was that I have seen many people come to my programs,

and generally be interested in meditation and there was a lot of curiosity,

and at the same time there was a lot of preconceptions.

People had a lot of ideas about what meditation was.

And I found myself often trying to demystify the practice for people.

Trying to say it's a very simple practice and it does not have to be that complicated.

But at the same time there's something to learn, there's something to engage in,

and there's actually a lot to delve into;

because, in a sense meditation is delving into our own mind.

And from this point of view, one of the kind of main thrusts of what I am trying do

with the practice of meditation, is that I feel like every single person

has the ability and capability to do the practice of meditation;

regardless of really who they are,

as long as they can understand some very basic principles.

And also incorporate the practice into their life.

And even really one of the main things is keeping the session short,

doing very brief five or ten minutes sessions. That it does not have to be this long process.

And many people I think have an idea of meditation,

and they have an image of maybe someone sitting in a meditation cave,

or going off into some sort of deep trance, and so forth.

And really that's not the full purpose of the practice,

and one doesn’t need to do that.

If one chooses one can go off into a cave,

but really whether one is in cave or whether one is sitting here,

it's the same mind, you know, it's the same being.

And many people spend much money and much time going to India or some place exotic,

to look for a teacher and then meditate. And all of a sudden guess who they find?

It’s the same person. And all of a sudden they say, "I could have,

you know, I could have done this a lot cheaper, you know. It would have been a lot easier."

And sometimes it feels like, you know, we have a lot of ideas about practice,

and it becomes very spiritual.

And ahh what is interesting with the practice of meditation

and how I was sort of introduced to it, in terms of just everyday, that it was very normal.

You know I feel like it's like drinking water, in a sense of everyday situation.

And why I am saying it's like drinking water, or an everyday situation,

is because my understanding of meditation is that it's simply relating to your mind.

When we use the word in Tibetan, when we use the word meditation, we use the word Gom.

And Gom has the root essence of the Tibetan word Kom, and it means familiarity.

Now in Tibetan we have many, many different kinds of words for meditation.

And obviously in English there is one basic word,

we use concentration or mindfulness, or contemplation, many things.

But really the word meditation is used over and over.

But in Tibet there is, you could say there's not really one word,

but there're different ways of describing the practice.

But in general the word is Kom, which means familiarity.

And the quality here is that we are becoming familiar.

So the practice of meditation is, "I am sitting still becoming familiar with something."

And as I become more familiar,

my understanding and depth of the subject begins to really penetrate,

whether it's wisdom, whether it's compassion,

or whether it's just simply following my breath, trying to relax.

Just relaxing with who we are.

So there is always a notion that we are becoming familiar with something.

I think the key thing here is that,

what is it that we can become familiar with in meditation that is beneficial?

And a lot of times in the beginning, because people come to meditation

because they hear about the lack of,

or you could say the amount of stress and it reduces the stress, it helps us relax.

So often in the beginning we use the breath. The breath is something that's consistent,

and when we breathe we can exhale a lot of the tension.

And breathing itself, in terms of meditation principle,

is very much connected with consciousness.

And it helps in terms of relaxation of the mind.

It helps in terms of relaxation of the body.

So initially we become familiar with breathing.

And I think there is a lot of potency in the breathing.

But one of the main principles is just settling down:

having a sense of relaxation, having a sense of strength.

And later we can, if we want to go on a,

for example, being a buddhist we meditated on compassion, or wisdom, or selflessness.

Then later we focus on those principles:

we contemplate those words, we contemplate those meanings.

We are becoming more and more familiar with that.

So from that point of view people say, you know to me,

"I meditate" or "I do not meditate".

And from my point of view I say, "Well actually you are always meditating."

Because you are always becoming familiar with something.

You get up in the morning and we are constantly meditating.

Now generally speaking we can look and say, "Is that meditation beneficial?"

You know "What is it that we rise with?"

Often we rise in the morning and we have anxiety, we have anger, we have jealousy.

So naturally we are becoming familiar with jealousy.

Somebody has something we want, and after a while we are really good meditators.

We do not wander at all. We are completely focused and you know.

So we know how to meditate. And the same thing with anger,

it’s like you know we start contemplating and start thinking about it, our mind,

even if we try to do something else, it comes back to anger.

"That person I don’t know what..

they cut me off in traffic I am going to go get em now".

You know, we are going to chase them down the road

or later we are going to do something to somebody.

So that is the other part of meditation, because meditation is contemplation,

familiarity with a subject and later it is action or engaged.

In Tibetan we say gom, and then what follows that is called chingle or activity.

Then we engage.

Because the point of meditation is that we are honing and we're strengthening something

that is very important and precious, so that we can actually actualize it.