An excellent time to meditate is when we are passengers on a vehicle – a train, bus, automobile, airplane, or boat. This allows us to integrate our practice into daily life in a situation that shares many of the benefits of formal meditation practice.
Commuting or traveling is something we often have to spend time doing anyway, so we might as well also use the time for some valuable meditation practice. It’s also pleasant to arrive at our destination feeling more refreshed, or to help to let go of where we just left.
When meditating on a vehicle, while seated or standing, we want to sit as tall and upright as we can without feeling self-conscious of how we look to others. On a crowded bus or train, it is often unavoidable that we will need to stand, which makes it harder to relax and let our bodies settle. Assuming that we are able to be seated, however, it is helpful to put a car seat’s back rest as straight upright as possible, and, on an airplane, to “Please put your seat in the full upright position”. If that feels uncomfortable or painful, it can be helpful to put a pillow, rolled-up blanket, towel, or jacket between one’s lumbar/lower back and the backrest.
When we ride in a vehicle, we don’t always get to choose the physical characteristics of our seat, and it might not be ideal. For example, the seat angle may force our knees higher than hips (making it more painful to sit upright), have constraining chair arms that force our elbows in, or the backrest may be fixed leaning back. Ultimately, though, as always, the perfect meditation seat is the one we actually meditate in.
As we meditate, even though there are people around us, we want to relax our bodies as much as possible, move less than usual, and fidget as little as possible. We want to avoid engaging with our phone, music, audio or podcasts, reading, or conversations.
In terms of which technique to choose, there are different levels of safety when riding on a vehicle. We may be relatively less physically safe, for example meditating while riding public transit late at night through a rough part of town. In such cases, we will want to keep our eyes open as we meditate, and we don’t want to use a technique we absorb so far inward that we lose awareness of our surroundings. Instead, a “focus out” technique is often best, where we intentionally concentrate on real time external seeing and hearing and perhaps also the feeling of our body touching our environment (the seat we are on, the clothes we are wearing, etc), and away from the inner world emotions and thoughts. One great thing about the focus out technique is that, when we deeply engage the hearing part of the practice, all external noise – crying babies, strangers’ conversations, the grind of machinery, people yelling, unwelcome music – can become just a neutral flow of sound, just waves of energy flowing through our ears.
There are also scenarios where we are relatively safer, for example while riding passenger in an automobile with people we trust, or in a window seat with someone we trust between us and an aisle. In these situations, we may be more comfortable closing our eyes, and we can do whatever technique we want, even ones that lead to deep internal absorption. It is like sitting meditation at home (although with things a bit more uncertain/surprising and physically shaky).
Another practice I have enjoyed in public is cultivating warm-heartedness, so-called “loving-kindness” practice, sending wishes for health and happiness out to the people around me.
I personally have done perhaps a thousand hours of meditation while riding on trains, buses, airplanes, and in cars. It has felt to me that when I have – sitting there, upright posture, looking serene – people have often felt the good vibes and dignity of what I have been doing, and it has felt like many seem to have silently responded with trust, appreciation, and openness. Similarly, when I have seen others meditating in vehicles, I have also felt appreciation, admiration, and connection.
Again, meditation on a vehicle provides an opportunity to bring practice into ordinary life rather than always confining it to special circumstances. Over time, those accumulated minutes and hours can become a meaningful part of a regular meditation practice.