Written by Jen Liu

“Interestingly enough, we'll often find that when the mind strays, the quality of our gaze suffers too. … Our visual field loses a sense of intentionality and becomes somewhat random, much like our thoughts. The mindfulness of our soft, open gaze has the unique ability to reflect back to us the mindfulness we are demonstrating within.”

One of the characteristics of meditation practice is that it is empirical, meaning it is learned primarily through personally verifiable experience, not faith. Without discounting its important cultural and historical envelope of the Buddhist tradition, we can appreciate the fact that in order to receive the benefits of meditation, it simply isn’t enough just to read about it, think about it, or hear about other people's experiences with it. At some point, each of us has to engage the practice — and, ultimately, find out for ourselves!

Think of mindfulness meditation as a recipe for a homemade dish that has been passed down by a succession of parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on going all the way back over 2,500 years. While the instructions represent a long lineage of tried-and-true steps that have delivered reliable results for countless people throughout history, the recipe itself will never be a substitute for the actual experience of preparing the ingredients, cooking the food, taking in the aroma, and sitting down to enjoy the flavors. No one else can taste the meal or receive its nourishment for you — and no one else can meditate for you, either. We alone are able to grant ourselves that experience, and these ancient teachings could not reach fruition without our participation.

During his lectures, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was sometimes known to answer students' questions by saying, "Your guess is as good as mine." This was not some form of false modesty. Those words conveyed the notion that, more so than there being a select few wisdom-keepers of these teachings, there are practices interwoven in the fabric of this very tradition that equalize us, making each person's unique, inherent wisdom and basic goodness a special contribution that only they can bring to the table.

Each of us is uniquely equipped to add to the story and carve out our own space in the tradition by forging our own meaningful, deeply personal relationships with these techniques. Energized by this truth, we can hold ourselves with confidence as we embark upon the challenging and irreplaceable work of finding out for ourselves.