Earplugs and meditation

[Porphyry Fedotov]

Hi everyone. So I've found that my meditation is more effective when I use earplugs. My parents usually watch tv everyday and to me the tv noise is distracting in its irritation (apparently it has some emotional baggage, other noises are mostly ok). I have to spend a lot of time differentiating the irritation from the sound and observing it until the irritation passes or subsides and it eats up a lot of time from every seat. Sometimes my mom just walks around the apartments talking to herself loudly which also doesn't make it any easier. In rare cases of silence (or when I use earplugs) my meditation is more smooth and enjoyable. I practice system from 'Mind Illuminated' btw.  However, can it be harmful in the long run because I'm feeling that I'm cutting myself out of the environment so to speak, like how I gonna be calm and joyful in everyday life if I can't manage some noise from the adjacent room?  It feels kinda like cheating. On the other hand how about all those monks who live in caves and jungles? I suppose they live that way to avoid distractions and are pretty effective regardless

[Vynce]

A very experienced meditator can be completely aware in the presence of "distractions". Because every so called distraction is just a sound or a picture, which can be observed non-judgemental just as you can observe your breath. However the challenge becomes harder if the sounds and pictures have content. The mind wants to interpret it, hence its harder for you to be free of the mind. 

Two solutions now:

1. Cope with it, and learn to meditate with distraction. This is way harder and will mostly result in frustration.

OR

2. Move out from your parents home. This will turbo-charge your personal development at your age. 

[BipolarGrowth]

If you prefer less stimuli and find it helps your meditation, keep doing that. I personally find that I go deeper into meditation with intense music on full blast while using an app called Lumenate which flashes rapidly at your closed eyelids to produce tons of visual sensations. I do vipassana meditation in this way just with way more sensations than the human body is going to get even through psychedelics most of the time. 

[Goldzilla]

I used earplugs to train my focus on my breath. 

Now that i achieved that, i can stay in a train station full of people, or construction site, hearing my breath above high noises. Is a matter of training. 

Yeah, earplugs are useful in the beginning. Atleast for me. 

[Leo Gura]

I use earplugs all the time.

Not an issue at all.

Silence is golden.

[hamedsf]

I can't go without earplugs. 

basically you should be disconnected from everything around you! 

[ZenSwift]

Dang I never even THOUGHT of using earplugs for my meditation. Definetly going to try this! ?

[noticeom]

I used to use meditation music. Was nice. But found that I was putting so much effort into controlling my environment and I'd get upset when I would get distracted. Then started to not control anything and embrace everything and my progress skyrocketed. Silence is nice, but letting go and embracing reality is what it's all about in my opinion. I learned that a "distraction" is only what you get bothered by, and the mind labels an experience as a distraction. You don't have to be bothered or label anything.

I guess it depends on what your intentions are with the sitting session.

I also like having some perception to analyze sometimes too. 

But at the end of the day theres nothing wrong with using earplugs or meditation music. 

[RickyFitts]

@noticeom Excellent post, agree with everything you said. I've started meditating to music recently, and I've found it to be a refreshing change from meditating in silence - I'm particularly feeling this one at the moment, I find it conducive to meditation:

 

 

[StarStruck]

Use NC headphones, it is much better and more comfy