Favorite Meditation Techniques
Favorite Meditation Techniques
Please read Fukanzazengi by Eihei Dōgen (Link) for explanation from the master himself. My knowledge comes from Moon in a Dewdrop by Eihei Dōgen (Link).
Quotes that especially resonate with my about zazen (taked from pages 29-30 from Moon in a Dewdrop):
"Zazen is not thinking of good, not thinking of bad. It is not conscious endeavor. It is not introspection"
"Do not desire to become a buddha"
"Be moderate in eating and drinking. Be mindful of the passing of time..."
"...engage yourself in zazen as though saving your head from fire"
"Sit solidly in samadhi [concentration] and think non-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Nonthinking. This is the art of zazen." (Hishiryō)
"Zazen is not learning to do concentration. It is the dharma gate of great ease and joy. It is undefiled practice-enlightenment."
Other Notes on zazen:
Za means 'sitting,' zen means 'meditation'
Zen originated from the Chinese Chán, which originated from the Sanskrit Dhyāna
I find zazen to be an especially difficult practice for me. My mind is often running in so many directions that it can be difficult to not latch onto a thought or idea and cling to it; keeping my head in the fire. I will not offer or suggest any sort of mastery, but instead provide a few comments as to why this type of practice resonates with me.
First of all, the goal is to have no goals: Do not try to think (Hishiryō), do not try to become the buddha, and do not worry about improving the self. Too often in life we are bogged down by our goals because our goals are often illusions we create that do not fit out reality. When our reality does not conform to this illusion we have created of the future, we are often left disappointed, stressed, ashamed, or angry because we did not accurately predict the future based on the illusions that molded that future. Instead, we must remember that our goals are often a fantasy and that to be present, to be in true zazen, is to live with joy because our present illusions are not tormenting us now and into the future. In the end, the practice itself is the act of enlightenment; we are not striving for enlightenment, we are experiencing it.
Second, I particularly enjoy the modest moderation of eating, drinking, thought, and action. The goal of zazen, from my view, is to have our body and practice reflect that of our beliefs; if our beliefs are modest, grounded in detachment, then our body can detach itself from the necessity to move.
Finally, in simply sitting (Shikantaza), we are engaging in one of the most powerful acts of freedom we can express on our environment. In sitting, we are communicating to our stressors, to our attachments, to our bodies, and to our environment that we are in control and that we are not animals chasing after the next impulse or attachment. Instead, sitting is freedom precisely because in doing nothing, we are doing something. That is why we call it doing nothing, because it is, in fact, a dismissal of the external stimuli and attachments that decide for us too much of what is valued, good, or useful. Instead, we are deciding for ourselves what should be valued, what has virtue and good, and what is useful.
When I don’t know where to start, I always begin with śūnyatā, or emptiness. My Meditation and Malas page includes mantras and rituals to frame the mind when it's especially busy, but what if I want something simpler? What if I want something closer to zazen, to the teachings of Soto Zen and Dōgen? What if I need to empty the bowl of my mind before I can truly sit?
The image of the empty bowl is my favorite meditative symbol. When I sit in meditation, I picture a bowl (my bowl) that represents my being, my consciousness, my beliefs. It’s not just any abstract vessel either. It’s the literal bowl (one of those Tibetan bell bowls) I bought years ago at a Buddhist market in San Diego. That bowl now carries a crack, the result of my sons smashing it with all their might. That little fracture (an embodiment of wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic of imperfection) makes the bowl even more precious to me.
In that bowl, I imagine a liquid (sometimes cloudy, sometimes vibrant) that represents my thoughts, emotions, memories, and identity at that moment. I remind myself that nothing in the bowl is truly mine. Every molecule of my being, every idea, every word, every belief, was gifted to me and borrowed from the world around me. My bowl was filled by language, by culture, by biology, by lineage, by chance. Every part of me is entangled with causes and conditions beyond my control.
I often return to a mantra inspired by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche: "Everything is impermanent. This will end. I will die and be a corpse someday." To keep it closer to my breath, I’ve simplified it: How quickly it all fades.
This reminds me: how quickly anxiety dissolves into calm. How quickly this body will decay. How quickly life has already passed.
So I pour it out. I empty the bowl. I let go of what I’m holding.
Then I sit in the ma of the moment. Here, ma refers both to the ma in Om mani padme hum and the Miyazaki ma, the Japanese concept of stillness and space. It literally means “gap” or “pause,” and I’ve written more on it in my Meditation and Malas section.
In this quiet space, I sit like an empty bowl.
I think, unthinking. I practice shikantaza ((just sitting). The bowl always refills, of course. It must. Like a vessel left in the rain, it begins to collect again. So I pour it out again, gently, silently, when the thought is ready to pass.
A full bowl eventually becomes stagnant. Even the purest water, if left sitting too long, breeds bacteria. Good food eventually rots. When we cling too tightly to what's in our bowl (whether it’s comforting or poisonous) we block ourselves from receiving something new, fresh, and nourishing. This is attachment, and attachment leads to suffering.
Violence, greed, anger, avarice, these do not arise from a clean, empty bowl. They arise from refusal to empty, from fear that we are nothing without our contents. But śūnyatā doesn’t mean nothingness in the nihilistic sense. Instead, it means interbeing, the lack of fixed, permanent self. In other words, the bowl is still a bowl even when it’s empty and I am still myself, even if I am still and unthinking.
In psychology, we see this too: people cling to abusive cycles, addictions, self-loathing. They do not cling because they love them, but because they’ve attached identity to them. They fear that if they pour out their suffering, they’ll pour out who they are.
Imagine two people sitting across from each other, each with a bowl in front of them. At first, they eat quietly (mindfully, even) from their own bowl. But then, one reaches over and drops poison into the other’s. The second pauses, looks down, and rather than emptying the bowl reaches across and poisons the first in return. A bitter exchange begins. Sip by sip, drop by drop, they continue this ritual.
Spite for spite. Fear for fear. Rage for memory. Poison for poison.
Time passes. The contents of both bowls grow darker, heavier, more bitter. Eventually, neither can remember what was originally in their own bowl, only that it no longer nourishes them. The poison spreads: to the spoons, to their lips, to the space between them.
Still, they refuse to pour it out.
They clutch their bowls with conviction, even as their bodies begin to decay. “They need to remember why I poisoned them,” one says. “They need to taste what I tasted,” the other replies. Neither speaks in forgiveness. Both speak in mirrored pain.
Day after day, the cycle repeats. Though the bowls have not grown in size or weight, they feel unbearably heavy now. In fact, they are so heavy neither can lift their own. “You did this to us,” one cries. “We had to,” the other responds. “It was our food to begin with.” And so they continue: poisoning, decaying, and arguing. Until one destroys the other. Or until they both fall.
Even if one were to fall, the other might declare, “I have defeated the villain who poisoned my bowl!” But his own bowl remains toxic. And his body, already rotting.
What if they chose to stop? What if they emptied their bowls, together?
This is the image I hold when I think of my heritage countries: Ukraine and Russia. Two peoples with shared origins, eating from the same historical bowl, now poisoning one another in cycles of fear, pride, and pain. I feel a deep sympathy for Ukraine because I believe Russia is the clear aggressor. I see the parable unfolding: a great power poisoning another’s bowl while shouting its own righteousness. I remember the rhetoric of Putin’s “Special Military Operation,” his claim of cleansing Nazism: “We must clean out our neighbor’s bowl,” I imagine him saying.
And here I am, in the United States, watching from afar. Powerless. Watching the bowls be poisoned, again and again. Watching the suffering of the Ukrainian people, caught in violence not of their making. Watching the suffering of Russians, too, those who reject the propaganda, who oppose the war, but who are silenced and trapped beneath the weight of power.
I wish, so dearly, for their suffering to end. And then, in the stillness of my own practice, I empty out my bowl.
When I find myself stressed, frustrated, or worn down by the repetitive cycles of parenting, I turn to a simple phrase that grounds me: “First time.” This is not a denial of reality or a plea for naivety. It is a meditative question I ask myself in the heat of the moment: How would I respond if this were the first time my child had done this?
Most of the behaviors that test me are minor: a potty accident, carrying water into their bedroom, jumping on the couch, screaming indoors, taking forever to get dressed. On their own, these are small. But parenting isn't lived one moment at a time because it’s lived through the accumulation of these tiny moments. When they pile up, they can become emotionally overwhelming.
And yet, I’ve noticed that my deepest frustration doesn’t come from the behaviors themselves. It comes from a deeper, more painful belief: I should have fixed this already. If they’re still doing this, then I have failed as a parent. That attachment (to the idea that my child’s growth must be linear, perfect, or efficient) fuels my impatience. My anger is often just grief in disguise: grief that I’m not the flawless, always-effective parent I thought I could be.
Of course, my impulse is to intervene with urgency: to correct, instruct, or even raise my voice. But when has shouting ever truly reduced shouting? The truth is, children cannot learn effectively while stressed. As Stephen Krashen’s theory of the affective filter explains: “When feelings or emotions such as anxiety, fear, or embarrassment are elevated, it becomes difficult for … acquisition to occur. The affective filter is an imaginary wall … that prevents input … from reaching the cognitive structures where learning happens” (Krashen, via Seidlitz Education). This is not just theoretical. It’s biological.
Elevated stress hormones (especially cortisol) can directly impair a child’s ability to learn. Research shows that excessive or prolonged cortisol exposure during early development can shrink or damage the hippocampus, the brain’s center for memory and learning, and disrupt the amygdala, which regulates emotional responses (Park Et. All, 2018, Tyrell, 2014). One study found that early alterations in these regions “could disrupt their function, impairing emotional and cognitive development” in young children (Fowler CH, Bogdan R, Gaffrey MS, 2021). In short, stress doesn’t just make learning harder, it makes it biologically less possible. The louder or more reactive I become as a parent, the more I undermine the very developmental outcomes I hope to support.
In other words: the more we elevate our child’s stress, the more we shut down the very capacities we hope to cultivate. If we want our kids to develop emotional regulation, intelligence, and compassion, we have to make peace the atmosphere they breathe.
After over a decade teaching professionally, I've been able to test and thoroughly experience an important maxim in my personal and professional life: there is no such thing as teaching. Learning does not occur through force or control. What we call “teaching” is actually just exposure, guidance, and emotional shaping. A teacher (or a parent) cannot implant knowledge. We can offer, model, support, direct, and protect. But the child must learn through their own mind and lived experience. To believe we can “make them learn” is not wisdom, but instead it is ego masked as parenting. It is the illusion of control.
So when my sons repeat a behavior for the hundredth time, I take a breath and return to that simple phrase: “First time.” It reminds me that I don’t need to carry the entire history of the behavior into this moment. I don’t need to parent from frustration, guilt, or exhaustion. I don’t need to fix it all now. All I need to do is respond as I would if this were the first time: with clarity, calm, and care.
The mantra “First time” doesn’t erase difficulty but instead it reframes it. It frees me from the illusion of perfection and returns me to what matters: being present, being gentle, and staying aligned with the parent I aspire to be. My children are not projects to complete. They are people walking the early steps in their path. And I’m walking this path beside them (not ahead of them, not above them) step by step, breath by breath, moment by moment.
I absolutely adore Yongey Mingjur Rinpoche. In particular, I love his calm, relaxed, and joyful practice and demeanor. I highly recommend watching him explain this concept himself here: Befriending Panic (YouTube). He elaborates on this technique as well in chapter 2 of his book In Love with the World (Link), his book about his wondering retreat from his monastery.
I have found this practice to be particularly useful when analyzing my own impulses for stimulation. I often ask, Which part of me desires this? or Which part of me is interested in this act? When I ask this question, I am able to step out of the river and see this impulse or thing as the passing river. Then, I try not to take control of the river or the emotion, but simply watch it pass. I take inspiration from the poewr that passivity and observation brings, and simply try to sit with the emotion, acknowledge it, learn about it, and let it pass when it is ready to pass.
Anxiety (especially the kind described by Mingyur Rinpoche in Befriending Panic)
Consumerism impulse ⥤ the desire to fill emptiness with a purchase or product
Lust and fantasy ⥤ forms of craving that disguise a deeper longing
The "must be useful" productivity impulse, especially in work and self-worth
People pleasing ⥤ rooted in fear of rejection or craving for love
The desire for affection and attention from family ⥤ wanting to be seen
The reflex to fix or solve everything ⥤ impatience with discomfort
The impulse to distract ⥤ TV, scrolling, browsing, just to escape a still moment
The inner critic ⥤ a voice that often appears the moment silence deepens
Doubt ⥤ about practice, progress, or whether “this is working”
I believe I picked this one up from Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, as well, though I’ve adapted it into my own variation over time. Here's how I apply it in my meditation practice.
First, I begin by identifying the emotion, whatever it may be. Just like the meditation technique described above, I attempt to sit with that emotion rather than push it away. However, instead of imagining the emotion as something like a river or cloud, I give it a more tangible form, most often as a child or animal.
This act of embodiment allows me to approach the emotion with gentleness and curiosity, rather than judgment or suppression. If the emotion is particularly restless, overwhelming, or hard to visualize as a child, I shift to an animal form instead.
One afternoon, I found myself anxious and frustrated. My wife hadn’t checked in on me, and even though everything in my material world was perfectly fine. That day, my body was fed, our home was peaceful, and work was under control. Still, I felt a gnawing dissatisfaction. Why?
When I sat down to meditate, I began visualizing the emotion as a small child or, more specifically, a younger version of myself. He was crying, not because anything was objectively wrong, but because he wanted attention and affection, much like a child cries out for their mother. I saw clearly that my craving for attention wasn’t grounded in care or compassion for my wife; it was rooted in self-centered desire for validation.
Through this visualization, my emotional attachment began to soften. I could recognize this needy impulse as something tender but immature and not something to obey blindly. With that awareness, I turned to loving speech and deep listening (as taught in the Plum Village tradition) and reached out to understand where my wife’s mind and heart were. As it turned out, she was also stressed and in need of my presence. Ironically, by releasing the desire to be seen and instead choosing to see her, I received the intimacy and connection I had been craving. Presence was born from compassion, not demand.
Each child visualization is different. Sometimes the child is clearly me, vulnerable, lost, and reaching. Other times, the child looks like one of my sons, or a playful, mischievous girl with teasing words. Occasionally, the child is a vulgar little sh*t (who I still love dearly) and whose response to my kindness is more vulgarity. And yet, I continue to sit with him. This practice helps me see that many of my emotional impulses (especially around materialism, lust, or people-pleasing) are childlike cravings for safety, ownership, or approval.
In this way, much like the previous river meditation, the practice is about stepping out of the current and watching how it flows gently, honestly, without blame.
Sometimes the emotions are better represented as animals, particularly when the energy is more instinctual or impulsive. One of my most frequent visualizations involves a border collie that is restless, alert, constantly needing a task (tṛṣṇā). This is the shape my craving for stimulation takes: always needing a new video, a new purchase, a new piece of information. Just like the collie needs sheep to herd, my mind seeks something to chase. By seeing it clearly, I can pet the dog, sit with it, and remind it to rest.
It’s tempting to rely on clichés like anger as a wolf or fear as a mouse. However, I try to be more creative and intuitive in my associations. Sometimes an unexpected image reveals the truth more clearly than the familiar.
These animal forms can also represent positive emotions or spiritual qualities. For example, I often visualize tranquility as a deer grazing quietly. And though it might seem generic, the symbolism becomes richer when I remember that the Buddha gave his first teaching in the Deer Park at Sarnath. Similarly, I might imagine wisdom or awakening as an elephant, referencing both the Buddha’s conception (as an elephant entering Queen Māyā’s womb). Māyā’s name also means illusion, reminding me that sometimes the greatest insights are sprung from our illusions, or that the insight itself might be an illusion.
These visualizations, whether child or animal, help me meet my emotions with tenderness, insight, and humor. They help me sit with rather than run from what arises. And they remind me that just as we wouldn’t yell at a crying child or frightened animal, we shouldn’t scold ourselves for being human. We can simply sit, observe, and practice compassion.
My list is always expanding. My ears and heart are always open to new techniques. Don't be afraid to reach out and email me a favorite of your own.
Written July 11, 2025
Last Edited July 11, 2025