Mingyur Rinpoche on Why Meditation Is Easier Than You Think
Understanding early meditation challenges through wisdom and neuroscience
This week, we have the great joy of welcoming Mingyur Rinpoche to Dharma Lab. Known for his humility, humor, and extraordinary depth of practice, he helps us dig into one of the most common experiences in meditation: the turbulence that arises at the beginning. Rather than a setback, he shows how it can become an essential part of the journey.
Rinpoche reminds us that when the mind begins to settle, we don’t feel calmer right away; we actually see more. As he puts it:
“When the river is muddy, you cannot see the fish. When it becomes calm and clear, suddenly you see many fish. They were always there — now the mind is clear enough to notice them.”
This clarity can feel uncomfortable, but he explains that these “down moments” are uniquely powerful:
“When we meditate during the down moments — even a little — the benefit is a lot. We learn the most from obstacles.”
Richie shares how research backs this up. Many beginners actually show an initial rise in anxiety after the first week — a sign that awareness is increasing — followed by significant decreases by week four.
“After the first week, anxiety often increases — and that’s a good sign. By the fourth week, it decreases significantly.”
Rinpoche cuts through the pressure to achieve a perfect state:
“Are you breathing now? That is meditation. No special posture, no special state. Just awareness.”
Cort describes the shift that unlocked his own practice:
“Once I learned to use whatever happens as support for awareness, there were no more obstacles. Practice became almost fun.”
Across the conversation, a theme emerges:
Meditation doesn’t require stillness. It requires relationship — with breath, with distraction, with difficulty. And when that relationship softens, practice becomes lighter, more natural, and available anywhere.
Join us later this week for the full episode.
REMINDER: Join us for our next Ask Me Anything live with Cort and Richie on Tuesday, December 16 @7pm Eastern Time. Please send us your questions in advance!
Meditation is a term that can cover a number of different practices and goals. The reality is that the majority of them do indeed induce some degree of mental stillness. By focusing attention on the breath, an external object, bodily sensations, a mantra, or even consciousness itself, you are not "thinking" as much about everything else. The result of most types of meditation is a reduction in the activity of the Default Mode Network which controls self referential thought. Although such a reduction of thinking doesn't have to be the initial goal, I think it's something that should be explained as an eventual result. Likewise, it's the continual process of recognizing that your drifting away from the object of your meditation and bringing yourself back that over time trains your ability to maintain attention. Thus, meditation can be "work" but the effort isn't to do anything but to simply continue effortlessly observing.
I don't think it's accurate to say meditation is easy or difficult, if you are talking about the process that eventually leads to a steady state of still calmness. Instead, it's something that really needs to be experienced. What helps me is to implant the suggestion within myself that I desire and actually love the quiet and stillness that results from maintaining awareness on the object. When I go into meditation with this attitude rather than it being a chore that must be completed, I find that I can meditate longer and afterwards want to go for another session sooner rather than later.