During Buddha's time, Buddha did not teach anything about religion. He did not mean to create one kind of sect or group. He just focused on the realistic method to help bring people away from deepening their suffering. It is later people that try to label what Buddha has taught as "ISM". For example, people come to call as "Buddh+ISM". In fact, there is not 'ISM' in his teaching.
He did not claim to create any kind of religion, neither a sectarian group. What he wants is just to share lessons that he believes very important for many lives. And among those many lessons Buddha did even warn that we do not need to believe him until we have found the reason to believe it. Only thing he wants to keep in mind is Vipassana Meditation.
This meditation, regardless of your backgroun, status, religion, and nationality, applies to all. You do not need to change your status, nationality and religion so that you can practice meditation. You can stay who you are. There is no effect on your outcome. There is no punishment from Buddha; there is no discriminate and there is no degradation of your value. You can remain yourself.
But what Buddha highly recommend is because of its outcome. It gives right now if you can do it properly. In fact, there few steps to reach the most stable one but in here I will just show the basic way to do meditation.
It is notetworthy to remember that this article is not for those have never tried meditation. It is for those who used to get some guidance from the meditation coach already. For very new learners, it is highly recommended to just read and try to get the meaning of it. And if you really want to give yourself a trial, please find meditation center and coach to guide you. There are plenty of meditation center all around world. You can find it in France, India, Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Laos and so on. Most of those center are giving meditation lessons for free of charge.
So, as I told you at the beginning of the article meditation has been the subject for popularity and useful since more than 2500 years ago but it was ignored by people in the last one thousand year. Until the year 1960s onward, we can see the new movement comes to give priority and value to meditation. Especially, many people in the West started to learn Meditation in time of depression and headache. They found that meditation is much effective than medicine. That's why meditation has become again the most refer to object.
Hence, how to do very basic meditation? At the very first, we should know why Meditation. Meditation is a method to calm our mind down, to be able to control our mind and to accept the reality that happens through mind. We know that human being's mind is like monkey. They will run to this and that direction, sometimes jump and other times walk, or run, etc. They can't stay in one place longer one minute. The same thing applies to our min. Have you ever noticed how many thoughts we produced within one second, minumte? It is a lot.
The fast movement of thinking can bring us good and bad outcome, but most bad. As such, be able to control our min will reduce the probability of getting stress, going crazy or deepression. Also, thing in this world is too big to learn and controll. We can control nothing except your mind. For most people, they rather thought that mind is the most difficult object to observe ever. Only few say yes they can regulate their mind transaction. After all we get our mind stabilized, balance and concentrated. It is through meditation.
So to do basic meditation, we should follow steps as below:
1). Find a proper and more quiet place
2). Get yourself be proper seated by crossing your right leg over the left and the same with your hand.
3). Close your eyes
4). Begin to follow up your breathing and make a notice if it comes out you know it, and comes in you also know. And with long or short breathing you also know.
5). Do not regulate your breathing. Let it as natural.
6). Keep your role as only observer and nothing else.
7). Do not reaction to some suffering, pain that may arise from sitting or closing longer.
It is highly recommended to do this kind of meditation two times a day. One in the morning and one before going to sleep and each should be minimally 5 minute. Keep doing this meditation at least help you to self-renewal.