Meditation Vs. Mindfulness

The opening talk, recorded live, from my Introduction to Meditation course in Denver, CO. A great starting place if you'd like to better understand what meditation is and what it can do for you. In the talk, I break down the difference between meditation and mindfulness, and share how meditation has MADE my life (and how it can make yours too)!

Transcript

The poet,

Dana Faulds,

Wrote the following.

Do not let the day slip through your fingers but live it fully now.

This breath,

This moment,

Catapulting you into full awareness.

Time is precious,

Minutes disappearing like water into sand,

Unless you choose to pay attention.

Since you do not know the number of your days,

Treat each as if it is your last.

Be that compassionate with yourself.

That open and loving to others.

That determined to give what is yours to give and to let in the energy and wonder of this world.

Experience everything,

Writing,

Relating,

Eating,

Doing all the little necessary tasks of life as if for the first time,

Pushing nothing aside as unimportant.

You have received these same reminders many times before.

This time take them into your soul.

For if you choose to live this way,

You will be rich beyond measure,

Grateful beyond words,

And the day of your death will arrive with no regrets.

Meditation practice is about living life more fully than our autopilot brain would like us to live.

It's about developing qualities of presence,

Qualities of gratitude,

Of peace,

Of ease,

Of joy,

Of wonder,

All qualities that we have naturally within us,

But that we lose touch with through our conditioning,

Through societal expectations,

Through the trauma experiences that we have.

These are our birthright.

These are available and accessible to us.

Life is truly a gift and it is also truly fleeting.

It doesn't last forever.

This practice,

Meditation practice,

Mindfulness practice,

Is about really,

Really cherishing life and living it fully.

Living each moment with as much vitality and presence as we can muster up.

It's helpful to define the difference between meditation and mindfulness and on your worksheet there are a handful of different definitions that I'd like to draw to your attention.

I've highlighted the ones that I think are most,

That speak most to the way that I perceive this practice,

But as I'll demonstrate in this course with us,

This is an experiment that really is for you to find what works for you,

What makes sense for you,

What lands for you.

So feel free to look over this page after class tonight and pick out any other pieces of definitions that make more sense to you.

I love what Jon Kabat-Zinn says,

Who is the founder of the mindfulness-based stress reduction movement here in America,

Which is a really scientifically integrated approach to mindfulness,

Which does come from the East,

Which does come from traditions abroad.

Jon Kabat-Zinn says,

Mindfulness is awareness cultivated by paying attention in a sustained and particular way.

On purpose,

In the present moment,

And non-judgmentally.

That purposefulness is the intention,

It's the effort put into being here with what is.

Because what happens if we're not putting in any intention?

What does our mind do?

It'll carry on on autopilot,

It will carry on with preconceived notions,

It will carry on with whatever patterns of thinking,

Whatever patterns of feeling,

Whatever patterns of perception that we have learned up until now.

And they're not always the happiest ones.

So it's that purposefulness,

It's that intention that is a key characteristic of mindfulness practice.

The present moment is where life is.

The thinking mind will try to convince us that we exist in the future,

Or that we exist in the past,

But truly life is here in this present moment.

So mindfulness is about cultivating this connection with the present moment.

And finally,

Non-judgment.

The mind will right and wrong things,

As Shakespeare says,

There is no right or wrong,

But words will make it so.

Our thinking mind decides that this is good and this is bad,

And then the associated feelings come rushing in.

Mindfulness practice,

A key characteristic,

So integral to this practice is learning to observe from a more objective place without judgment.

Thich Nhat Hanh,

The revered Vietnamese monk who is a big role model for me,

He was a huge proponent of the peace movement during the Vietnam War,

Good friends with Martin Luther King Jr.

He says,

Mindfulness is the practice of being fully present and alive,

Body and mind united.

It's about being here with life in this moment.

The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley bringing in some more of this scientifically grounded approach and understanding of mindfulness.

I love that they say,

Mindfulness is a moment to moment awareness of our thoughts,

Feelings,

Bodily sensations,

And surrounding environment.

Mindfulness also involves acceptance,

Meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them,

Without believing,

For instance,

That there is a right or wrong way to think or feel in a given moment.

So much of what pains us in life is that judgment,

Is that sense of things should be different than they are.

And it's the beautiful ability to be present with what is without having to judge it,

Without having to make it worse,

Even then sometimes life can be hard,

That really cultivates a sense of peace with life,

That I want to invite for us as a motivation for this practice.

Peace is accessible to all of us.

We can feel more peace in our life.

Raise your hand if you would like to feel more peace in your life.

Yeah,

We would all love to feel more peace in our life.

So that's mindfulness.

There are four foundations of mindfulness and we're going to explore some of these throughout the course.

Mindfulness of the body,

And so our primary practice will be learning to cultivate awareness of the breath,

Cultivate awareness of the body,

Being able to be present with the sensations of the five senses without judgment.

There is mindfulness of feelings.

We can become aware of our full emotional body and we are very emotional human beings.

There's a little rainbow and we can explore all of them.

We'll start to explore some of them here.

Mindfulness of thoughts.

We can become aware of the thinking mind and then finally there's mindfulness of mind states and relationship to experience.

There's a deeper level that we won't go so much into in this course.

So what is meditation?

If mindfulness is this daily life ability to be present with what is,

To experience life through the senses,

To experience thought,

To experience feelings without judgment.

Meditation is the deliberate training of this attention.

It's the deliberate strengthening of this muscle.

Why do we go to the gym?

Inevitably so that we can function and move in a certain way in life.

If you're thinking about training in the gym as a functional activity,

We stay strong so that we can carry our loved ones,

Our children.

We stay strong so that we can walk our dogs.

We stay strong so that we can enjoy activities with the people that we love and do things that feel good in our body.

We train in order to bring that into daily life.

Meditation practice is a constructive commitment to cultivating this awareness of non-judgment,

Of presence,

So that we can feel it more during the day.

As Dana Fold said,

You've received these same reminders many times before.

This time take them into your soul.

We forget.

We forget over and over and over again because we live in a really complex world.

There are a lot of moving pieces.

There are a lot of responsibilities.

There are complicated factors.

We carry so much as human beings.

The brain is designed to dig itself,

Put its head in the sand,

And just chug away.

Mindfulness practice during our daily life is about remembering to turn towards life with this energy of mindfulness.

Meditation as a practice,

Which I want to encourage everybody to find a really loving and accessible commitment to through this course,

Is what helps us remember throughout the day.

We all know what it feels like to feel present.

I'm sure we can all relate to what it feels like to be completely lost in the sauce,

As I like to say.

So if you want to just close your eyes for a moment and just remember a time,

Even today or in this past week,

Where you felt completely chaotic and just perhaps under the water level.

Get a sense of what that feels like in your body.

And now recalling a moment where you felt really,

Truly present,

Really,

Truly alive and awake.

It could be in nature,

It could be a really engaging conversation with a loved one.

It could be listening to a favorite song.

We all know and can connect with that feeling of presence because we feel it throughout our life.

And we can create more of that.

We don't have to just be rocked into presence by magical experiences or the best experiences in life.

We can really learn to feel that level of presence,

That level of fullness,

That level of awakeness in as many moments as we remember throughout our days.

And that,

To me,

Is the motivation for this practice is like this life is beautiful.

And we can learn to live it so fully.

Meditation is a practice.

It is also a skill and a habit.

And you're welcome to open your eyes now if you'd like to,

Or if you'd like to sit and receive with your eyes closed,

You're welcome to as well.

It's a practice.

It is not a one and done.

You don't become a great meditator and then you're done.

It's something that we keep with and we continue to return to.

In the same way that,

You know,

When we build musculature in the gym and we do so to be able to lift our kids or to be able to go for a walk and live our life or to dance.

If we sleep on that,

If we don't stay committed to the cultivation,

To the strengthening of that muscle,

We'll lose track of it.

So what I want to encourage for us in this course is to really see this as something not to necessarily want to be super good at,

But to be something that you feel worthy of your time and effort.

And as you'll see,

It doesn't have to be a lot of time and effort,

But a little bit goes a long way in gearing our attention and gearing our awareness to this presence,

To this ability to be more fully alive and awake,

Grateful,

At ease,

At peace.

We'll go into in a few weeks more so on how meditation and mindfulness practice also makes us more resilient because as we learn to experience not just the joys in life,

We also learn to be more fully with the challenges in life.

Again,

Without that judgment,

They call it the second arrow in Buddhism.

You get hit with an arrow and it hurts,

But we often fire the second arrow.

The second arrow that says,

Oh,

This is not supposed to be this way.

Oh,

I can't do this.

This judgment,

This negative mind,

This criticism.

So much of our suffering is caused by that extra layer of judgment.

And when we learn to soften that layer of judgment and to really just fully be with what is,

Whether it's our anger or sorrow or disappointment,

We build our capacity for this part of being human in a way that softens us and allows us to handle it more resiliently.

So there's this really beautiful aspect of this practice that gives us the strength to be brave and to face the hard parts of life without self-destructing,

Without self-sabotaging,

Without having to repress or suppress.

We can really face life full on.

We're going to go into that more as we work through self-compassion practice and RAIN practice in a few weeks.

I was crunching some numbers today,

Which is a funny way to say this,

But I realized that this is smack dab in the middle of my seven year anniversary from the first ever silent retreat that I went on.

And I started meditating when I lived in New York City.

I was a couple of years out of college and I started to get the sense that life is moving really fast.

And I really wanted to slow down.

I want to be here more fully with it.

And a friend had tipped me off to this app called Headspace and I started a couple minutes a day,

Five minutes a day learning slowly but surely.

And I started to really get a sense of like,

Wow,

This is real.

This is important.

And that's how this practice grows is you get a little taste of the felt experience.

We're going to talk a lot about it,

But we're also going to really feel into it.

We're going to experience it.

Once you start to experience these qualities that you can feel of presence,

Of joy,

Of connection with yourself,

Of connection with life,

Of connection with your loved ones,

It becomes a no brainer to continue investing time and energy into this practice.

And so I knew that I wanted to go on a meditation retreat.

I knew that I wanted to dive a little bit more deeply into this.

And I'm not saying that you need to do this.

You don't need to go on a retreat in order to be a meditator or for meditation to impact you positively,

But it sure as hell deepens your understanding and appreciation for what this practice can do.

And I was really struggling in New York at the time.

I was ready to leave.

I was going to go live abroad in Vietnam in the fall.

And it was February and I looked up the website for Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts and I was like,

Oh,

I'll try to go to one in the summer.

And they were all booked,

All booked except for one that started tomorrow.

And there was one spot left.

And there have been few moments in my life that have felt so natural.

Here we go.

Signed up,

Took my bus ride into the forest of Massachusetts and got picked up by an Uber driver who was a Rastafarian and as far as I can tell an angel because he was speaking all the right language about love and gratitude.

And I arrived last and rushed and settled into this five-day loving kindness retreat.

And we're going to learn loving kindness practice in week three.

And it just blew my heart wide open.

Putting everything down,

The phones,

The responsibilities,

The laptops,

And just showing up to be there with myself,

To be there with this practice,

To commit that to myself.

And it was this beautiful,

Beautiful winter,

Sunny winter,

There was snow in the forest and you could just walk around on the trails and the forest was covered in snow.

Sun was shining through the trees.

And I remember just sitting there quietly,

Not talking,

No distractions,

No TikTok,

No music,

None of the usual things that bring us pleasure.

Just sitting there fully awake and alive,

The sun shining through the trees and this beautiful,

Beautiful,

But simple and peaceful space and just being in awe of life.

In awe of life and recognizing very deeply,

Intimately how important and powerful this practice is in my life.

And I knew in that moment that I would never stray away from it,

That I would always come back to it,

That I would continue to pursue this and commit to this because it made my life better.

And what I want to leave you with is,

You know,

You say more commonly in our vernacular,

Like this saved my life,

You know,

This practice or this experience saved my life.

And in many ways,

Meditation did save my life.

It saved my life from a mundane life,

From a more autopilot and miserable and less authentic life.

But truly it has made my life,

It has made my life more vibrant.

It has made my life more enjoyable.

It has made my life more empowered.

It has,

It has given me the keys to all of the doors that can make a life brilliant and beautiful and cherished.

And I hope to inspire that in you.

I hope to equip you with the tools to be able to build this practice,

This habit,

This skill into your life.

And again,

It doesn't have to be on going on,

You know,

Long meditation retreats.

It can be a few minutes a day and it can make a huge difference.

It does make a huge difference.