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Introduction to Mindfulness & Meditation Session 4 Handout

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Introduction to Mindfulness & Meditation Session 4 Handout Introduction to Mindfulness & Meditation Session 4 Handout Sometimes people think that the point of meditation is to stop thinking — to have a silent mind. This does happen occasionally, but it is not necessarily the point of meditation. Thoughts are an important part of life. Mindfulness practice is not a struggle against thoughts, but overcoming our preoccupation with them. Mindfulness is not thinking about things; it is observation of our life in all its aspects. In those moments when thinking predominates, mindfulness is the clear and silent awareness that we are thinking. Thoughts can come and go as they wish, and the meditator does not need to become involved with them. In meditation, when thoughts are subtle and in the background, or when random thoughts pull you away from awareness of the present, it is enough to resume mindfulness of breathing. However, when your preoccupation with thoughts is stronger than your ability to easily let go of them, then direct your mindfulness to being clearly aware that thinking is occurring. Sometimes thinking can be strong and compulsive even while we are aware of it. When this happens, notice how such thinking is affecting your body, physically and energetically. Let your mindfulness feel the sensations of tightness, pressure, or whatever you discover. When you feel the physical sensation of thinking, you are bringing attention to the present moment rather than the story line of the thoughts. When a particular theme keeps reappearing in our thinking, it is likely being triggered by a strong emotion. If the associated emotion isn’t recognized, the concern will keep reappearing. For example, people who plan a lot often find that planning thoughts arise out of apprehension. If they do not acknowledge this, the fear will be a factory of new planning thoughts. If there is a repetitive thought pattern, see if you can discover an emotion associated with it, and then practice mindfulness of the emotion. Ground yourself in the present moment in the emotion itself. When you acknowledge the emotion, often it will cease generating those particular thoughts. Thoughts are a huge part of our lives. Many of us spend much time inhabiting the cognitive world of stories and ideas. Mindfulness practice won’t stop the thinking, but it will help prevent us from compulsively following thoughts that have appeared. This will help us become more balanced, so our physical, emotional and cognitive sides all work together as a whole. One of our main objectives in practicing mindfulness is to create a calm and clear mind. Our aim is to be able to see clearly, to see things as they really are, so that we can be wise and effective in life, understand others, and be compassionate. There are four mindfulness practices with regards to thinking that can help us with this: (1) The first practice is to ask ourselves, “Are you sure?” Many of our perceptions are erroneous and cause suffering. You might write, “Are you sure?” on a large piece of paper and hang it where we will see it often. Perhaps it would make a good screen saver as well. 2 (2) The second practice is to ask ourselves, “What am I doing?” Although the answer might seem obvious—“I am feeding the birds”, this question counters the habit of rushing into the future. It returns us to the present moment. Asking, “What am I doing?” can also reveal the extent to which our thoughts are conditioned—if not created—by whatever we are doing. Having that awareness, we may be less inclined to believe our passing thoughts or lose ourselves in speculation. (3) The third practice is to say, “Hello, habit energy.” By “habit energies” we mean our habitual patterns of thinking and behaving. To become aware of those energies is often to diminish their power. Insofar as we can recognize the habitual components in our thinking, we can respond with wisdom rather than react with reflexive judgment. (4) The fourth practice involves becoming aware of our deep, heart-felt aspirations for life and setting our intentions so that they become the basis of our thinking. When we get in touch with and generate a deep wish to cultivate love and understanding for ourselves and others, it guides us towards compassionate speech and action. We can begin each day evoking these aspirations and setting our specific intentions for the day. We might ask ourselves, what qualities of mind do I want to generate today? Clarity, kindness, compassion, ease, mindfulness, gratitude, joy, determination, equanimity? We can set our intentions each morning, for example: May I be kind today to all I meet. May I experience each moment fully. May I practice understanding and compassion today. May I be helpful to those in need. May I smile in gratitude for the blessings in my life. May I be clear, calm, and focused when I take the test today. May I be kind and honest, listen deeply, and contribute to others in the meeting that I attend today. Home Practice on Thoughts and Gratitude: For the next week, try to extend your daily meditation session to 30 minutes. For at least the first ten minutes, focus on the breath. When some other experience gets in the way of being with the breath, simply let it go and come back to the breath. Then switch to more open mindfulness by continuing with the breath until something else becomes more compelling. When physical sensations, emotions or thinking predominate focus your awareness on these. When nothing else is compelling, come back to the breathing. Spend some time reflecting on the assumptions, attitudes and beliefs you have about your thoughts. Do you assume that they are either true false, right or wrong? Do you identify with your thoughts? Do you think that what you think defines who you are? Do you believe that your thinking will solve your problems or that it is the only means to understand something? Once during the next week, spend an hour period tracking the kinds of things you think about. Find some way to remind yourself every few minutes to notice what you are thinking. Are the thoughts primarily self-referential or primarily about others? Critical or judgmental? What is the frequency of thoughts of “should” or “ought”? Are the thoughts directed to the future, to the past, or toward fantasy? Are they optimistic or pessimistic? Stressful or peaceful? Contented or dissatisfied? Filled with gratitude or not? This is not an exercise in judging what you notice, but in simply noticing--in stepping outside of the thought-stream to take up residence in a mindful awareness that is bigger than the thinking mind. Using a journal for reflection may be useful. 3 During the week, try to apply the four mindfulness practices related to thinking: (1) Am I sure? (2) What am I doing? (3) Hello, habit energy, and (4) evoking aspirations and setting intentions so that they become a basis for our thoughts and actions. Open Awareness There is another aspect of mindfulness meditation that helps us develop the strong stable awareness that brings calmness and clarity to our minds. This aspect of mindfulness is called open attention, choiceless awareness, resting in awareness or moment-to-moment awareness. These are all good names because they are all descriptive of this practice. In this practice, instead of intentionally keeping attention focused on one object, such as the breath or an emotion or thoughts, awareness is open to whatever is arising in the mind. This is called choiceless awareness because we are sitting with no agenda about what to be mindful of or where to direct our attention. The mind is just present to whatever comes up. This may be sensation such as sights, sounds, smells, or sensations in the body. Or it may be mental phenomena like memories and thoughts. Some of the phenomena that arise may seem very compelling—intense emotions, such as fear and anger; bodily discomfort; strong memories, beliefs, desires and resistances. Some may be subtle—ephemeral thoughts, faint sensations in the body, mild irritation. Our habitual mind wants to reach out to these sensations and emotions and thoughts with like or dislike, to see them as pleasant or unpleasant, to start commenting on them, start spinning a story. But instead we can learn to keep our mind still and steady, open and spacious without rejecting, grasping onto, reacting, commenting, or trying to control anything. We just observe whatever is present in the mind, whatever is arising moment-to-moment, with an attitude of complete openness and receptivity. The more we practice resting in awareness, the more we will begin to see the true nature of all the mental phenomena that arise in our mind as transitory; insubstantial, without any inherent reality; and impersonal. In this practice we are learning to turn our attention away from the content of the mind (sensations, thoughts etc.) and toward the process of awareness itself. Our aware mind, pure awareness, becomes more familiar to us, more tangible and real. We learn to be less entangled with the discursive mind. This is a very different way of being in the world, of relating to the world and to our minds. We cultivate choiceless awareness during sitting meditation in order to bring it into our everyday life, so we live in the world just present to our life as it unfolds. This has been called a “being mode” of mind. We’re still doing in the world, but from a place of awareness, of presence. Many people have learned to do this and to live with greater presence, steadiness and well-being.
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