" Insight Meditation

    Find your "SEAT," a posture and attitude of stability. You can sit on a chair or cushion, but you should be comfortable and relaxed and your back should be straight but not rigid and strained. If you are not used to the cushion and want to try it, sit on it for five or 10 minutes at first and then go back to the chair. The first step is called SHAMATHA or getting calm. This is usually done by watching the breath. You pick a place to watch it, like the tip of the nose or the abdomen. Do not force your breath to be a certain way. It is the way it is and you just watch. Your mind will wander. When it does, just go back to the breath. In Insight Meditation eyes are usually closed. Some meditators prefer to have eyes slightly open looking at the floor a couple of feet ahead.
    You may wish to count breaths at first: One out breathe, two out breaths, etc. up to four or 10. Whatever works is all right. If you don't get to two without finding your mind wandering, don't worry, it's normal. (And shocking, to see firsthand how little control we have over our mind.) This concentration on breathing can be done for as long as you like. A half-hour, a week, a lifetime. If you are new, spend a lot of time with the breath until you begin to get very calm.
    The next step is INSIGHT meditation. In Insight meditation we watch our minds. Six so-called "sense doors" appear and disappear: bodily sensations (pressure, hot, cold, body aches and tension, etc.), smelling, tasting, seeing, hearing and thoughts. (Thoughts in this context, are considered a sense door. An emotion, if you look carefully, is a combination of bodily sensations with an overlay of thought.) We just notice that all these sense door phenomena arise and pass away. We may even become so still that we lose our sense of separateness from the objects we're observing. Then we can just rest in awareness itself. "