topics for meditation

The most frequent meditation question is "what do I think about while I'm sitting?" One of the most useful practices to start with (after finding a comfortable seat and committing to staying ABSOLUTELY STILL, observing the breath for a few minutes to bring your mind to the present, and thinking about someone who needs your help and deciding that you will meditate for him or her), is to focus on the sensations in your body. If you have an itch, or your foot is falling asleep, DON'T MOVE.! Instead of trying to make the sensation go away -- either by moving the body or trying not to focus on the sensation -- go to the sensation and into it. Try to find the precise place where you are feeling the sensation. Try to break the sensation down as if you are in a lab doing a dissection. Is it just one sensation, or is it made up of many nano-seconds of sensation that your mind adds up and then labels as "itch," or "asleep?" No-one ever died or had a limb amputated because it fell asleep or itched. So just sit with it and explore it. Chances are, once you really examine it, it will either go away, or seem very different to you than when you first felt and labeled it. If the urge to move or scratch is overwhelming, examine it -- don't succumb to it. Break the emotional feeling or thought down the same way you break down a sensation. Ask yourself, is that feeling or sensation one independently existing, monolithic, thing separate from how I perceive it? This is how it appears to the mind. Use your body, your thoughts and sensations, vehicles for your mind to determine whether this is really so.

Why? Because you will begin to see that things that appear to exist outside of and separate from you are really coming from you. And the way you perceive your world will begin to change.