Talk: Reframing Distraction In Meditation

This talk is from an in-person Buddhist Recovery Circle workshop titled "Deepening Meditation in Buddhist Recovery." The talk asks us to consider "distractions" in meditation as sensory inputs from what the Buddha noted as our six senses, including the mind. The question explored is this: "Are these sensory inputs outside of our mindful awareness, intruding upon it? Or are they a natural part of our experience in mindful awareness?"

Transcript

This talk,

Reframing Distractions,

Is from a Buddhist Recovery Circle workshop titled Deepening Meditation in Buddhist Recovery.

But I want to talk about distraction in meditation.

We hear sounds.

We have itchy skin.

We've got visual distractions,

The person next to you is shifting posture,

The light shifts,

We have random thoughts happening.

You know,

It's a very common problem,

So never think,

You know,

That you're the only one.

And like I said earlier,

You can't really try to stop those distractions.

When I do,

It just amplifies them,

You know,

Becomes this losing battle for me.

We know that distractions come from our senses.

And the Buddha spoke of six.

The five that we normally consider hearing,

Sound,

Taste,

Tactile sensations.

But he also included the mind as a sixth sense,

That our mind presents us sensory perceptions in the form of thought.

And looked at in that way,

What your mind is showing you or presenting to you during meditation is not necessarily any different than an itch or a pain in your knee or something like that.

It's just a perception,

No more important than the itch.

This is really key because we want to believe that what we're thinking is valuable,

That means something,

That surely we must pay attention to it because,

You know,

We're thinking it,

Right?

If you look at it as a sensory perception,

It's not any different than an itch on your face.

It's not any more valuable,

Not any more important.

Because when we pay attention to these things that we consider distractions,

Including thinking,

You know,

They set us into these patterns of aversion,

Like this,

I wish I didn't have this itch,

Irritation,

Sometimes even resentment for me,

You know,

It's like,

I just don't want this to be happening and I can even become resentful and the next thing I know,

I'm just like,

I'm in this whirlwind,

I'm just spinning.

Some of you may have read some work by Thanassaro Bhikkhu.

Bhikkhu is just a weather-beams monk.

He's a well-known kind of Theravadan monk and author and he wrote that when you follow certain trains of thought,

You develop the habits that go along with it.

So when we react to what we perceive as distractions,

Thanassaro Bhikkhu asks,

Are we developing the thing that our meditation is meant to develop?

Are we developing calm or yoga?

Are we developing mental stability or are we developing restlessness?

So let's see if we can kind of get to the heart of this.

If we're being distracted by our sensory input,

Including thought,

Let's consider the platforms,

If you will,

Through which these sensations present themselves,

What some refer to as the sense doors,

The eyes,

The ears,

The nose,

The tongue,

Our skin and our mind itself.

The sense doors.

Now in the Adhapanasati Sutra,

Which is one of only a few where the Buddha addressed meditation directly,

He asks,

What is the way to develop and practice continuously the method of full awareness of breathing?

And he goes on to say,

It's like this,

The practitioner goes into the forest or to the foot of a tree or to any quiet place,

Sits stably,

Holding his or her body straight and practices like this.

Breathing in,

I know that I'm breathing in.

Breathing out,

I know that I'm breathing out.

We're fortunate to be here today because a quiet place is hard to find these days.

A quiet mind is hard to find these days.

And meditators and meditation teachers,

They acknowledge this and we're urged to learn to skillfully handle these sensory sensations and our perceptions of them that come up during our practice.

And this is where some people talk about the idea of sense restraint.

Now,

If you've heard that before,

I think it's a very misleading phrase.

But within the Buddha's teachings,

Sense restraint is a term that comes up.

I say it's an easily misunderstood expression because we're not really trying to restrain our senses.

We can't.

This is how our bodies work.

We have these five senses,

Or the six senses,

As the Buddha taught with the mind being another one.

And if we're trying to restrain them,

Like I say,

I don't think we can.

I think instead the question is,

Can we allow the sensations that arise,

Including those of the mind,

To simply be part of our practice rather than distractions?

And this really is the meaning of sense restraint,

To not grasp at the characteristics of our sensations,

How that itch feels,

What this emotion feels like.

Not grasp after them,

Not try to push them away,

As though they were somehow outside of our practice,

As though they were somehow outside of our mindfulness,

But to just experience them for what they are.

There's another Buddhist monk.

He's a scholar monk.

I love that phrase.

He's a scholar monk.

Bhikkhu Anayo.

And he writes that our task is not to react to sensorial perceptions in ways that pull us away from our meditation,

From our concentration.

The point,

He says,

Can't be simply to avoid distractions,

To try to ignore them.

Instead,

Anayo teaches,

With a cultivation of mindfulness and awareness of these sensory perceptions,

We can remain within the realm of our experience,

But step out of our reactivity to it.

Let's do that again.

We can remain within the realm of our experience,

But step out of our reactivity to it.

That's a whole different ballgame.

Right?

So there's several things to consider that might help us here.

One of the first,

And I said this before,

Is just to simply drop this idea that somehow silence and calm,

External or internal,

Is something that belongs to us,

Something that we somehow have a right to.

It's just not how it works.

With that attitude,

Naturally,

When our silence internally or externally is broken,

We react negatively against that,

And we become resentful.

Right?

Sensory inputs are going to happen.

So you just got to say to yourself,

That's just what it is.

Another idea is to just set an intention as you sit down to meditate,

An intention to practice with effort and sincerity in this time and in this place,

No matter what happens.

I'm here to do this practice.

I'm here to sit.

I'm here to meditate.

Whether I perceive that I'm doing it well,

Whether I perceive that I'm not doing it well,

I'm here to do it either way.

But the other thing to think about,

And in a lot of ways,

This is really the main thing,

Is this idea of sense restraint.

Not engaging with our perceptions of sensory input as though they're somehow separate from our field of awareness,

From our mindfulness,

From our meditation.

Rather just that they're part of it.

They're part of what's happening.

So we're encouraged to consider the idea of gatekeepers at the doors of the senses.

The eyes,

The ears,

The mind,

Et cetera.

Guardians at our sense doors.

So consider,

What if a sensation at any one of our sense doors,

Sound,

Smell,

Thought,

What if it were meant directly by the presence of mindfulness?

What if we meet sensations at the moment of their arising and just understand them for what they are?

Just a sensation,

Nothing more.

It's something that can divert our minds or which can become part of our minds and our mindfulness and our experience.

That's the choice right there.

That's really the heart of this kind of practice.

Remember I said a couple of minutes ago,

What happens in your mind during meditation is not as important as how you deal with what happens in your mind during meditation.

Distraction is just a word.

It's just a thing.

You can consider these things as distractions or not.

So this idea of mindfulness as a gatekeeper at the sense doors,

Using mindfulness to help us avoid grasping after these sensations.

Not to react to those perceptions of what's happening around us within it,

But just be with them.

So when I was in fourth grade,

My family moved to a house that was about 150 yards from train track and I was just stunned as a nine year old how loud these trains were.

They came through three or four times every night.

And not only that,

You could feel the vibrations from the track in the house and it kept me awake.

It kept me awake.

But here's the beautiful thing about our minds.

Our minds start to make a determination.

Is this something I actually really need to be aware of?

Okay,

Here's the sound.

Jesus' vibration.

Well,

You know,

After a week,

Your mind's like,

You know what?

This is just what's happening and I don't need to think about it before you know it.

I really wasn't thinking about it anymore and I wouldn't even really hear it or be aware of it.

So like our minds do when we filter out these unnecessary perceptions over time,

Like the sound of a train or something like that,

We can take our sense perceptions,

Which we once can see as distractions,

And we can simply let them find a place in our meditative awareness.

Just like my mind did with the train noises.

It's not that my brain didn't perceive it.

My brain just put it in its place.

I'm just going to put this over here.

I don't really need to bring my full attention to this.

My brain just let it be part of my experience rather than something which was intruding on my experience trying to sleep.

You see the difference?

So this is the strength of mindfulness,

Right?

And it's real intended function in meditation to stand as a gatekeeper at these sense stores,

Not to keep things out,

But to help them find their proper place.

So we can continue to bring our presence,

Our attention to the reality of our breathing and our development of concentration.

Make sense?

It's a lifelong practice because we like to be distracted.

Squirm!

Daddy Brad wagon laughing

Reviews

I appreciate this discussion about allowing those distractions to become a part of our practice. Much gratitude. 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

Timely! Thank you for providing context in noticing sensations of all kinds as a mean to integrate « all » in our experience… and it’s dissolving 😊🙏🏻😊

Helpful. This sheds a new light on perceived distractions and living alongside what is beside me.
🙏 Thank you

Excellent explanation of how to handle distraction during meditation.