Question

In everyday practice, I have a lot of problems with breath meditation, being aware of the breathing. Is this it a problem if I do only reflection instead?

Answer

As We do teach a lot of wise reflection meditation. We also do teach breath awareness. We also teach walking meditation and standing meditation.

We typically say to people, when they are beginning to organize their own type of practice, to start with a fifty-fifty practice. That means fifty-percent of the time use a technique in which you let go of thought, just being mindful, say with the breath, or with the footsteps - and fifty-percent of the time you use a reflective meditation, such as Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation, Sympathetic Joy, the Ten Paramis, the Five Reflections and so on.

Now, as a person develops their practice, they might shift a little and be closer to a sixty-forty, or forty-sixty practice and that's fine, that will depend on their particular personality. On the side of the practice that includes the breath awareness, it also includes just simple walking meditation and being aware of your footsteps. Now, if you have a lot of trouble with breath awareness, if you don't feel comfortable with it, then you don't have to do a lot of it, but you should could instead increase the amount of walking meditation that you do. This is so that you do continue to practice the part of the meditation in which you let go of thought.

However, don't avoid some part of sitting practice, just like the breath awareness, don't avoid it totally. If you pick-and-choose just your favorite techniques and always do just a few of your favorites, then you limit your practice. It's very difficult then to get a balanced broad practice. It'd be like somebody trying to build a house with only a hammer. Can you actually imagine someone trying to build a house with only a hammer? It's simply not possible. But there are many meditators who have a very narrow practice, they only one have a small number of techniques, and they think somehow that will take care of everything else. We don't personally believe that, and we've seen in ourselves, and in our long-term students, that a balanced practice with a lot of techniques is so much easier to develop.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.