Meditation and the Internet
Q: "I'm traveling frequently and can't attend a class in meditation. Can I learn meditation through the Internet?"

A: Imagine the scene: a meditator turns on their computer and prints out a page of instructions from a web-site. Sitting at their accustomed time in the morning, they follow the new instructions step-by-step. Then they make some notes of their experience. Later, perhaps at work, they type out an email to their meditation teacher about their morning's experiences and any questions they have about the method or what's happening to them. In the evening they check the web-site again and read their message, the messages from their fellow students, and all the replies to these messages from the teacher. Can a person learn meditation this way, actually extending their range of experience, or is this just more cyberspace entertainment?

Learning to meditate is similar to learning to swim. It's about that hard, and it has similar, well-known moments of anxiety. Puting your head under water has the same degree of difficulty as closing your eyes. Breath control is needed in both meditation and swimming. Floating is like the experience of holding your breath. Being under the surface of the water brings up fears similar to those producd by breathing all the way out. But one doesn't learn to swim by reading, so how can one expect to learn meditation over the Internet?

As I put it in my book, "Living from the Heart," "Meditation can't be taught, but it can be caught." How could someone who believes that, write a book about meditation or offer meditation training over the Internet? While I do believe that one has to "catch" the meditation state from one who is in it, experience has convinced me that it can be caught through the teacher's words, if they are directed personally. General, public statements don't seem to be sufficient, even though they can be very encouraging and helpful. But a message specifically directed to a person's question or experience can carry the meditative quality and deliver it to the addressee.

 There are many misconceptions about meditation, and they cause questioning and doubt at that point in the discovery process where one is most vulnerable. Depending on your type, you might feel that you can never learn to meditate or that you are already familiar with meditation and employ it often, although it's likely that neither is true. There is a balance in meditation between letting go and concentrating, and your psychological pattern will cause you to err on one side of this balance or the other. There are stages in meditation, and you need to change your breath rhythm, visualization, attitude and self-concept at each stage. The consequence of getting any of these things wrong can range from boredom to fear. This is why few people meditate regularly although many have tried it.

When you describe your experience and your resulting condition and then ask a question, you allow the teacher to sift through volumes of information and instructions about meditation to find exactly the advice you need at the moment. Just as it's helpful to have your swimming teacher tell you to practice floating before you try stroking, it's helpful to be told that attaining a condition of peaceful quiet is not a prerequisite for meditation but an outcome. The aches and pains you get while meditating have meaning and valuable messages; you should be guided to use them. If you're blanking out in meditation, unable to recall what happened, you're sleeping in unconsciousness rather than meditating in heightened consciousness.

With individual, personal attention from the teacher, you can learn to meditate. When the teacher is present in person, non-verbal clues abound and the process is easy. If a teacher is not present but you can exchange personally about your actual sensations in meditation, you can still catch the feeling of it and navigate around the paralyzing difficulties to reach a state of real healing and deep insight that will lift your life in joy and peace.

By Puran Bair, author of "Living from the Heart" (Random House, 1998)
(c) 1999 by The Institute for Applied Meditation, Inc.
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