By Jessica Lam Hill Young

Without a firm commitment to our well-being, Hong Kong’s fast-paced, high-demand lifestyle can become nerve-wracking. In a city where the motto is “work hard, play harder,” it is all too easy to cocoon ourselves in a trance of rushing from work to play to work, without stopping to appreciate life in the here and now. Distracting ourselves with the endless indulgences this city has to offer, we tend to ignore the pleas of our bodies and minds for calm and quiet. All this leads to a sense of living mechanically, separation from self, and chronic stress. Practicing mindfulness meditation can restore a balanced sense of health and well being by increasing awareness to all aspects of self, including body and mind, heart and soul. For those interested in trying meditation, here is a guide to start the practice in this city.

“Mindfulness” is a technique you may have heard of. It describes the experience of moment-to-moment awareness, a way of relating directly to whatever is happening in life without judgment. Though it has become popular in recent years for managing stress, anxiety, and chronic pain, it has been used for 2,500 years as the core practice of Buddhist meditation. To understand mindfulness, you can try a one minute exercise right now: close your eyes and allow your awareness to briefly scan through your body, relaxing areas of tension. Then bring your attention to the breath. Be aware of whatever thoughts, sensations, or sounds that comes to you. Gently let them go, always returning to the sensation of breath. Open your eyes. That is mindfulness meditation in a nutshell.

When I started meditating a year ago, like many others, I was looking for a tool to manage my stress and anxiety. The result of my experimentation with mindfulness was like dipping my toes in the ocean to test the temperature and found myself, instead, engulfed in the ocean’s waves. I progressed from one-minute meditations on bus rides to a forty day retreat in a Myanmar monastery, practicing mindfulness from the moment of waking to the moment of falling asleep.

What kept me going wasn’t the refuge of tranquility when meditating, increased powers of concentration, or the joy of connecting with myself and others. It wasn’t having less anxiety, better health, or clearer thinking, though those are all good reasons to meditate. I persisted with meditation practice because I’ve found a way to control my own behavior where other self-help systems failed. Meditation is the teaching of non-reaction: when we observe feelings and sensations during meditation, there’s no need, and usually no inclination to react. This is a most important aspect of reaching peace and harmony within ourselves, otherwise our reactions will always be wave motions that overwhelm us. Whenever unpleasant emotions and thoughts turn up, one learns to see it just as a feeling or a thought that passes away. This valuable lesson on how to handle myself has, over the course of a year, helped me beat addictions, slow down, and become happier.

Behind the glamorous façade of the city, Hong Kong contains a wealth of resources to support spiritual practice. Hundreds of meditation groups from many different traditions meet weekly in various neighborhoods to help meditators maintain practice. There are university and private courses in meditation, Buddhist magazines, and regular meditation retreats throughout the year in the outlying islands. Retreats are a period of time when people come together under the guidance of a teacher and meditate in a focused environment for a number of days.

To start meditating, it doesn’t mean you have to suddenly become a deeply spiritual person, learn about Buddhism, or find an isolated mountain monastery to meditate in. Anyone, from any spiritual faith, can benefit from the practice of mindfulness in any place. To meditate simply means resting in moments of appreciative, exquisite attentiveness. Moments that allow us to savor the experience of living and make us feel both deeply calm and deeply alert. Moments we come away from feeling refreshed, renewed, and engaged.

For beginners, an excellent way to begin meditation is taking Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program (MBSR), an accessible (and I would even say enjoyable) eight-week mindfulness meditation class that offers a lot of structure and hand-holding to those who find meditation intimidating. The course, available in English, is taught by a licensed psychologist, Dr. Peta McAuley, and costs $3,090, which includes CDs, workbook, and other materials. Dr. McAuley also offers a group meditation session for $100 per lesson every Wednesday evening at the YWCA. In addition, The Hong Kong Buddhist Lodge of Laity offers a free four-week, three-hour course on breath meditation and loving-kindness meditation—a practice to develop love and friendliness towards all beings.

If taking a course sounds like too much of a commitment, the Plum Village Mindfulness Center in Tsim Sha Tsui offers meditation instructions in English and a one-hour group practice every evening from Monday to Friday. The center also holds regular weekend retreats and talks on Buddhism. The Hong Kong Insight Meditation Society is another group that offers weekly group meditation sessions, English instructions, and regular retreats. Both are good starting points for beginners interested in meditation. While Plum Village is flexible in their meditation technique and includes chanting and songs in their practice, HKIMS uses a specific technique of watching the abdomen. Both centers run based on donations.

For people with a bit more time and gumption, try a ten-day vipassana meditation course as taught by S.N. Goenka, an Indian teacher who popularized mindfulness meditation all over the world. The intensive course, meant for all levels of meditators, incorporates ten hours of meditation a day with daily teachings in English. Students keep a vow of silence, fast after noon, and follow a schedule that begins at 4 a.m.. Though it appears daunting, it is well worth the challenge if you are serious about achieving immediate and tangible benefits from meditation.

Many other Buddhist organizations hold regular group sittings, teachings, and talks, as well as retreats in monasteries on the outlying islands. Going on a meditation retreat is a great way to spend some time with ourselves and refresh, renew, and recharge. To find out more about Buddhist and meditation activities in Hong Kong, visit http://bulletin.buddhistdoor.com/ for a comprehensive, up-to-date list of events. The Chinese weekly magazine “Buddhist Compassion,” available in most 7-11 stores, also lists meditation groups and events in its back pages. With a little help and support from others, we don’t have to take expensive vacations or inject Botox to rejuvenate. We can find a sanctuary and a place of profound rest right here, in ourselves, and in this city.

For More Information:

Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Programme
http://mindfulness.hk/

Hong Kong Buddhist Lodge of Laity
http://www.laybuddhist.com/eng_index_buddhist.htm

Hong Kong Insight Meditation Society
http://www.hkims.org

Plum Village Mindfulness Center
http://www.pvfhk.org/

Hong Kong Vipassana Meditation Center (Goenka Course)
http://www.dhamma.org/

Buddhist Door Global Bulletin
http://bulletin.buddhistdoor.com/eng/