Let us imagine that you have managed to "stay on the pot" and decided to really come to grips with meditation; that you have managed to apply a successful program of "stopping the most foolish obstructions"; that you have "cut off the fat," getting down past the pink seductions and have finally been ready to step out of the "straight-cut ditch" and manage to understand and deal with your cognitive dissonance, which will be the great barrier to meditation.
But first you must know how to begin meditation and what to meditate upon.
Indeed, you are ready to meditate, but what do you meditate upon?
If you believe that you are intelligent you will want to meditate upon vacuity, that is, EMPTINESS or perhaps upon the UNITY of all things.
STOP IT ! ! !
If you believe that you are sensitive you may want to meditate upon Compassion or Benevolent Affect.
STOP IT ! ! !
If you are discriminating and now know that you suffer you will want to meditate upon Suffering.
STOP IT ! ! !
You are certainly far from ready to deal with Emptiness or Unity. You have a great deal to learn before you are ready to launch into True and Natural Compassion and Benevolent Affect and you certainly Suffer but know little about the nature of Suffering.
That does not mean you have to launch yourself into a thousand and one sutras, nor read books, enter mind-destroying chats or allow yourself to be led by the blind. You don't need to enter those courses that will teach you instant meditation or the meditation that will launch you into the state of an arahat for just a minimum expediture of energy or dollars.
If you are tempted you have already forgotten that meditation is Difficult.
Your first meditation to start with is probably the Bamboo Meditation.
When foolish people ask me what my lineage is I tell them that the bamboo stick is my lineage and, as a matter of fact, it is also my teaching from start to finish.
The bamboo is completely natural, it has no impediments and while the first lesson is to become like a stick of bamboo, the last point where Awakening is waiting is where there is the realization of the Uncarved and Empty Bamboo.
THE BAMBOO MEDITATION
Now don't let your cognitively intelligent mind roam into the area where you think that you understand that the bamboo is empty and that is some link to transcendental emptiness. That is not the point at all.
You do not understand what Emptiness is.
The great master Tilopa declared:
Do nought with the body but relax;
shut firm the mouth and silent remain;
empty your mind and think of nought.
Like a hollow bamboo rest at ease with your body.
Giving not nor taking, put your mind at rest.
Thus practicing, in time you will reach buddhahood.
The first thing that you have to do with regard to this meditation is forget that it is a meditation and that it will accomplish anything or that you will gain anything at all.
Laozi in the Daodejing declared:
Without stepping outside one's doors one can know what is happening in the world.
Without looking out of one's windows one can see the Dao of heaven.
The further one pursues knowledge the less one knows.
Therefore the sage knows without running about,
understands without seeing, accomplishes without doing.
So sit quietly being an empty shaft of bamboo, nothing more. Be just an external shell with nothing inside and just watch with the mind. You can be an empty shell and still watch, for the mind is neither inside nor outside.
But let the mind watch without there being anyone watching.
If you do this, then what you will discern is your breathing and nothing more.
Watch the breath entering and leaving, nothing more and you will see that any thoughts that have entered will just fall away. There is no room for the mind to attend to the breathing and idle thoughts at the same time.
So become like bamboo.
That is your first meditation and you go to the Dissonance practices using this meditation as a base.
This state of becoming like a shaft of bamboo is that in which you have reduced all interference of thoughts by "watching the inhalation and exhalation of breath" and in which you have emptied yourself like the bamboo, by watching without there being a watcher, becoming so to speak "the empty shell which is your body."
This shell state which unites all the tactile sensations into one "whole body" sensation is that which is called the "Becoming of Consciousness" and with practice all the senses can be combined into one complete multi-faceted pure sensation without any content whatsoever.
This takes time, so do not be in a hurry, set your sense of being a meditator aside along with expectations and just with calmness and patience dwell within this Becoming with joy and nothing else.
When accomplished with stability, then a first foray into meditation, before even considering meditations like that of "Impermanence" or the "Four Sublime States" which are Compassion, Benevolent Affect, Gladness and Equanimity, is that of stepping out of the "straight-cut ditch of Samsara" by solving Dissonance.