Simple, gentle meditation is the best

Since I no longer believe in looking upon life itself as a problem, I also have stopped viewing meditation as the solution to an existential problem.

If there's no need to be saved, I don't need salvation. If there's no need to be enlightened, I don't need enlightenment. If there's no original sin or past life karma, I don't need forgiveness. 

Yet I still meditate every morning. Just like I exercise every day. And read every day. I enjoy meditation. It's interesting. I feel that it's good for my mind.

After looking upon meditation much more intensely and seriously for thirty years or so, now I take a simpler and gentler approach. 

Pema Chodron has some good meditation tips in her book, "When Things Fall Apart." Here's excerpts from the Relax As It Is chapter.

When Trungpa Rinpoche first taught in the West, he told his students to simply open their minds and relax. If thoughts distracted them, they could simply let the thoughts dissolve and just come back to that open, relaxed state of mind.

…After a few years…He put more emphasis on posture and taught people to put very light attention to their out-breath. Later he said that the out-breath was as close as you could come to simply resting the mind in its natural open state and still have an object to which to return.

He emphasized that it should be just the ordinary out-breath, not manipulated in any way, and that the attention should be soft, a sort of touch-and-go approach.

He said that about 25 percent of the attention should be on the breath, so that one was still aware of one's surroundings and didn't consider them an intrusion or an obstacle to meditation. 

…The point was not to try to achieve some special state or to transcend the sounds and movement of ordinary life. Rather we were encouraged to relax more completely with our environment and to appreciate the world around us and the ordinary truth that takes place in every moment.

…In this case, the out-breath is the object of meditation — the elusive, fluid, everchanging out-breath, ungraspable and yet continuously arising. When you breath in, it's like a pause or a gap. There is nothing particular to do except wait for the next out-breath.

…That was the first time I realized that built right into the instruction was the opportunity to completely let go.

I'd heard Zen teachers talk of meditation as the willingness to die over and over again. And there it was — as each breath went out and dissolved, there was the chance to die to all that had gone before and to relax instead of panic.

…So right from the beginning it's helpful to always remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking and choosing. It's definitely not meant to repress anything, and it's not intended to encourage grasping, either. 

…So as meditators we might as well stop struggling against our thoughts and realize that honesty and humor are far more inspiring and helpful than any kind of solemn religious striving for or against anything.

…Ultimately it comes down to the question of just how willing we are to lighten up and loosen our grip. How honest do we want to be with ourselves?