My teachers taught me about the mind using two principal techniques: meditation and contemplation. The intent of both is to understand the mind and realize where the source of our contentment lies, but they use different mental faculties:
In this book, we focus on meditation. But this doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with thinking and analyzing. They just aren’t our objective when it comes to meditation.
Meditation and contemplation are in fact complementary practices. The mental agility and pliability of the mind that we develop in our meditation practice, as well as the ability to remain undistracted, are useful skills when applied to contemplative practice.
Combining the two practices is like the way candlelight is used to read a book—the light must be still and bright. If the candle is still but not bright, we can’t read the page. If the light is bright but flickers here and there, we can’t read it either. Both stillness and brightness are needed. Similarly, to understand our mind deeply, the training of single-pointed concentration in meditation brings stillness, and the use of our contemplative intellect offers us illuminating insight.
In coming to know the mind, my teachers first taught me meditation because they emphasized the importance of single-pointed concentration and not being distracted. Once I had some degree of stability in resting in a non-distracted state, they had me alternate between meditation and contemplation. In a 40-minute session, for example, they suggested I meditate for the first half on my breath, or follow the other practices we have covered in this book. And then, for the next half of the session, remaining in the same meditation posture, I used the calm and collected mind to think about a question or topic. Some questions were more about the process of inquiry rather than arriving at a specific answer, such as “Where do thoughts come from, abide, and dissolve to?” or “Where is my mind located?” or “What is awareness?” I would sit for 20 minutes or so and contemplate the question, using the rope of mindfulness to rein my mind back to the topic as necessary. Then, at the conclusion of the meditation and contemplation practice, I would relax my mind completely and rest for short while, and then dedicate whatever virtue or understanding had arisen to the benefit of others.
One practical way to contemplate our meditation practice is to assess our efforts and any benefits derived from them. For example, we might contemplate the following questions, taking a frank look at our mind, attitude, and actions:
You can be creative with the questions you ponder. But you may need to be careful not to indulge the habit of self-criticism that sometimes comes when we look inwardly and think about ourselves. It is important not to criticize ourselves for anything that we may discover in our contemplation. At the same time, honestly assessing our practice is integral to the path of introspection.
One last suggestion on how to enhance your understanding of meditation by using contemplation is to write in your meditation journal. Putting pen to paper often helps clarify thinking. After you contemplate the questions above, or others that you find important, try writing down your insights in your meditation journal.
The next meditation we’ll practice is known as Spacious Out-breath. It is unlike our previous meditation practice in that the object that we rest our attention upon is not as defined as, for example, the breath, or sensations, or even sound. While our previous meditations tended to refine our concentration and attention, Spacious Out-breath promotes a greater sense of relaxation, even while we are being attentive.
The practice allows our awareness to mingle with the spacious gap at the end of our exhalation and can give us a glimpse into the profound state of awareness that is free of concepts. This is not, however, a practice of spacing out. Rather, we are abiding with an expanded sense of awareness, even though there isn’t a “thing” upon which we fix our focus.
When we practice like this, we may have a sense that our awareness is unbound, even limitless. We might also experience how, when thinking begins, our awareness constricts tightly around a thought. In this sense, we can see how our thinking binds us, and how any panoramic awareness of the present moment is lost when we do it.
One of the effects of the practice of Spacious Out-breath is a kind of useful detachment from those things and situations around us that usually provoke anger, jealousy or negative emotions in us. This detachment arises when the power that thoughts, emotions, and external stimulation have over us wanes. The alternative is to be ruled by our thoughts or situations, or our reactions to them, which will only result in repeated cycles of dissatisfaction.
Detachment doesn’t mean becoming uncaring, disconnected, or numb. Quite the contrary—it allows us to see our mind and our ever-changing world with clarity and have the discernment to act with compassion for others and for ourselves.
The practice of Spacious Out-breath tends to have a deeply calming effect on body and mind, and sometimes we can drift into a sleepy, lethargic, or sluggish state during it. We aim to be always fine-tuning our practice to balance attentiveness with relaxation, but for some individuals, a common obstacle to their meditation practice is feeling drowsy, and Spacious Out-breath is so relaxing that people sometimes fall asleep. So here are some suggestions you can use if your mind becomes drowsy. These can be used for this meditation practice or any other time you are feeling sleepy in your practice.
Find a comfortable seated posture on the floor or in a chair, or perhaps lie down if you have pain in some part of your body. Arrange your body so that your foundation is steady and grounded. Allow your spine to be comfortably elongated and tuck your chin under slightly. Cast your gaze downwards if your eyes are open, or gently close them. Relax completely all the muscles of your face and shoulders, and let your belly be loose and not holding any tension at all.
To establish a motivation for today’s practice, perhaps you can think:
May today’s meditation practice generate an open heart and clarity of mind, so that I can interact with my family, my community, and beyond in a mindful and compassionate way.
Take two or three deep breaths—full inhalations into your chest and up to your collarbones, and then relaxing exhalations.
Having arranged your body in a comfortable stillness, bring your mind into your body. Feel its steadiness and motionlessness. For a few minutes, allow your attention to hover within and around your body and simply feel the most prominent sensations. Relax deeply.
Then gently turn your attention to your breath. Locate your breath wherever you feel it most strongly—maybe around your nostrils, in your chest, or in your belly. Just rest your attention there.
Feel the rising inhalation of your breath. And watch the descending exhalation.
Notice the texture of your breath, and if it is long or short. However it is, allow it to come and go naturally as you maintain a witnessing mode of attention.
Continue to relax your body while noticing your breath … breathing in, breathing out. Balance your attentive effort with ease.
Next, while keeping your body completely still, pay attention to the end of the exhalation, and, in particular, to the gap that opens momentarily before you breathe in. You don’t have to hold your breath or breathe out more strongly or manipulate your breath in some other way, just notice the slight pause, the moment, as the out-breath moves into space.
Rest in the spacious out-breath and then, as you breathe in, you can follow the inhalation … and then once again merge your awareness with the spacious out-breath.
When your awareness rides your breath outwardly into that space, there’s no need to do anything. Just abide there in space. And, as long as you are abiding in that gap, spacious and alert, remain there.
There may be some awareness of sound, or thoughts, or happenings around you, but just remain open.
Body still. Breath is natural. Mind is relaxed and attentive.
Continue to explore the spacious out-breath.
Be mindful to breathe naturally. Allow your breath to come and go, like a vast ocean that ebbs and flows.
When you start to think or get distracted, gently bring your attention back to your breath. Watch it come and go a few times, in and out, and then on an out-breath, again, rest in the spacious gap at the end of the breath.
Practice like this for the next 10–15 minutes.
As you do so, it’s important not to try to block or suppress anything. The world around you can arise and pass, and thoughts too can come and go, but remain following your breath and then repeatedly resting in the spacious gap at the end of the out-breath.
To conclude your practice, on an out-breath, release any mental effort of focusing on the breath, and completely relax in silent stillness for a minute or so.
And to bring your meditation practice to an auspicious close, perhaps you can think:
Through my meditation practice today, may I gather the needed strength and clarity to shine more compassion and love into the world.
I think it is significant that when we look at the life of great spiritual masters, we often see that they had profound insights while out of doors. When we read their biographies, we find that so many of them found solace, inspiration, and spiritual insights when they were in mountains, deserts, and forests.
Bring to mind for a moment the saints, yogis, and spiritual masters who have inspired you. I think of Saint Francis of Assisi walking barefoot in the woodlands of Umbria, or Sri Ramana Maharshi meditating in caves on Mount Arunachala, or the Zen monk Han Shan carving his poems into stone in the mountains he wandered through in eastern China.
I met one Buddhist monk in eastern Tibet who had taken a vow never to take a meal or sleep under a roof—he said it was to cultivate non-attachment to food and a home so he wouldn’t be distracted from meditating! He had wandered in the mountains and lived in a simple pop-up canvas tent or in caves for his whole adult life. People who respected this monk told me that he “chose clouds as his clothes, and meditation as his sustenance.”
Consider for a moment those individuals who have inspired you and where they went to meditate, to contemplate, to look deeply into themselves. Perhaps write about one of them in your meditation journal. Most likely they didn’t find their inspiration inside a monastery, temple, church, or mosque, but rather in the wilderness, with the wide sky above them.
Henry David Thoreau discovered this and wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberatively, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discovered that I had not lived.”
Indeed, four of the most significant moments in the life of the Buddha happened under trees—his birth, his awakening, his first teaching (and many afterwards), and his passing. He suggested many times to his disciples that an ideal location for meditation was in the forest.
The saints of the past lived at a different pace than we do today and weren’t inundated with the sensory stimulation of the modern world. Still, we have a choice, though it may take some self-discipline not to be continually distracted by all the stimulation.
This is precisely why getting outside is so important. We all know the rejuvenating effect and the deep rest that come from just taking a walk in the park or hiking by a river. So, why not engage in meditation beyond the comfort of our living room or meditation shrine? The simplicity of being in the natural world with open air and running water and feeling the dirt beneath our feet can be healing medicine for the mind.
Coupled with the invigorating effects of being out of doors, it is of critical importance to unplug from our computer screens and smartphones for a period of time each day—or longer! If our intention in meditation is to develop a panoramic vision externally and internally, then we must allow that to unfold from within. Screens, emails, and social media commandeer our awareness, constrict our attention, and sap our vitality. Try leaving your smartphone at home and go outside.
As for a meditation practice outside, you can engage in any of the practices in this book. In addition, let me suggest two objects upon which to rest your attention.
First, try using the sky as an object of meditation. As you have already learned, first assume your meditation posture, either seated or lying down, and after calming the body and mind with scanning the body or breathing meditation, move your attention toward the sky. Gaze into the boundless sky that has no edges. Merge your awareness with the vastness of the sky.
Of course you may drift into a thought loop, or perhaps begin to fade away or kind of space out. When this happens, revive your meditation and return to the merging of your awareness with the sky.
A second object to use for your meditation practice, especially if you are sitting in your garden or in a forest, is the space between leaves, or perhaps the space between trees.
Our habit is to look at an object, like a tree or flower. But here we allow our awareness to merge into the space or the gaps between them. It may be that you rest your attention in the space between you and the trees in front of you.
I received this meditation practice from a Native American medicine man on a park bench in Wyoming. He told me:
Train to see what is between us and the tree. Don’t focus on the twigs themselves, but slide your mind around the branches. Don’t pay attention to the flickering foliage, but look at the space between the leaves. That space is where we meet our maker, and is pregnant with possibility. Anything can arise there. That space is the mother of the tree; it is the mother of you and of me.
Remember that if you can begin and close your meditation practice with a brief intention and dedication, it makes your practice all the more powerful.
You may have experienced in your meditation practice how there is sometimes a gap, or a space, between stimulation—a sound, sight, or thought—and your response to that stimulation. It is a moment when you haven’t reacted and remain completely present, relaxed, and aware. This moment or gap is very instructive.
Often our reactions seem automatic. We don’t even recognize the moment between stimulation and response. But in meditation we can practice resting in this gap with relaxed awareness, rather than being pulled in one direction by our attachment or pushed in another by our aversion. Recognizing that there is this gap, and then repeatedly familiarizing ourselves with it, becomes a precious moment, because in this space lies our power to choose our response, or to choose not to respond at all.
The next meditation practice is known as Resting in the Space between Thoughts. The practice is to rest our awareness in the gap at the conclusion of one thought before another thought has formed. Some thoughts are quick and snappy, while others linger in the mind. Whatever the case, when one thought has ceased and before another has arisen, in that space, that gap, we can allow our attention to rest. Our awareness is poured into that space, like water being poured into water, and we can explore that moment deeply. Inevitably, another thought will arise at some point, and so the practice continues.
It may be that when we explore the space after one thought has ceased, when we abide in the gap, no other thoughts arise for a while. If this happens, we can allow our awareness to expand and abide in its natural state.
Resting in the space between thoughts can become a practice of not “doing” anything at all, except resting the mind in its natural, expansive, relaxed state. This kind of meditation practice is indeed a unique time, because of this “not doing.” We know that our mind is always doing something—always thinking something, continually occupied with planning and strategizing. If we aren’t looking at our friends’ latest Facebook post or newsfeeds on our smartphones or iPads, our mind is being lured by advertisements on the radio, TV, or in magazines. But when we rest our awareness in its natural state in the gap between thoughts, mental fixations lose their purchase and get no traction. It is as if our mind has been wound up tighter and tighter and is finally released, like a snake uncoiling itself.
There is a beautiful example that nearly every one of my Tibetan Buddhist meditation teachers has used to describe the effect of this practice. It involves the imagery of a mountain stream. At some point in a stream’s journey, the water flows into a clear and transparent pool. If you were to put your hand in the pool and stir the water, sediment from the bottom would rise and cloud the water. But if you were to let the water be and not stir it, the sand would settle to the bottom and the pool would return to being clear.
The clarity of the pool of water is like the natural resting-place of awareness—crystal-clear and pristine. But our continually chasing after thoughts and indulging our habitual responses alters the mind, stirring and clouding our awareness in such way that its natural clarity is obscured. Resting in the space between thoughts allows what is veiling our awareness to settle, and what emerges is our unaltered clarity and intelligence.
Assume your relaxed meditation posture on the floor or in a chair, or lie down. Situate your body so that your spine maintains its natural comfortable curve as you pull your shoulders back, relax your face completely, and allow your belly to be loose and not holding any tension. Let your eyes be very relaxed, either open or closed, and not darting here and there.
Feel the steadiness of your feet, legs and hips. And rest your body in stillness.
Take a few deep breaths, inhaling all the way up to your collarbones and relaxing into a deep exhalation. Then let your breath return to its natural ebb and flow.
Turn your attention to your body as it sits motionless. Just notice how it feels right now. Feel the tactile sensations for a few moments.
Then take in the sounds around you. Again, just notice them for a few moments—there’s no need to think about them or do anything except witness them.
Then observe whatever visual stimulation you see. Whether your eyes are open or closed, just notice whatever shapes, colors, lightness, or darkness you see.
Then note the tastes on your palette and whatever scents are around you.
Upon noticing something with your five senses, just let it be as it comes and goes around you.
Then turn your attention to the space of your mind. In a very relaxed manner, look at the space where thoughts, emotions, and mental images move. Observe whatever is there. There’s no need to think about any of the thoughts or try to stop thoughts from arising.
When a thought occurs, watch its course. Thoughts tend to arise, remain in the space of our awareness for some time, and then dissolve. Watch this arising and dissolution.
And as you watch the arising and dissolution of thoughts, notice the space at the end of a thought before another thought begins. Look into that space, that gap.
While remaining very relaxed and very alert, allow your awareness to pervade that space completely. Remain there for however long you abide undistracted. Mingle your awareness with that space like water being poured into water.
Inevitably, another thought will arise, or you will follow a thought and begin thinking. No problem. When this happens, release the thinking, relax and return to the witness mode of bare attention, watching the arising and dissolution of thoughts, and then dive into the gap at the end of a thought, before another thought occurs. Rest there.
The gap between thoughts may be momentary, or it may last longer. It doesn’t matter. Repeatedly return to and explore the space between thoughts.
If you become drowsy or your mind sinks in some manner, revive your meditation by sitting up straight, or try meditating with your eyes open.
Continue to watch the space of the mind and rest in the gap between thoughts.
A pool of water, if you don’t stir it, becomes clear. Similarly, the mind, left unaltered, finds its natural clarity.
After 15 or 20 minutes of meditation, while keeping your body very still, release any effort to meditate, and rest in silent stillness for a few minutes.
You may dedicate your practice by thinking:
Through my practice of meditation, may I find space in my heart to care for all other beings.