retreat simply means being alone with your own mind.  Then they become a bit intrigued and ask, “Why do you do it?”  Good question. The goal of any spiritual practice, such as meditating, is to end suffering for yourself and the world.  I believe that anyone who has an interest in meditating – whether spiritual or otherwise – has some form of this goal in mind.  But the practice of meditation can be difficult. You can do it for many years without making much headway. An amazing way to make some progress in your practice is to bok jinpa your meditation – set it on fire. 

Find a Teacher
Before you can bok jinpa your meditation, you need to know what to meditate on during retreat. If you’ve been meditating, you’ve hopefully received guidance from someone who has more experience than you – perhaps even from a formal teacher. The first advice about what to meditate on during retreat is, ask your teacher. If you don’t have a person like this in your life, find one. Retreats can be very fruitful, even profound, but they can also be daunting. If you want the bok jinpa effect, you need guidance, which will provide the comforting realization that you’re actually not alone. The words and direction of your teacher will help you meet whatever challenges might come up while on retreat.

The Retreat
In general, for retreats longer than a day or so, do three or four meditation sessions per day. Depending on your capability, each meditation session should last between 20 minutes to an hour. For what to do in-between meditation sessions, please refer to the article: Six Strategies to Make the Most of Your Downtime in Retreat.

As to the meditation itself, begin your session with a series of preliminaries to quiet and focus your mind. Try this excellent guided meditation on the preliminaries by Cliff Spencer, just click the play button below or you can download the file here.

Then move to the main topic.  There are countless topics to choose from, but if you want to bok jinpa your meditations, don’t let your mind be distracted by too many. Concentrate on no more than two topics during your retreat, and only one topic per session. Two of the most rewarding meditation subjects are generating compassion and what, in Buddhist practice, is called emptiness – the true nature of reality.

While it might be clear that closing ourselves up in a room and meditating on generating compassion might have a positive effect on our state of mind, it might seem silly to suggest that it would have a beneficial effect on the world.  This is why we need to understand emptiness and make an effort to meditate on how the world is really working.

Please enjoy the following bok jinpa mediation by clicking the play button below. Or you can download the file here.

Lauren Benjamin has been studying Tibetan Buddhism since 2000 through teachings principally by Venerable Sumati Marut, Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally.  She does regular long-term retreats and teaches meditation and Buddhism studies at Mahasukha Center in Los Angeles.