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Mindfulness meditation - hearing and soundscape?

I'm just getting into mindfulness meditation at the moment. What i am reading (Jon Kabat-Zinn) suggests that listening and attending to the sounds of your environment (soundscape) is a good starting point for meditation. I would like to do meditation by myself and in my room, howver i live next to a busy road and unfortunately only hear the busy traffic which annoys me greatly. I was wondering if it would be okay for a beginner to have ambient music in the background, in order to block out the traffic. i am worried however that i will end up just simply listening to the music pleasurably and not really getting into mindfulness meditation. Any suggestions, advice or opinions would be great. Jason

Public Comments

1. if you are already getting worried of the music you will never get anywhere...any meditation is learning first to relax and if that means putting on some relaxed music than do so. Relaxing --teach yourself how to do it than move on to other mindfulness noise.
2. Hey Jason :) Brings me a smile to see you are starting mindfulness meditation. I live in NYC (and near a hospital) so when I first started I had the same problem with outside noise. My teacher suggested music and if you use it properly you won't just be enjoying it pleasurably. I would recommend purchasing meditation music (for me - Zazen CD's do the trick!) The music is composed to uplift and improve focus as long as YOU work to focus on it. When you feel yourself drift, bring yourself back to it, listen to the sounds, the energy, the attention it brings you to. It's okay to drift, its really natural and normal in the beginning. Just keep working at it and dont ever judge your meditation sessions. Send me a message if you need any other meditation advice! Goodluck!
3. Jason, It doesn't matter what Jon Kabat-Zinn says. You can do whatever you want. And if all that happens is listening to music pleasurably, how is that not meditation? I think it is. BTW you can get noise-canceling headphones and listen to music that way.