Ideal Length For Meditation Sessions ?

[Shan]

Howdy all, 

Edit: I am an intermediate meditator with 1.5 years of continuous practice. Because of time constraints, looking for input on optimal length. 

I am with Leo that we should meditate EVERYDAY. But I don't recollect him being specific about how long? If the goal is to achieve high levels of peace, clarity; assist in the heroes journey, and to progress to enlightenment eventually while initially balancing work what is the optimal time.

From my experience, something happens to me after the 40-minute mark like changing gears. But that requires 1-hour sessions which are too long. I tried to break them into 2 X 20-minute sessions in morning and evening plus 5 mins focus practice. 

Your input/experience on ideal time length would be appreciated.

Edited July 1, 2017 by Shan

[Jani]

I keep the minimum at 20 minutes a day. Usually it's around 30-40 minutes. I'm kinda laid back about it. Don't start with anything too radical, I started out with 1 hour each morning and soon got burnt out. Just focus on making it a habit first. 

[krazzer]

Hard to say, I think it's very personal. When I started I did 10 minutes a day, which were a drag back then. Now i do 30 minutes a day. I want to build it up to an hour. The most important thing is to do it every day.

[Prabhaker]

30 minutes ago, Shan said:

Ideal Length For Meditation Sessions ?

 I don’t want you to think of meditation within limits. I want meditation to become your very life. In the past this has been one of the fallacies: you meditate twenty minutes, or you meditate three times a day, you meditate five times a day – different religions, but the basic idea is that a few minutes every day should be given to meditation.

And what will you do in the remaining time? Whatever you will gain in twenty minutes…what are you going to do in the remaining twenty-three hours and forty minutes? – something anti-meditative. Naturally your twenty minutes will be defeated. The enemies are too big, and you are giving too much juice and energy to the enemies and just twenty minutes for meditation. No, meditation in the past has not been able to bring a rebellion in the world because of these fallacies.

These fallacies are the reason I want you to look at meditation from a totally different standpoint. You can learn meditation for twenty minutes or forty minutes – learning is one thing – but then you have to carry whatever you have learned day in, day out. Meditation has to become just like your heartbeat.

You cannot say, “Is it enough, Osho, to breathe for twenty minutes every day?” – the next day will never come. Even while you are asleep you continue breathing. Nature has not left the essential functions of your body and life in your hands. Nature has not trusted you, because if breathing were in your hands you would start thinking how much to breathe and whether it is right to breathe while you are sleeping. It looks a little odd doing two things together – sleeping and breathing. Breathing seems to be a kind of disturbance in sleeping. But then the sleep will be eternal!

Your heartbeat, your blood circulation are not under your control. Nature has kept everything that is essential in its own hands. You are not reliable, you can forget, and then there is no time even to say, “I am sorry, I forgot to breathe. Just give me one more chance!” Even that much opportunity is not there.

But meditation is not part of your biology, your physiology, your chemistry; it is not part of the ordinary natural flow. If you want to remain just a human being for eternity, you can remain there. Nature has come to a point of evolution where more than this is not needed by nature: you are perfectly capable of reproducing children and that’s enough. You will die, your children will continue. Your children will carry on the same stupidities that you were doing. Some will be coming into the congregation, into the churches; some other idiot will be giving sermons, and the whole thing will continue – don’t be worried.

Nature has come to a point where now, unless you take individual responsibility, you cannot grow. More than this nature cannot do. It has done enough. It has given you life, it has given you opportunity; now how to use it, it has left up to you.

Meditation is your freedom, not a biological necessity. You can learn meditation in a certain period of time every day to strengthen it, to make it stronger – but carry the flavor of it the whole day.

First, while you are awake, from the moment you wake up, immediately catch hold of the thread of remaining alert and conscious, because that is the most precious moment to catch the thread of consciousness. In the day you will forget many times – but the moment you remember, immediately start being alert. Never repent, because that is a sheer wastage of time. Never repent, “My God, I forgot again!”

In my teachings there is no place for any repentance. Whatever has happened is gone. Now there is no need to waste time on it. Catch hold again of the thread of awareness. Slowly, slowly you will be able to be alert the whole day: an undercurrent of awareness in every act, in every movement, in everything that you are doing or not doing. Something underneath will be continuously flowing.

Patanjali, the first man in the world to write about meditation, says that it is almost like dreamless sleep, but with one difference. In dreamless sleep you are not aware. In samadhi, in the ultimate state of meditation, there is just a little difference: you are aware.

You can continue for twenty minutes every day to learn, to refresh, to give more energy and more roots – but don’t be satisfied that that’s enough. That’s how the whole of humanity has failed, although the whole of humanity has tried in some way or other. But so few people have been successful that by and by many people stopped even trying, because success seems to be so far away. But the reason is that just twenty minutes or ten minutes won’t do.

I can understand that you have many things to do, so find time. But that time is not meditation, that time is only to refresh yourself – and then again you will have to work, earn, do your job and a thousand and one things. Just remain alert whether it is still there inside or it has disappeared.

This continuity then becomes a garland of twenty-four hours. Only then, will you be able to experience satyam shivam sundaram – not before it.

Osho, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Talk #28

[Shan]

The @krazzer and @Jani

Edited my post as I want to clarify I am not a beginner.  I can now meditate for an hour or even longer which I haven't tried yet.  I am trying to see if there is an optimal sweet-spot when it comes to length. 

I'd be nice to know from any advance meditators on the lengths they go for and any benefits due to longer sessions (1). Also any benefit of breaking into morning and evening sessions? (2)

[Prabhaker]

@Shan

Osho on Meditation – Meditation is a lifestyle, not an activity

To be asleep means to live a life in which awareness has no place. You are doing something, but your mind is somewhere else. You are walking along the street, your body is there in the street, but your mind is having a conversation with your wife, or may already have reached the office ahead of your physical arrival there. Your mind is already making arrangements in the office while you are still walking along the street. Mind in one place, body in another, is the characteristic of lack of awareness. Mind accompanying body is the characteristic of awareness.

You are here, listening to me. In these moments of listening, if your hearing is all, if only your hearing remains and your mind wanders nowhere else but is here and now, if hearing is the only thing happening, as if the rest of the world has disappeared, as if nothing else remains. Here, I am the speaker, there, you are the listener and a bridge is created between us. Your mind does nothing else, it falls silent, utterly silent; it hears, only hears. When only hearing remains, you experience awareness. For the first time, you discover what meditation is.

Meditation means being in the moment, not leaving this moment. Someone asked Buddha, ”How shall we meditate?”

Buddha replied, ”Whatsoever you do, do it with awareness; this is meditation. Walking, walk attentively, as if walking is everything; eating, eat with awareness, as if eating is everything; rising, rise with awareness; sitting, sit with awareness; all your actions become conscious, your mind does not travel beyond this moment, it remains in the moment, settles in the moment – this is meditation.”

Meditation is not a separate process. Meditation is simply the name for life lived with awareness. Meditation is not an hour-a-day affair where you sit for one hour and then it is over till tomorrow. No, if twenty-three hours are empty of meditation and only one hour is meditative, then it is certain that the twenty-three hours will defeat the single hour. Non-meditation will win, meditation will lose. If you are living twenty-three hours a day without awareness, and only one hour with awareness, then you will never attain to the state of buddhahood. How can this single hour triumph over the other twenty-three hours?

There is something else that also has to be understood. How can one be aware for one hour if in the remaining twenty-three hours one is not aware? How can you be healthy for one hour if you are sick the other twenty-three hours of the day? Health and sickness are the result of an internal flow. If you are healthy for twenty-three hours of the day, you will be healthy for all twenty-four hours, because the internal flow cannot suddenly be broken for just one of those hours. The current that is flowing goes on flowing.

Meditation cannot come about just because you visit a temple or mosque or gurudwara.. If you were not awake in the shop, in the marketplace, or at home, how can you all of a sudden be awake in the temple? Nothing is going to come about suddenly, when it is not part of an internal flowing. This is why Buddha has said that meditation can happen only if you are meditative for twenty-four hours a day.

So understand well that meditation is not just one of life’s innumerable activities. It is not just one link in the chain of man’s endless doings. It is like the thread on which all the flowers of a garland have been strung. Meditation is a lifestyle, not an activity. If one is meditative in everything one is doing, if the thread is running through each of the flowers, only then a garland is created. The thread is not even visible, it is hidden underneath the flowers. Nor can the meditator be seen; he is present, but hidden behind all the activities being done through him. An individual is awakened the day when he begins to live meditatively. While he lives nonmeditatively, he sleeps.

Someone asked Mahavira what was the definition of a sadhu. Nobody else has ever given the answer that Mahavira gave. He said, Asutta muni, sutt amuni– the one who is not asleep is a sadhu, the one who is asleep is no sadhu”. Who is not asleep? The one whose every action is meditative is not asleep. Religion, liberation, is an experience that happens in such a wakeful consciousness

Source – Osho Book “Nowhere To Go But In”

[Leo Gura]

@Shan The longer the better, but not so long that you get sloppy with your mindfulness.

I find it's like pushing weights at the gym. You gradually need to build yourself up to the higher weights.

[Nahm]

@Shan I have practiced for about 23 years. I don't have anything new to add to this thread but thought I'd give a testimony that might be helpful for those beginning meditation. I have found it to be exactly like Leo just said. I did a few 30 minute sessions per day when I first started and now I do about 20 minutes each morning, and occasionally (rarely) 20 minutes again mid day. It is very much like strength building in that the deeper levels can be reached more easily and with less time after a long duration of daily consistency. One specific testimony, and I hope it's inspirational / motivational, monkey mind does go away if you maintain consistency.