Is Meditation Difficult?

This is one of the questions I often encounter when talking with people about meditation.

But let me respond to that with another question: is Painting difficult?

Meditation like painting or playing an instrument or any other human activity requires time, perseverance, discipline and focus.

For most of us, that is.

Some of us just jump in hey presto!, they're there.
But these are the exception, not the rule.

I'm not one of these wonders. I'm one of the other ones. The ones that hesitate and falter and bash their heads and hurt and get hopelessly confused trying to figure out something they don't quite understand. The kind that makes mistakes that sets them back for a while, that turn out to push them forward for a time and that, in the end... well, I still haven't got there so I can't really tell you about that...

So meditation is a bit like painting (be it with a crayon, a brush or a blow-torch). If we have a natural aptitude to it, it will be easier to draw a smooth and steady line, to create and repeat shapes, to compose them on a canvas, to use colour, to play with various desired effects. It will probably mean a lot of work, a great many hours dedicated to that art, perfecting it in whichever ways we find ourselves most interested in.

But even if we don't have a natural aptitude for painting we can all do it to some extent. It might take us longer than these "naturals" but we might get to be as "good" as them if we practice enough, if we explore it enough. We might even be "better".
After all, even if someone has the greatest natural aptitude for painting but if they don't do anything with it, what good is that natural gift?

Besides, we might not be all that great with the brush and water colour but we might be incredible with charcoal. Who knows? We need to experiment and be willing to learn from those experiences.

I think meditation truly is a bit like playing an instrument or painting. There's music in all of us, there's art in all of us. And, to a certain extent, it is important to uncover our own music and our own art because it is an integral part of who we are.
The same applies to meditation.
Okay, perhaps Vipassana isn't for you. But maybe Yoga is. Or Tantra. Or something else entirely (Vipassana with a different teacher, in a different place....) These things will change as you get to know yourself through them.
The important thing is to be willing to learn from every single experience and, for that to happen, we need to know what occurred. And that means we need to be paying attention...

The other thing I'd like to mention is something that we tend to identify with difficulty.

When I speak about the schedule and the discipline of a meditation retreat (where a yogi is supposed to be meditating at every waking moment and refrain from such basic things as speaking, looking here and there and thinking too much) people react saying that it sounds really difficult or really hard.
And it is.
Even for me and I've done it a few times already.
But it is particularly so in the beginning of the practice. Then, as your body and mind start to become accustomed to the routine, it starts becoming easier and easier. And there is much to be gained...

This sense of difficulty comes about happens because most of us do not have the experience of being fully committed to anything through the entirety of our lives. Not at this level at least.
We're used to having moments where we can just "switch off" and "relax" and "take our mind off of things".

This is great for many activities but, in regards to meditation, at least in the way I have been taught and learned from, the emphasis is placed on the building of this kind of meditative momentum. And, in order for it to increase, we must make continuous effort. The emphasis truly is on the word continuous.

I'll give you the following example.

Imagine that you are on the shore of a river. This river is continuously flowing. There is no bridge whatsoever and the only way to cross it is for you to build a bridge yourself. There is however another problem: the only material available is sand.

The river flow is fairly calm and so, little by little, upon each handful of sand placed on the shore, the distance between us and the other shore shortens. The more we work, the faster and more precisely we do it, the faster we'll get to the other side. Still, we need to be careful for if we trip or start going in the wrong direction we might be making effort in a way that will deviate us from our objective rather than bringing us closer to it.

With this in mind my question to you is this: what will happen if we stop to rest?

Clearly the river never ceases flowing, therefore it will drag at least part of the sand we've placed. This means we have to continuously replenish sand. If we always put more sand than the amount the river takes we will be making slow but steady progress.

Eventually we will have to rest, to sleep. But these activities should be kept to a minimum in order for us to be able to reach our objective.

Of course, by placing sand on the shore of the river, the flow of the river itself is altered and, therefore, the placing of the sand must continuously adapt to this in order for us to attain our objective.

This is what happens in meditation. The more we diligently sustain our awareness upon the objects surfacing in our consciousness, the closer we will be moving to that other side of our reality, the one we might have glimpsed but whose route we are yet to find.

But there is another great advantage of undergoing a process such as this. In fact it's an advantage that brings many others. If we allow ourselves to commit totally to something not only will we know what that actually means, but we will also be a great step closer to what the word devotion truly means. And, as a side effect, we will know all the much better what are our limits, what we can do, when should we stop, how much further can we go.
In a word, through this process of total commitment, true compassion arises, for self, and for others.

And, in my opinion, if for nothing else, solely for this, this immersion in the meditative practice would already be incredibly valuable.

So, in conclusion and in answer to the initial question, meditation, per se, isn't difficult. We are all gifted for it in one way or another. The question is how far we are willing to explore and be explored by it.

After all, meditation's biggest problem isn't difficulty, it's the yogi...

Peace!