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    One-Moment Meditation: Stillness for People on the Go
    One-Moment Meditation: Stillness for People on the Go
    One-Moment Meditation: Stillness for People on the Go
    Ebook162 pages2 hours

    One-Moment Meditation: Stillness for People on the Go

    By Martin Boroson

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    About this ebook

    Think of all the moments you "lose": stuck in traffic, standing in line, waiting for a download. And think of all the moments you "waste": working when you're not focused, or fiddling with your phone. What if each of these moments offered you an extraordinary opportunity?

    In One-Moment Meditation, now published in eight languages, Martin Boroson distills the philosophy of time into a simple form of meditation that you can do anywhere, anytime. It begins with an exercise that takes just one minute per day. With practice, this takes less and less time, until it only takes a moment. Then each and every moment gives you a chance to reduce stress, refresh your mind, and open yourself to new possibilities.

    This unique approach to meditation was featured as a thirty-day series for stress reduction on Oprah.com. Playful, profound, and above all, practical, One-Moment Meditation teaches you that inner peace is not a distant goal reserved for saints and sages, and it doesn't take a lot of time: it only takes a moment.

    "It's hard to overestimate how helpful this technique could be." -- Psychologies magazine

    "This gem of a book is a marvelous launching pad for anyone who wants to rest in the now, the only time there is." -- Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Reinventing Medicine

    "Martin Boroson's fantastic book ... is all about learning to condense the practice of meditation into these fleeting moments. And about how, from a certain perspective, a sequence of fleeting moments are all we ever really have anyway." -- Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian
    LanguageEnglish
    PublishereBookIt.com
    Release dateApr 26, 2016
    ISBN9780982374610
    One-Moment Meditation: Stillness for People on the Go

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      Book preview

      One-Moment Meditation - Martin Boroson

      (attrib.)

      Introduction

      Think of all the moments we lose—stuck in traffic, standing in line, sitting in a boring meeting. Think of all the moments we waste—going to parties we don’t enjoy, working when we’re not focused, watching one more television show before bed. Then there are those stolen moments—the moments we grab when no one’s looking—to window shop, surf the net, or fiddle with our phones. And then there are those moments that pass by unnoticed—the moments between other moments. What if each of these moments offered us an opportunity? What if each and every moment offered us a chance to become more calm, alert, balanced and content? What if there were something simple we could do, in just a moment, that could have a profound effect on our lives?

      •  •  •

      This book was conceived in a moment.

      I was meditating one morning for my usual thirty minutes, and was determined to sit still, eyes looking down, for the full thirty minutes. But this particular morning, I was restless, my mind was racing, and time seemed to be moving so slowly. I worried that I had forgotten to set the alarm, and that I might end up sitting there for hours. It certainly felt like hours. I wanted to check the clock. Many times. But I was determined to sit still, and just didn’t want to give in. Then I gave in.

      I turned to the clock and discovered that I had not forgotten to set the alarm. There was one minute left. Which meant that I’d just spent twenty-nine minutes wondering if thirty minutes had passed. Discouraged, I thought, With just a minute left, I might as well quit for today. And then it hit me: What’s wrong with a minute of meditation? What did I hope to experience in thirty minutes that I can’t experience in one minute? So I decided to start again, as if from the beginning. I decided to meditate for whatever time was left. I decided to meditate for a minute . . . but make it a good one.

      From that moment on, my attitude toward time began to change. I began to think less about long-term goals and more about present opportunities. I began to realize how much could be achieved in a very short time. And I began to meditate in a new way—not just sitting on my cushion each morning for thirty minutes, but briefly, all throughout my day, wherever I happened to be—on the train, at my desk, at the gym. I began to understand that the more quickly I could tap into peacefulness, and the fewer props I needed, the better. In short, I began to meditate whenever I had a moment.

      •  •  •

      Most of the time, we fail to realize the enormous potential of a moment. Perhaps this is because we think of a moment as a very short amount of time—just a few seconds—and therefore rather negligible. But the word moment actually comes from a Latin word that means a particle sufficient to turn the scales. In other words, a moment can be revolutionary. It can turn your life around. A moment is, by its very nature, momentous.

      Imagine what can happen in a moment: a dam bursts, the earth quakes, a dry forest bursts into flames. In just a moment, a drunk driver speeds through a stop sign and hits your car. In just a moment, stock prices start tumbling. You never know when something that you take for granted will be gone.

      But a moment can also bring healing, inspiration, and joy. In just a moment, a fantastic new idea lands, unexpectedly, in your mind. In just a moment, someone solves a problem for you, or you get a phone call from a long-lost friend. In just a moment, after years of division, a wall comes down. In just a moment, during a long illness, you simply start recovering, and no one can say exactly why.

      But whether life-changing moments are happy or sad, global or personal, they remind us that ordinary life has the possibility to be extraordinary. In just a moment, ordinary life can crack open to reveal another reality that was inconceivable the moment before. In other words, dramatic change doesn’t require a lot of time: it only takes a moment.

      I have helped many individuals and organizations through processes of major change. And although these processes can take time, when the breakthroughs do happen, they happen suddenly, in a moment. No one can predict when they will happen or what they will be. But the best condition for having a breakthrough is when the people involved are truly present in the present moment, and open to its possibility. In other words, they are open to the radical possibility that no matter what their plans, habits, or expectations might be, this moment offers the potential for significant change.

      •  •  •

      This book will help you notice the moment, understand the moment, appreciate the moment, be in the moment, and tap the enormous potential of a moment. And it won’t take a lot of time. The first exercise requires no more than one or two minutes each day—guaranteed. As you progress, this exercise actually gets shorter and shorter, taking less and less time, until you can do it in just a moment.

      With this approach, you will be able to refresh and recharge yourself many times throughout the day. You will learn to experience deep stillness (which is your nature) in the midst of activity (which is also your nature). You will understand time in a new way, and learn ways to transform a day that feels crowded and rushed into one that feels spacious and full of opportunity.

      As you practice these techniques, and your understanding of this philosophy deepens, you will approach what could be called mastery of the moment. Mastery, in this case, does not mean dominating the moment or taking control of it. Nor does it mean submitting to the moment or letting it control you. It simply means being at peace in the moment—that there is no tension between you and whatever is happening right now.

      I have taught this technique in lectures and workshops, on the radio, in leadership seminars, and in on-the-job training sessions, and have seen how it can benefit people in many different ways. If you are new to meditation, this technique gives you a straightforward method that will fit in easily with your life as it is. If you have tried meditation and failed, this technique gives you a way to try again—a way that focuses not on long-term success but on short-term opportunity. And if you believe that you are just too busy to meditate, this approach takes away that excuse: everyone has a moment to spare.

      Although this book was written with beginners in mind, it was also written for advanced beginners. (Advanced beginners are people so advanced that they are always willing to begin again.) So even if you are experienced at mediation, I hope that you will be open to this approach. You might well find that it helps you to refresh and reinvigorate your existing practice, or to integrate that practice into the challenges of everyday life. And if you are one of those experienced meditators who get hung up on how long you can sit still without thinking (a kind of meditation machismo), this approach will remind you to take everything—even meditation—one moment at a time.

      •  •  •

      Is it really possible to meditate in a moment?

      Many people do see mediation as an endurance test: the longer they can sit still, being peaceful, the more spiritual they are. Many people also believe that meditation must be practiced in a serene and beautiful retreat—far removed from everyday life. They have these beliefs, no doubt, because so much of our spiritual heritage has been handed down by monks, nuns, hermits, and prophets—people who renounced ordinary life to spend years and years in silent contemplation.

      But times are changing, and our understanding of meditation is, too. Scientific research is confirming that the benefits of meditation are not just esoteric or spiritual, but quite practical, too. Laboratory experiments and psychological studies have shown that meditation can improve our mood, decrease anxiety, alleviate depression, lower blood pressure, strengthen the immune system, and promote optimism and resilience.

      Today, more and more people believe that the benefits of meditation should be available to us when we need them, and that the practice of meditation should be do-able everywhere—whether we’re stuck in traffic, starting a business, or changing a diaper. Many people today also want to bring meditation, or meditative principles, into their relationships, their parenting, and their work, and see a need for more meditative approaches in politics, business decisions, and public conversations. Surely the more quickly we can be peaceful, and the fewer props we need, the better. So let me tell you why I believe that it is not only possible to meditate in a moment, but essential that we do.

      We all fantasize, from time to time, about being peaceful in some other time or place. We imagine being peaceful in the future—at the end of the day, on the weekend, after the kids grow up, when we retire. Or we imagine being peaceful somewhere else—in church, in a park, on that deserted beach. But each time we do this, we fail to meet the moment that is here. We let ourselves off the hook. This is an especially self-defeating form of procrastination, for the moment in which we most need to be peaceful is the very moment in which it is not so easy to be peaceful.

      Also, whenever we think that peacefulness takes a lot of time, or will come only in the future, we are focusing on becoming peaceful rather than being peaceful. We are keeping ourselves in a state of wanting, and this state of wanting is, by definition, not a state of being or having. So if you believe that you must meditate for a long time in order to become peaceful, you are creating more stress for yourself. It’s like throwing a ball out in front of you, then racing to catch it, and then if you do catch it, immediately throwing it out in front of you again—while also complaining that you never ever have a ball.

      On a deeper level, if our sense of contentment is dependent on circumstances, then it is vulnerable to a change of circumstances. If we are only content because life is going well, we will not be content when life is going badly. That’s just not a very stable or deep kind of contentment. True contentment transcends the "ups and

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