As our meditation practice develops, once our body is calm and able to remain motionless, our thoughts and emotions tend to slow down slightly. Then we apply a method of concentration, like observing bodily sensations or our breath, and use the rope of mindfulness to bring ourselves back when we become distracted.
We also cultivate a spaciously relaxed disposition while meditating. And as we develop single-pointed concentration, a non-distracted state of being arises.
After honing our ability to remain non-distracted, we are then able to direct our attention to our present experience with a panoramic awareness.
During this process, we are coming to know our mind, and may have glimpses of reality as it is—beyond our thoughts and emotions and interpretations. But often it is just a glimpse. What will allow those glimpses of reality to become more sustained?
Instead of seeing reality as it is, we are often ruminating about past experiences or embroiled in thinking about the future. Both of these habits obscure seeing reality. The past no longer exists and the future has not arisen. Our task in meditation is to awaken fully to the ever-changing flow that we call the present moment.
As the Buddha said in the Auspicious Day Discourse (Bhaddekaratta Sutta):
No need to chase after the past
or place expectations on the future.
What is past
is left behind.
The future
has not arisen.
Look deeply at life as it is.
In the very here and now,
the meditator develops the heart dwelling in stability and freedom.
Death can come at any time.
This cannot be disputed.
A practitioner who dwells thus mindfully aware, throughout the day and night, knows the most auspicious way to live.
In dwelling mindfully aware in the present moment, we reclaim the power that fear and hope have taken away from us.
It is important to remember that meditation is not a singular occurrence. It is not something we “get” once and then return to. There is no “it” to “get” in meditation practice. What is to be found in meditation is a continual renewal of our awareness in the present moment, which is never the same and always changing. Coming to know our mind is an eternally unfolding process, a peeling away, like pulling back the layers of an onion, one after another, moment by moment, day by day.
Feelings, experiences, emotions, and the like come and go while we are meditating. Many of the insights we have during meditation arise simply through watching the fleeting arising and dissolution of our ephemeral ideas, thoughts, and emotions. Even when we have profound experiences in meditation, such as bodily bliss, vivid clarity, or states of no-thought, they too are impermanent, so we are not trying to return to them. Rather, we are returning to a given method of meditation, through which fresh insights will continually arise from within us.
Strive on! Relax, relax, alert, alert!
Find a comfortable seated meditation posture. Or, if you have some kind of pain or need support, arrange yourself in a supine position.
However you situate yourself, work to bring a steadiness and fresh alertness into your posture with a spine that is straight but not stiff, and eyes that are softly shut or gazing downward without moving.
Relaxing your body, take a few deep breaths—full inhalations, relaxing exhalations. Then return to natural breathing.
Body still. Breath natural. Mind at ease.
To extend your practice beyond yourself, bring to mind a person or a group of people, or a situation, whose suffering you would like to alleviate. Having brought them to mind, perhaps think:
By the power and truth of my meditation practice today, may all beings everywhere enjoy happiness and its causes, and may they be free from suffering and its causes.
Now bring your awareness into your body, your entire body, as a composite whole. Feel for a few moments the physical sensations of your body. Notice if there is any tension in your face, shoulders, or belly, and relax.
Then, slowly scan your body and notice any tactile sensations. Feel first the parts of your body that are touching the floor. Notice the sensations on the bottom or sides of your feet, the sides of your ankles, and the sides of your knees. Just feel the sensations, and maybe notice if they are shifting or changing in any way.
Then feel your sit-bones pressing into your seat. Pressure, hardness, softness—whatever the sensations are, just notice them. Remain open and relaxed and attentive.
Then bring your attention to your straight spine. Slowly scan up your spine, over your sacrum, lower and mid-back, shoulders, and the back of your neck. Then spread your awareness over the back of your head, including behind your ears, and arrive at the top of your head. What sensations are you noticing? Vibrating, pulsating, buzzing, numbness? Whatever is happening, just notice it.
Now scan slowly down the front side of your body. Feel your forehead and temple region and examine the sinus region, moving into the head. If you feel any tension, relax and release.
Feel your eyes, cheeks, jaw, and lips. Assume a smile inside your mouth to relax your face and the back of your throat.
Moving down over your chin and chest, arrive in your belly region. Allow this to be loose and relaxed. There’s no need to hold in any tension.
Now, staying in your belly region, turn your attention to your breath. Breathe naturally. Notice the movement in and out with each breath. Feel the sensations that come and go in your belly region while you are breathing. Allow your attention to remain here, observing the breath for a minute or so.
If the mind wanders off on a thought loop, no problem. Release the thinking, relax fully and with the rope of mindfulness, return to the practice. Release, relax, and return.
Next, move your attention to your chest and feel your breath. There’s no need to name or think about what you sense. Rather, dive into the direct experience. Follow the movement up and down with each inhalation and exhalation. Pressure and tightness, openness and looseness—just feel whatever is there.
Practice like this for a few minutes.
Now locate the movement of your breath in your nostrils. Notice the feeling during the inhalation, the slight pause, and then the exhalation. Sense the temperature of your breath, its texture, and where exactly it is moving in your nostrils (or just one of your nostrils). Again, completely immerse yourself in the experience of breathing, while remaining very relaxed, very alert.
Practice this way for a few minutes. If you become distracted, release the thinking, relax, and return to the breath.
Finally, continuing to keep your body very still, release the mental effort that you have exerted to follow your breath. Rest naturally in open spacious stillness for a short while.
To conclude your practice on an auspicious note, perhaps you can think:
Through my effort in meditation, may I gain clarity of mind and a kinder heart so that I may bring more peace to my family, my community, and beyond.
Every time we take time to meditate in a formal session, we cultivate stillness, silence, and awareness. Combined, these three aspects of our practice balance relaxation and attentiveness within us. It is in this balance that we come to know our mind.
What is stillness? Outwardly it is maintaining a motionless body. We arrange our body in such a position that it is alert and relaxed, and we need not fuss about anything. Then our body remains steady and firm like a mountain.
The stillness of the body is established primarily through the stable foundation of the legs and hips and the comfortably straight spine. Allow your spine to have its natural curve.
Inwardly, stillness is cultivated by focusing our attention on our body or breath. This supports the establishment of an internal stillness.
As for silence, outwardly this means a pause from speaking, just like a guitar string that has been severed. Letting go of our need, or habit, to comment verbally gives space for our internal commentator, that voice in our head, that voice of criticism, to rest and find its own comfort in quietude.
The French physicist and Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal was onto something profound when he wrote in Thoughts (Pensées), “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
As for awareness, we allow our mind to be relaxed and be spacious like the sky, while at the same time our awareness is wakeful and keenly attentive to the object of our concentration.
Too much relaxation in the practice can result in lethargy of the mind, sleepiness or grogginess. While there might not be a lot of distraction, there is no concentration.
Too tight attention, on the other hand, can cause agitation in the mind, pushing us toward stressful conceptualization and creating even more thought loops.
So, in each session, we seek a balance between relaxation and concentration, and it will vary from session to session. You will need to find that balance for yourself in a gentle and kind manner.
Here’s another way to think about your disposition when you are meditating and how much you concentrate and how much you relax:
You need to find that balance between attention, vigilance, and spaciousness in your practice. The above percentages are just general guidelines and, as you develop your meditation practice, you’ll find that sometimes you need more spaciousness and need to relax your attention, while at other times, perhaps if you are sleepy, you’ll want to turn up your attention and vigilance. You can become your own doctor and prescribe which of the three is needed at any given time.
It may be good to write in your journal about finding the balance between attention, vigilance, and spacious relaxation.
Mindfulness has truly gone mainstream and is now being taught in schools, hospitals, and the corporate workplace. All kinds of media outlets, from Time and Newsweek to The Guardian, CNN, and the BBC, regularly report on the latest scientific research on the effects of mindfulness, and governments fund major research on the topic. Mindfulness courses are taught to young people in YMCAs, prisoners in state penitentiaries, and the world corporate élite at Davos. You can find mindfulness courses paired with nearly any activity, including “Mindfulness and Photography,” “Mindfulness and Wine Tasting,” “Intimate and Mindful Relationships” and even “Mindful Pet Care.” There are slick mindfulness boutiques in capital cities, where you can pop in for wheatgrass shot before grabbing your mindful moment with noise-cancelling earphones. Super-star athletes talk about how mindfulness improves their performance on the court, while rock stars and actors tell us how it helps them relax from the stress of being a celebrity.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, is the individual who is most responsible for introducing mindfulness practice into the mainstream culture of the West, including hospitals and medical facilities. He writes:
Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to be present; inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.
Mindfulness is a mental skill that anyone can develop and use in any situation, and I’ve no doubt that in some way it helps nearly everyone who brings it into their life. But I want to delve into this singular topic a little further here, so that we can place it properly within our overall practice of meditation, because it is only part of the story.
First, let’s remember the definition of mindfulness that Asanga gave us in the fourth century, which is “the non-forgetfulness of the mind with regard to a familiar object. Its function is non-distraction.”
When applied to the practice of meditation, mindfulness is returning to our chosen object of concentration whenever we are distracted. We all know that when we sit down to meditate and focus on bodily sensations or the breath, our mind tends to do one of three things—either it is agitated and starts to think about something else, or it becomes bored and drops into lethargy, or it wants to sleep. Mindfulness counters all these tendencies. In other words, it is an antidote to distraction.
How does this antidote work? Mindfulness is effective because inherent within it is a specific plan of action:
This is the game plan for mindfulness and how it is an antidote to distraction.
But there is more to our practice than just mindfulness. Remember that in the Buddhist and Hatha Yoga traditions, mindfulness and concentration were usually only taught to students after they had established a firm ethical and moral footing. The reason for this is that mindfulness practice, which leads to a pliable mind with single-pointed concentration abilities, is by itself neutral—neutral in the sense that a person can use it in any activity, including those that might be harmful.
To guard against our mindfulness and concentration skills being used to increase our anger, greed, or negative behavior, we adjust our attitude at the beginning of each session to remind ourselves that we are meditating not only for our own benefit but that so we might bring more love and compassion into the world. And, at the end, we direct the positive energy from our practice to the welfare of others through our dedication.
Through repeatedly recalling our motivation and dedication, we are training our mind in altruism and empathy. This moves our mindfulness practice in the direction of, as the Buddha called it, “right mindfulness”—mindfulness that leads towards compassionate action.
Find a comfortable and stable meditation posture. You can sit on the floor or a chair, or lie down. If you are sitting on the ground, steady your hips and legs. If you are in a chair, have your feet flat on the floor. If you are lying down, bend your knees and place your feet flat, or extend your legs with your feet falling away from each other.
In whatever posture you are meditating, find steadiness and comfort. Allow your spine to be straight, your shoulders pulled back and relaxed down, your chin slightly tucked under, the tip of your tongue touching or pointing toward your upper palate, and your eyes gently closed or half-open with a downward gaze.
Body like a mountain, majestic and steady.
Breath like the ocean, natural and vast.
Mind like the sky, clear and open.
Find balance in silence, stillness, and awareness.
Now, having found your motionless posture, you can establish your motivation for this session, perhaps thinking:
May my efforts today at meditation open my heart and mind so that I may understand and more skillfully help others in my family, my community and beyond.
To start, inhale deeply and exhale completely. Just take a few breaths like this and then allow your breath to return to its natural flow.
Gather your mind and bring it into your body. Feel the physical sensations of your body sitting (or lying) still for a few moments. Feel the weight and steadiness of your foundation—whatever is touching the floor. Feel your spine extending upward from your foundation.
Then slowly sweep your attention down the front side of your body, relaxing your face, jaw, shoulders, chest, and belly.
Rest in stillness and feel the sensations of your body for another minute or so.
Then turn your attention to your breath. Locate where you feel it is strongest, perhaps in your nostril or lip region, or chest or belly. Wherever you feel it is most prominent, concentrate your attention there for this session.
Follow the full extent of the inhalation, the slight pause, and the full extent of the exhalation. Once again, dive into everything that is happening with your breath—the texture, temperature, and sensations. Does your breath have a scent or a taste? Follow it into your body and experience it fully.
When your mind moves away from concentrating on your breath, release whatever you are thinking about, relax deeply, and return to the practice.
If you have a running commentary in your mind about the meditation practice, release that voice as well. Every time you release and relax, you are being kind to yourself.
As you continue to follow your breath, on the inhalation, exert a bit more effort to concentrate on the totality of the breath. Focus on it a bit more strongly.
On the exhalation, release and relax, letting go of almost all mental effort.
Then repeat the pattern. On the inhalation, concentrate a bit more strongly; on the exhalation, relax more deeply. Alert, alert. Relax, relax.
Practice in this manner for 10 minutes or longer.
To conclude your meditation, on an exhalation, release and relax. Let go of any and all mental effort, including any idea that you are meditating. Simply remain there with an open presence.
To seal your meditation practice in an auspicious way, perhaps bring to mind a person or a group of people, or a place in the world where there is suffering, and think:
May my efforts today at meditation ripple into the world, bringing waves of peace, love, and joy to every being, near and far.