SITTING MEDITATIONS

Like lying down meditations, there are many different ways to cultivate mindfulness while sitting. Ultimately, they all boil down to skillful ways for dwelling with what is in the landscape of the present moment, and being with and knowing things as they actually are. Sounds simple. And it is. At the same time, there is nothing casual about sitting meditation, just as there is nothing casual about any other form of practice. We can and need to be kind and gentle with ourselves, and at the same time sit as if our lives depended on it. Because, when it comes right down to it, they surely do.

But in order to understand this, we have to understand what it means to sit. It doesn’t just mean to be seated. It means taking your seat in and in relationship with the present moment. It means taking a stand in your life, sitting. That is why adopting and maintaining a posture that embodies dignity—whatever that means to you—is so helpful in the formal practice of sitting. The embodiment of dignity inwardly and outwardly immediately reflects and radiates the sovereignty of your life, that you are who and what you are—beyond all words, concepts, and descriptions, and beyond what anybody else thinks about you, or even what you think about you. It is a dignity without self-assertion—not driving forward toward anything, nor recoiling from anything—a balancing in sheer presence, a presencing.

Even if you don’t always feel it, it is helpful to come to sitting practice as if it were a radical act of love just to sit in this way—love for yourself, love for others, love for the world, love for silence and for insight, love for compassion, love for what is most important. Over time, you will come to see that it is so in ways that go far deeper than these words or any concepts you may have about practice.

From this perspective, what we mean by “sitting” can be practiced in any posture, including lying down or standing. Because it is the inner orientation that is being spoken of, not literally whether you are seated or not. It is the mind that is “sitting.”

But that being said, on a purely literal level, formal sitting practice has much to recommend it, not the least of which is its great potential stability, the reduced likelihood, compared to lying down, that you will fall asleep, and the reduced likelihood, compared to standing, that you will be challenged by fatigue from maintaining the posture itself. For sitting, especially when you learn to establish yourself in a stable posture as economically as possible from the point of view of muscular effort, supports your capacity to practice mindfulness with great concentration and with stable, penetrative, unwavering qualities of mind and body.

In terms of body posture, the greatest stability comes from sitting on the floor in one of a number of cross-legged positions, supported by a meditation cushion or bench that raises your buttocks off the floor to an appropriate degree.^* Since sitting on the floor is not always congenial for people, especially at the beginning, and since ultimately the practice is not about the stability of the body but about the stability and openness and clarity of the mind and the sincerity of your motivation to practice, what you are sitting on is relatively unimportant. Even your physical posture is relatively unimportant. Sitting on a chair is an equally valid and powerful way to practice sitting meditation, especially if the chair has a straight back and supports your sitting in an erect upright position that embodies wakefulness and dignity. But let’s keep in mind not to get too attached even to the concept of dignity, and of sitting a certain way. It is really the inner attitude that is most important here—not the outward posture.

Once established in a sitting posture, we simply give ourselves over to awareness of the present moment. The options are the same as for lying down meditations, and as with them, we can work with the eyes closed or open in any of these sitting practices as well.

Perhaps hearing is the most basic door into sitting meditation, since we have nothing to do other than to be aware of the sounds already arriving at our ears. Since everything is already happening, since we are already hearing, there is actually nothing to do other than to know it. The challenge is, can we know it? Can we sit here from moment to moment simply hearing what is here to be heard, without the elaborations and diversions of the ruminative, discursive mind? The answer is, for most of us, most of the time, “No, we can’t.” But we can investigate this very challenge. We can experiment with cultivating awareness of how out of touch we can be with such an obvious aspect of the present moment. So in this particular form of practice, we open our attention to the soundscape and sustain it within the soundscape as best we can, moment by moment by moment as we sit here. In the words of the Buddha, in the hearing there is only the heard. When the mind wanders, as it inevitably will, we note what is on our mind in that moment (which is always this moment when it occurs) or downstream from it in the moment when we finally realize we are no longer attending to sound. We note whatever is on our mind in that moment, and we do so as best we can without judgment or criticism, or without judging the judging and the criticizing if they do occur. Then and there, which is already now and here, we simply allow our awareness to include hearing once again, and thus allow hearing to resume its place as the primary locus of attention. We bring the mind back to hearing, over and over again, when it is carried off, distracted, or diverted away from hearing.

Another option, equally simple and accessible for people at the beginning stages of meditation practice, is to feature the breath as the primary object of attention rather than the soundscape, since the breath, like sound, is always present, and since, literally and metaphorically, you can’t leave home without it. As with hearing, the invitation to attend to the experience of our own breathing from moment to moment may be simple as a concept but it is far from easy as a practice, especially in the sustaining of our attention on the breath. And as with hearing meditation, breath awareness is potentially as profound as any other form of meditation, since ultimately the mindfulness that is cultivated is the same and the insights that it has the potential to give rise to are also the same.

It is never the object of attention that is primary. It is always the attending itself. This is a key principle to keep in mind, whatever your practice, whatever object or objects of attention you have singled out. What we pay attention to, while important, is secondary. The various sense doors are all different entry points into awareness itself. The point is not to prefer one door to another, or to stand in the doorway and comment on it. Rather it is to enter the space of awareness and take up residency here, whatever doorway you choose to enter through.

The basic instructions for mindfulness of breathing are that, while maintaining the dignified sitting posture we have adopted as best we can, we focus on the breath sensations at a place in the body where they are most vivid, usually at the nostrils or at the abdomen. Then, to whatever degree we can manage it, we sustain our awareness of the feeling of the breath at the nostrils as it passes in and out of the body; or, alternatively, we sustain attending to the sensations associated with the rising and the falling of the belly with the in-breaths and the out-breaths.

When we find that the mind has wandered away from the primary object of our attention, as is bound to happen over and over again, we simply note what is on our mind at the moment we remember the breath and realize that we have not been in touch with it for some time. And we do so without judgment or self-condemnation, again, as best we can. We note that the realization that we are no longer with the breath is itself awareness, and so we are already back in the present moment. Importantly, we do not have to dispel or push away or even remember whatever it was that was preoccupying the mind the moment before. We simply allow the breath to once again resume its place as the primary object of our attention, since it has never not been here and is as available to us in this very moment as in any other.

Another powerful sitting meditation practice involves expanding the field of awareness to include sensations within the body, once you feel stable in either the breath awareness or in awareness of hearing, whichever you are using. This can include awareness of sensations in various parts of the body as they arise, perhaps dominate for a while, and then change over the course of a moment or over the course of an entire sitting, sensations such as discomfort in a knee, or in the lower back, a headache if it arises, or for that matter, subtle or vivid feelings of ease, comfort, and pleasure within the body. Sensations might include feelings of pressure and temperature at the points of contact of the body with the floor, or tingling, itching, pulsations, aching, throbbing, light touch from the air currents, warmth or coolness anywhere in the body, the possibilities are endless. They may also include significant degrees of physical discomfort or pain that might arise either from sitting without moving for extended periods of time, or from a particular medical condition. None of these has to be an impediment to developing or deepening your sitting meditation practice, although it is always important to err on the side of being conservative and not pushing beyond your limits of the moment. But, to whatever degree it is possible, we simply sit with an awareness of sensations within the body, whatever they are, noting them as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, noting their level of intensity, and as best we can not reacting emotionally to them or inflaming them with our preference for it to be another way so that our meditation might be “better” than what we are experiencing right now. In a word, we simply put out the red carpet for whatever sensations are arising in this moment and embrace them as they are, wherever they are, beneath the colorations of our likes and dislikes and our expectations for how things should be but aren’t, all in the service of cultivating greater intimacy with the nowscape, which, as we’ve seen over and over again in so many ways, includes and is grounded in the body. In this way, we are cultivating an exquisite intimacy with the bodyscape and the sensations through which it makes itself known.

We can also practice sitting with a sense of the body as a whole sitting and breathing. This is a practice I find particularly congenial. Some traditions refer to it as whole body sitting. Here we open to the subtle sensoria of proprioceptive and interoceptive knowing as well as to the more individual isolated sensations within the body. Awareness now embraces the entirety of the body, including the skin, and the sitting posture itself. Within this sensory field, any and all sensations, including all those mentioned previously, can be noted fluxing continuously throughout the body and in the same way as before, simply opened to, known at the point and moment of contact as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, and, to whatever degree you can manage it, accepted as they are, however they are, wherever they are.

In this practice, the breath and the body as a whole come together (not that they are ever separate), are seen and felt and known as one, and we simply rest here from moment to moment, and of course, reestablish that condition over and over again when it is lost to the distractions of the mind or to the incessant call of the outer landscape.

As you can see, the process of expanding the field of awareness around the breath and the body as a whole sitting is virtually limitless. We can include hearing, seeing (if our eyes are open), and smelling as we sit here, either featuring them singly, or attending to them all together as they unfold moment by moment. Yet the overall stance remains the same: resting in awareness itself and seeing, hearing, feeling, sensing, knowing whatever it is that is being seen, heard, felt, sensed, or known in the moment of its arising, the moment of its lingering, and the moment of its passing away. We are the knowing because we align with that in us that is most fundamental, our capacity for awareness, for knowing itself, beyond the conventional boundaries of name and form and concepts of any kind.

In sitting meditation, we can also choose to allow the world of somatic sensations, including the breath sensations, to recede into the background, along with the soundscape and our other sensing modalities, as we feature center stage in the field of awareness some other particular aspect of our experience in the present moment, such as the thinking process itself and/or our emotions. Here we are attending to the activity of the mind itself as a sensory organ, in the same way that we can attend to the activity of the five more traditional senses and, in so doing, refine our familiarity and intimacy with it and how it functions to either enhance or suppress awareness.

In this practice, as we sit here, we simply bring our attention to thoughts as events in the field of awareness, arising and passing away in what can often feel like a gushing stream, torrent, or waterfall. As best we can, we note their content, the emotional charge they carry (again, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral), and their evanescent and passing nature, while attempting, again, as best we can, not to be drawn into the content of any thought, which we will easily find will merely lead to another thought, image, memory, or fantasy, carrying us away in the stream of one thought proliferating into the next, rather than staying with the knowing frame in which all thoughts are seen with a degree of equanimity, discerned as events with content and emotional charge, and left alone to simply be what they are, momentary events arising, lingering, and dissolving in the mindscape, in the field of awareness itself.

Here, as implied by these verbal descriptions of the process, certain images may be helpful in supporting your practice as long as you don’t cling to them or take them too literally. For instance, if we imagine our thoughts and emotions as a ceaseless river that is flowing endlessly, whether we are meditating or not, whether we are observing it or not, it can be helpful at times to think of the practice as an invitation to sit by the bank and listen to its endless bubbles, gurgles, and eddies, its voices, images, and stories, rather than be caught up in them and carried downstream. We can sit on the bank of our own mindstream, and by listening to its voices, come to know it, how it behaves, and what it carries in ways we never could if we are perpetually caught up in it. This is a direct and effective way to investigate the nature of the mind using your own mind as both the tool and the object of the investigation.

Another related image that people find useful is that of the cascading mind, as if the stream of our thoughts and emotions were flowing over a high cliff, producing a great waterfall. We can imagine that there is a cave behind the curtain of water and spray, within which we can sit and watch and listen to the stream of thoughts and emotions, perhaps perceiving at least some of them as individual water droplets, as discrete events within the chaotic complexity of falling water, individual events that can be seen and felt and known without falling into the gushing torrent itself and being carried away by it, without even getting soaked by the spray. We remain cozy and dry, just being with, just knowing each mind event, each bubble, as it appears, lingers, and dissolves.

Another image that may be helpful in attending mindfully to thoughts and emotions is that of observing an endless procession of cars on a street below, as if seen from behind a high window. Our assignment is to simply note dispassionately the car that is below the window in this moment. Since the cars may be old or new, fancy or plain, rare or common, electric or not, the mind may wind up thinking about one car long after it has passed, fantasizing about it, or wondering about it in relationship to other cars seen or unseen, or other car manufacturers, currently in business or long gone. If one car has sentimental value, for whatever reason, the mind might find its way into memories of pleasant or unpleasant family outings one had as a child, or leap to dreaming about the next car one hopes to buy, or reflecting on global warming and perhaps doing without an automobile. In any event, hundreds of cars may have gone by unnoticed because we were carried away by our preoccupation with one that happened to get the thought-stream going. Whenever that happens, we note as best we can what the chain of events was that carried us away. We note where we are now, and we pick up once again with the car that is front and center in our frame of reference right now. This is guaranteed to happen over and over again.

Whatever image or process you choose to employ, watching our thoughts and feelings is extremely difficult because they proliferate so wildly, and because, even though insubstantial and evanescent, they do fabricate our very reality, our story of who and what we are, and of what we care about and what has meaning for us; and because they come laden with emotional tie-ins that are none other than our mostly unexamined habits for insuring our survival and making sense of the world and our place in it.

As a consequence, we are usually very attached to many if not most of our thoughts and feelings, whatever they are, and simply relate to their content unquestioningly, as if it were the truth, hardly ever recognizing that thoughts and feelings are actually discrete events within the field of awareness, tiny and fleeting occurrences that are usually at least somewhat if not highly inaccurate and unreliable. Our thoughts may have a degree of relevance and accuracy at times, but often they are at least somewhat distorted by our self-centered and self-cherishing inclinations, such as our ambitions, our aversions, and our overriding tendency to ignore or be deluded by both our ambition and our aversions, and also perhaps by unacknowledged self-righteousness at times.

And then there is the practice of choiceless awareness.

Given that the field of awareness we have been cultivating through the various practices described above is fundamentally limitless by nature, we can expand our awareness still further, beyond even attending specifically to the stream of our own thoughts and emotions arising and passing away in each moment. We can, instead, allow the field of awareness to be essentially infinite, boundless, like space itself, or like the sky, noting that it can include any and all aspects of our experience, interior and exterior, sensory, perceptual, somatic, emotional, cognitive as primary objects of attention, and that we can rest in this vast, sky-like field of awareness without choosing among or specifically featuring any of these particular occurrences. Instead, we allow them all to come and go, appear and disappear, as they will, and be known in their fullness from moment to moment within the nowscape.

This is the practice of what Krishnamurti called choiceless awareness, akin to the practice of shikan-taza, or “just sitting—nothing more” in Zen, and to Dzogchen in the Tibetan tradition. The Buddha called it the themeless concentration of awareness. The mind itself, once cultivated in this way, has the ability instantly to know and recognize what is arising, whatever it is, as it is arising, and instantly discern its true nature. With the arising, it is known non-conceptually by the mind itself, as if the sky knew the birds and the clouds and the moonlight within it. And in that knowing, with no attachment, no aversion, in that knowing in this very moment of now, the event, the sensation, the memory, the thought bubble in the stream, the feeling of hurt or sadness, or anger, or joy “self-liberates,” as the Tibetans like to say, like touching a soap bubble, but with the mind, or, put differently, dissipates naturally in the knowing, like “writing on water.”

This being human is a guest-house

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you

out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

RUMI, “The Guest House”
Translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne