The short answers are emphatically, “No,” and “No.”

Mindfulness is a quality of attention that results from calmly focusing on whatever is arising in the present moment, intentionally but without judgment. It is as natural as listening to the traffic outside, feeling the texture of a piece of fruit as you chew it, or looking at a beautiful sunset.

In other words, mindfulness is about experience, not belief. Thus, it is completely non-sectarian and non-ideological.

Having said this, it’s easy to understand why the question comes up. Mindfulness involves a kind of open, non-judgmental attention. To some, this may imply that people who practice mindfulness might be easily manipulated into accepting things without thinking about them. This is not true. Mindfulness practice gives us the ability to observe things in greater detail. This ability gives us valuable insights into ourselves and others, and allows us to exercise a wider range of choices when responding to events.

Remember when your parents advised you to “count to ten” before reacting to a situation? Mindfulness practice is about making such pauses a habit, even when there’s no particular problem, and using those moments to unify body and mind. Then, when you return to your tasks, you are calmer, more solid, more precise, and more effective.

In 1890, William James, the pioneering American psychologist, philosopher and educator, put it this way:

"The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will. . . An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence."

To summarize, mindfulness practice strengthens the attributes of good judgment, character, and will power in ourselves and the people around us. These are qualities that can clarify and deepen any experience, including religious practice, and even awaken us to the sacred potential within every moment.

As a general rule, the best way to deal with any afflictive mental state is to observe it closely. One of the best ways of doing this is to particularize the emotion as a physical sensation. Locate your “boredom” in the body, and then explore the physical sensation thoroughly. When you do, you may discover that “boredom” is actually quite interesting!

When we say, "I'm bored," that's usually an amorphous attitude or a lazy mental concept. There’s an old saying that “an emotion is the body’s reaction to a thought,” but we’re rarely aware of how our emotions actually feel in the body. I call the process of examining the emotion as a physical sensation “particularization.” What kind of feeling is it (pressure, tingling, aching, sinking, etc.)? Where do you feel it? How deep is it? How big is it? What shape is it? How much water could it hold? In meditation, we neither resist nor cling to the arising experience; we just ARE with it, without trying to resist, change, or suppress it. In this way, we discover the amazing power of Presence. When we can Be With anything in a spirit of total acceptance, we open up a whole new dimension of experience and possibility. We are no longer reactive and driven by our emotions; rather, we become receptive to them. We gain an intimacy with the experience that enables us to transform boredom or any other afflictive thought or emotion from an obstacle to a steppingstone.

Almost any regular meditator who practices both in groups and in solitude will attest to the benefits of group meditation. It’s not that group meditation is necessarily “better,” but it’s definitely different. When several minds are aligned and attuned as they usually are in group settings, especially in guided meditations or established groups where all the participants are using the same techniques, people usually find that sitting with a group enhances the ease and depth of their meditation. This is why I offer three virtual group meditations every week, in addition to my personal meditation practice and one-on-one client work.

On the down side, experienced meditators who have developed stronger concentration may want to sit for a longer time than the group allows, especially when they are enjoying a particularly deep meditation. But this is not necessarily an obstacle to group meditation. Experienced meditators can sit again later, and, in the meantime, they will get the same positive benefits from group meditation that beginners do. Whatever your level of expertise, group meditation will facilitate and enhance your experience.

We cannot leave this question without mentioning the enormous benefits of going on extended retreats. There, one truly experiences the full power of the group, greatly enhanced by the harmonization of inner and outer life, with factors such as extended periods of silence, vegetarian food, and the observance of behavioral precepts contributing to the meditative atmosphere. What you learn about yourself in such settings can never be unlearned, even after you go back to your regular life.

It’s a misconception to believe that to meditate you must somehow “turn off” the mind and stop thinking. There is no off button to the mind. If the many thousands of people who have reported Near-Death Experiences are to be believed, not even brain death will do it. The skill of meditation has nothing whatsoever to do with stopping thoughts. It’s about detaching oneself from thoughts and other mental objects as they arise. With detachment, you stop nourishing the mindstream with energy, and your mind then calms down naturally and of its own accord. This is a gradual process that requires three things:

1.) Total acceptance. Accept everything that arises, without exception. Remember that resistance = persistence. Rather than resisting your thoughts, accept them, but don’t interact with or cling to them.

2.) Detachment. Letting go of thoughts requires detachment. The meditator must recognize when he or she is clinging to a thought, and then relax and release that attachment. This is not something that can be done once and for all. Letting go of thoughts is a continuous and ongoing process.

3.) Patience. Even when you’ve met the first two conditions, the settling of the mind takes time. A mindset of patient, gentle persistence is required for the process to work.

The meditator is like a snow globe — the kind you get in a souvenir shop, with a tiny Statue of Liberty or Eiffel Tower inside. When you sit down to meditate, it’s like putting your snow globe down on a table after shaking it. The “shaking” consists of your activities prior to meditation — just before sitting, or even hours, days, weeks, years, or lifetimes ago. The moment you sit down and close your eyes, the first thing you encounter are “snowflakes” — the echoes of these past thoughts, words and actions — swirling around in your mind. It takes time for them to settle, but they will settle, as long as you don’t interfere with them. This is the simple secret to entering into meditation: don’t interfere. Just observe nonreactively. Reactions of any kind — getting into a dialogue with your thoughts, judging them, analyzing them, resenting them, or trying to suppress them, only stimulate and energize the thought-generating process, which results in more thoughts. But when you shift into a non-reactive mode, your thoughts calm down naturally. With no reaction, the thoughts have nothing to feed on. Without nourishment, they slow down and eventually stop altogether. That is when you discover an inner sanctum of quietude and spaciousness that is profoundly healing and nourishing.

WARNING AND DISCLAIMER: This posting is for general information only; it is not a prescription for your personal case. In cases such as described below, consult your meditation teacher or a medical or psychiatric professional.

There are, of course, many different kinds of meditation, but what is common to all of them is that we bring a high quality of attention to an object, task or process. This quality of attention is nonjudgmental — it observes without reacting. When non-judgment is well developed, it produces an inner calm and spaciousness that can be quite pleasurable. This is because when you suspend judgment, you’re no longer fighting and resisting the way things are right now. But that same attribute, because it is so expansive and accepting, may also permit painful memories and emotions to arise that were heretofore suppressed. There are many techniques that are effective for resolving this problem, which depend upon the individual meditator, her background and personality, etc. In general, to the extent possible, the meditator should just continue to observe the content of his or her experience dispassionately and nonjudgmentally. Continue to make space for whatever is there, receiving it with kindness and compassion. Just as you would take a crying baby into your arms, so should you embrace the present moment in a spirit of total acceptance. When you do, the afflictive thoughts and feelings will attenuate as a function of your own spaciousness, and ultimately, they will disappear entirely.

The second category of negative experiences in meditation is that of uncontrolled or “stuck” energy, which can manifest as insomnia, dizziness, headaches, and even psychotic episodes. Such effects usually arise primarily in forms of meditation that seek to manipulate the chi or prana of the body-mind system. Such practices should only be undertaken under the supervision of a qualified teacher. As a general rule, when symptoms such as these arise in meditation, shift the focus of your attention to the lower abdomen, starting with the rise and fall of your belly as you breathe in and out, and gradually narrowing the focus down to a single point: the lower dantian, located 2–3 finger widths below the navel and about one third of the way in toward the spine (directly above the perineum). Anchoring your attention there will draw the errant energy down to the lower abdomen, where it can be stored safely. This will have a calming and grounding effect. Whenever working with chi or prana, always end the meditation session this way. Never leave aroused subtle energies in the head or upper body. Always draw them down to the lower abdomen at the end of your meditation session.

Anything can be overdone, including meditation. Much depends on your motivation. If you pursue meditation as an escape from reality, you’re bound to be disappointed. Meditation is actually a deep dive INTO reality.

As to how long a beginner should meditate, this depends on the techniques you are using. Transcendental Meditation, for example, prescribes two sessions of 20 minutes each per day. This is also a good period of time to initially aim for when practicing most Buddhist, Taoist, or secular mindfulness techniques. For my own beginning students, however, I recommend ten minutes twice a day, plus ten or more “mindful moments” (about 30–60 seconds each) throughout the day. Mindful moments are simply pauses during your waking hours when you stop to focus mindfully on something in your immediate environment — for example, a cup of coffee, a plate of food, the face of a loved one, or a beautiful sunset. These moments “squeeze” the mindfulness muscle in the midst of daily life, making sitting meditation easier, resulting in a virtuous circle of mutually reinforcing practices both on and off the cushion.

Over a period of 45 days or so, my students work up to sits of 20 minutes or longer. In the beginning, the quality of attention is more important than the quantity. The critical thing in establishing a meditation practice is continuity, whether your sits are for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes or longer. Don’t intellectualize, analyze, or judge it; just do it. Focus with gentle persistence on a present-moment experience such as sounds, body sensations, or your breathing. Don’t try too hard; always maintain a light touch. When your mind wanders, gently bring it back, again and again. Gradually, this practice will lead to deeper and deeper meditations. Once you taste the pleasure of going deep, motivation and time will no longer be an issue.

Many meditation techniques involve repetitious actions such as counting breaths, reciting prayers, or repeating mantras. I call such actions “replacement tasks,” because they counteract the mind’s natural tendancy to wander by providing it with something else to do that keeps it focused on the present moment. Beads, malas, rosaries, etc. are reminders that help the meditator stay on-task and aware of where she is in the cycle of repetitions. In this sense, they are like other meditation cues such as a verbal instruction or the sound of a bell, with the advantage that they bring another sensory dimension — the sense of touch — into the exercise. When multiple senses are aligned on a single task, we are, in effect, giving ourselves multiple points of contact with the present moment.

One of my students who comes from a Catholic background told me that the rosary in her tradition is meant to “occupy the lower mind while the higher mind contemplates a mystery.” This is another way of expressing the idea of a replacement task. Using the rosary and an accompanying prayer such as the “Hail Mary”, the “lower mind,” which usually wanders randomly, stabilizes itself in the present moment via the task of recitation while fingering the beads. This stability renders the “higher mind” available for contemplation of something more subtle. For Catholics, this may be the divine Incarnation. In my own meditations, the subtle object of contemplation is Presence itself.

Of course, for some people, prayer beads are more of a fashion statement or a fetish than an authentic tool of meditation. I do not recommend using them in that way.

Yes, however, this is not recommended for beginners. In the mode called “Choiceless Awareness,” the meditator focuses on whatever arises in his present-moment experience, be it thoughts, feelings, perceptions, body sensations, emotions, etc. However, this is not as easy as it sounds. It’s not meditation if you just get sucked into every passing thought and interact with it in the usual way — by associating it with other thoughts, debating, judging, reacting and so forth. For Choiceless Awareness to qualify as meditation, you need to be observing the mindstream mindfully, that is, the “Witness” must be present and paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and without judgment. This is almost impossible to do without training and practice.

Instead, start by focusing mindfully on one concrete object at a time, such as the sounds in your room or your body sensations. Over time, extend your attention to more subtle objects such as mental states, emotions, and eventually the underlying Presence which makes experiencing those things possible. The learning curve progresses from more concrete to more subtle objects as your mindfulness develops into concentration, and your ability to hold subtle objects in the mind with stability matures.

You will read many passages in the meditation literature extolling the virtues of “just sitting and doing nothing.” Those passages are referring to a profound state of stillness, but be careful lest you confuse this idealized state with the learning curve required to realize it.

Yes. When you discover the peace and pleasure of meditation, and experience its profound benefits, it becomes easy to keep practicing without any pressure at all. But, as with anything that is worthwhile, it takes time and effort to get there. The “pressure” comes from within — from your own motivation.

In my own case, it took about 10 years of off-and-on effort to establish an unbroken thread of regular meditation practice. Today, as a full-time meditation teacher, I see this as completely normal, and encourage my beginners to keep trying. If you persist, you will definitely succeed. But you must persist in the right way. GENTLE persistence is the key. When training your mind, too much intensity is counterproductive, because it elicits mental tension. Don’t try too hard. Always apply a light touch.

The human brain evolved to constantly scan the environment for threats and opportunities. This is why our attention flits randomly from object to object. When you try to focus mindfully on just one object, as we do in many forms of meditation, the mind naturally resists, producing an unpleasant sense of struggle. However, there are skillful means of getting past this struggle, and enjoying the peace and pleasure that lie beyond. As a teacher, my role is to offer these tools to anyone who is interested, so that they may enjoy a lifetime of nourishing meditation practice, and reap the benefits that come from it.

As you establish your practice, the most important thing is to mindfully “check in” to your present-moment experience as often as you can. This doesn’t have to involve sitting; it’s more like pausing and taking in what’s in front of you nonjudgmentally. Doing this strengthens your baseline level of mindful energy, which in turn makes sitting meditation easier. You can sit once a day, but then, in addition to that, take at least 10-20 mindful moments where you chew a bite of food, look into the face of a loved one, stop at a stop sign, or wash the dishes with a deep quality of dedicated attention. The opportunities to grow your mindfulness in day-to-day life are endless. 

That said, when you feel tired but also sense a desire to meditate after a long day, by all means do it, even if you only last a few minutes. The practice here is to really experience your tiredness. You’ll soon fall asleep, but for two or three minutes try to particularize it — to discern where in the body you feel the tiredness, what the sensation is like, and what thoughts or mental states arise along with it. The point is not to conquer it, but to be there with it. When practicing like this, the mind will occasionally surprise you by becoming very lucid and capable of sustaining meditation for a longer time than you thought possible.

Over time, with consistent practice, mindfulness starts to feel more palpable, like a substance or an energy that can be applied to any object of attention, including emotions and psychophysical states like fatigue, restlessness and boredom. 

What you’re describing here is completely normal. The usual instruction is to let the breath be however it wants to be, to not interfere or try to change it in any way. Our task is to just observe it, and to notice what happens as we do that. Sometimes, we notice that the breath becomes labored as we observe it. This is due to a kind of reflexive self-consciousness that sometimes arises when we focus on the breath, because unlike other objects of attention, the breath is something that we can control, though we rarely do. But when we fix the attention on any bodily function for a sustained period of time, it’s usually for the purpose of manipulating or controlling it in some way. This is why, when meditating on the breath, the habitual link between observation and manipulation may assert itself, and we find ourselves “participating” in the breathing — trying to make it deeper, slower, longer etc. — instead of just watching it. And this introduces an element of tension which may result in the breath feeling labored. 

To calm the breath we begin with the same principle we use whenever tension arises: acceptance. Before you do anything else, you have to be with your breath, however it is manifesting right now, in a calm, compassionate, and non-judgmental way. 

The line between observation and participation is very thin and delicate; this is something that meditation reveals to us. As our practice matures, we become more capable of discerning and suspending the impulse to participate — in other words, to take “ourselves” out of the equation. The more we do that, the purer our Presence becomes — we become able to observe without even the slightest inclination to interfere. At that point, calming the breath is like relaxing any tense part of the body; you just let it go.