Dharma Talk: Why Meditate

In this insightful and engaging Dharma talk, Cheryl Fraser discusses why we should meditate. She shares deep insight into how the mind works and explores the concepts of science and consciousness, drawing on the teachings of neuropsychologist and Buddhist practitioner, Culadasa (John Yates).

Note: This is a live recording so contains minor background noise.

Transcript

Today is going to be a bit of a practice day, Practice sort of class. And what I mean is I'm going to talk a little more deeply about the process of meditation and how the mind works around attention and awareness and what's kind of going on at a neurological level or a psychological level or a meditation level when we're attempting to train the mind in this way. And I'll offer a couple of more techniques. Some of you will be familiar with these and for some of you, A few of them may be a little new and you can try them. We'll have a few periods of sort of five minutes throughout this talk where we'll try some of these things and you can explore for yourself the direct experience and potentially find some ways to support your practice or to inspire you to begin a regular practice. For those of you for whom that's not part of your ongoing wellness or training. So let me explain that a little bit. It's probably fairly obvious, But meditation's helpful or I wouldn't waste my time doing it. I'm a fairly impatient person and I like results or I least like to be putting in effort that I have experienced that at some point that effort will yield something of value of import to me. I'm sure that almost all of you, If not all of you feel the same way. So why would we spend time training the mind when there's a number almost limitless other things we could be doing on Saturday morning? Why aren't we at the movies? Why aren't we going for a hike? Well obviously you know why I'm not going for a hike right now, But why aren't you able bodied people going for a hike? Why are each of us here? There's as many answers for that question as there are beings in the room, But I would put forward that there's an inner wisdom that wishes to be happy. There's an inner wisdom that wishes to live a life that is perhaps brighter and more alive than the life we're currently living. Whether you conceptualize it that way. It may just be a vague curiosity. Someone said, Oh I go to these classes sometimes at the rotary hall, They're kind of cool. And you said, Oh I wouldn't mind checking that out. I would propose that underneath that is a wisdom or a longing or an intelligence that's saying is there another way to be more happy? To be in the language we would sometimes use in Buddhist teaching to be more free. Well free of what? Free of prison. Free of the binding trap of our habitual mental patterns. Our habitual sufferings. Our habitual negativities, Negative emotions, Painful stuff. We all have them. I certainly do. And don't you get fed up sometimes with your habits? I was with a friend this week and some of us in this world, This is a new training for me in the last couple of years. I used to sneeze in my hands. I'm sorry you're up, You sneeze in your hands. Well now I sneeze into my elbow. Because that's what we've learned is a wiser thing to do in terms of transmitting viruses. But that's a training. How many people here have managed to train themselves away from ha-choo to a-choo? It took attention, Did it not? And did you default to this for quite a while and go, Oh dang I meant to do this. It's a training of a habitual pattern. So I was with a friend who's attempting to do more of this and still does quite a bit of this and we were having a laugh about how when we're not mindful, When we're not paying attention of course we tend to revert to old habits, Old ingrained patterns. If you move within your hometown to a different part of town and you drive down Main Street and for the last seven years you turned left to get to your home and now you need to turn right to get to your new home, When you're not paying attention, When you're daydreaming, When you're not present, You turn the old way, Don't you? Oh dang it I don't live here anymore, And so on. These are beautiful simple examples from each of our own experience that we need to train new patterns or of course we default to old patterns. I propose that each of us is here or learning to meditate or has established a meditation practice or has gone on retreats or is curious to go on retreats or is simply curious about this talk today, I don't know what day it is, The 9th of March, Because inside you there's something that would like to be more free, Would like to be more happy because you're not fools, Would like to enjoy the richness and the bounty of the life we're blessed to have for as long as we can have it. And from a Buddha Dharma perspective, This term Buddha Dharma, Buddha essentially means the awakening, The budding, The unfolding of heart and mind. Buddha doesn't mean the dude who sat under the tree, It has some connotations to Shakyamuni Buddha who was a dude that sat under a tree and is one of as best we might understand or take under advisement. Someone who became a fully awake being, Arguably Jesus Christ, Many other beings, Fully awake being, Awake from what? Awake from being asleep, Wandering through life in a haze of not understanding the nature of reality, Wandering through life in a haze of being on your dang device and not noticing what's in front of your very nose. Wandering through life and feeling a low grade sort of sense of discontentment that afternoon, Just sort of a bit, I feel a bit grumpy, I feel a bit off and not knowing why and not knowing how to break through that. Wandering through and sneezing into your hands when you'd rather sneeze into your elbow. This is the confusion we get into in the traps of old patterns. So that was a bit of a sideline contextual laying of some ground, I guess, For what I mainly want to focus on today, Which is training. Training the mind in meditation and what are some techniques and some ways of meditation you can adopt. You can revive for those of you with an established practice, Sometimes hearing these again or maybe fresh is helpful. You think, Ah yes, I'm going to add that to my practice for the next few weeks and really focus on that piece. Because meditation is extremely helpful, That's where I started. Extremely helpful to direct the mind. If we don't direct the mind, The mind tends to run away with itself. The mind tends to ferret around and look for things. Some of them are wholesome, Some of them are unwholesome. The untrained mind, Like an untrained puppy dog, Can make a fair bit of mess. There's nothing inherently wrong with an untrained mind. But I prefer my mind was more biddable. I don't like it when my mind goes down the rabbit hole of negativity. I don't like it when my mind notices everything is wrong instead of what is right. I don't like it when my mind dwells on hurts from the past or worries about fictional and possible things that might happen in the future. None of us like that. We're not masochists and as previously stated, I don't think we're fools. We like peace of mind. What a beautiful phrase that is. Not the, I'm going to give you a piece of my mind, Not that one. The other one, Peace of mind. The mind being peaceful. And I would propose that when the mind is peaceful, It's unperturbed by negative emotion. The waves of negative emotion have calmed. That's a still calm pond of a peaceful mind. And that mind can be curious. That mind can be bright. That mind can want to engage in whatever's happening. This conversation, This math homework, This taking out the garbage can be fascinating when the mind is calm because a calm mind can be curious, Bright and connected. But having a calm mind is not so easy, Right? This is where training comes in. Meditation's helpful. I can quote all sorts of research. I'll do that another time or you can just Google it yourself later. How does meditation help affect on anxiety, Depression, Your relationship, Your level of compassion and altruism? Is it a magic panacea? Of course not. It's a useful training that will enhance your mental well-being. But it takes effort, Just like everything else. If we want to strengthen a weak leg, It takes effort. It takes repetition and sometimes painful effort and sometimes frustrating effort to get the flexibility and bid-ability and strength and fluidity of mind or body we crave. So that, As you can all discern because you're all clever, Is a sales pitch for why you should begin meditating on a daily or a daily-ish basis if you're not already doing that because it will assist you. It will help you in your emotional well-being. It will help you in your attention, Your concentration and your happiness. Will it be a quick fix? I doubt it. If so, You're a lucky and a blessed one. The rest of us, It takes a fair bit of effort and we may not notice much change for quite a while. What did I mean by a daily-ish practice? Well, I'm a realist. I work with real people with real minds and we might charge out of here today, Well, I won't charge but you know what I mean, And say, I'm going to meditate every day for 30 minutes. And you might do that for four or five days and then all heck breaks loose and something happens and you have to take the cat to the vet or something and you forget to meditate on day six. Well, Then you've blown it. You might as well quit now. What? Says who. Go for a daily-ish practice. Aspire to daily and if you hit four or five days out of seven, That's fantastic, Particularly for those of you who don't have any sort of ongoing meditation practice. Now I'm going to open this up and talk about the nature of consciousness and what we're doing when we're training the mind with meditation. Each of those, For those of you with a level of experience in the room, Almost every phrase I'm saying could be unpacked and deepened and go in a lot of different directions. So even when I say meditation, Well, There's 42 classical Buddhist meditations, Many more in other traditions. What does she mean by meditation? So hold it lightly. I'm giving a general talk with some specifics in it and everything I'm saying could be expanded and we'll do that on another time, Particularly if you come on longer retreats. But I want to talk about how the nature of our consciousness works and this is drawn both from historical meditation subjective experience, 3, 000 or more years of meditation, Probably more. And it's also drawn from modern neurology and neurocognitive science and how our brains and minds work. What is conscious experience? I've used this word here, Consciousness. For the purpose of this teaching, When I refer to consciousness, I mean our conscious experience as we sit here. For the moment we'll limit it to when we're so-called awake. That's not capital A awake, But for now we'll call, We're all awake right now, Except for the one or two of you I see dozing. We're all awake right now. We're not asleep or in a coma at this particular moment. Our conscious experience right now is made up of what? Well it's made up of all the stimuli and the data, We'll call it sense data, That's coming in through our five senses. So right now our brain is processing almost an incalculable amount of data points. Visually there is so much data coming in. As I look out, I'm looking out through the window behind Brad's head right now. In my foreground sort of fuzzy vision there's about 30 heads and people and colors and a little bit of movement. Then behind him there's this expanse and there's trees and there's sky and there's vehicles going by. In my periphery there's a Buddha here. I can see my fingers over here. The amount of visual sensory data that's coming in to each of us through our sense receptors in our eyes and through our optic nerve to our neurology is extraordinary. Then we've got our sound data. We've got our physical touch data. We've got our sense of smell and we've got our sense of taste. Let's for the sake of just a for instance, It's not accurate, Let me repeat, This is not accurate, But let's say there's a million data points coming in. We'll just take that as a for instance. Of that million data points, And I'm currently limiting this to the five physical senses, We're going to add a sixth one in a minute, But in the five physical senses, Let's say there's a million data points coming in each second right now. How many are you consciously aware of? I do not have numbers for this, But let's say 2, 000. Let's say of the million data points coming in, You're attending to about 2, 000 of them. The sound of my voice, Some of my words, Maybe a bit of a hum in the background, Your sore ankle, The creaking of the ceiling right now. You're attending to a narrow amount of the data that's coming in. Can everybody pretty much agree to that? It's neurologically accurate. If you're skeptical, That's great. Go out and experience this for yourself. Explore this for yourself. But the bottom line neurologically is that there is so much more coming into our conscious experience than we're currently aware of. And I often use this example, Many of you have heard it a dozen times. Imagine you're at a busy cocktail party and there's a lot of noise and there's music, There's a band playing and there's the clanking of glasses and people shouting with laughter and hollering each other's names. And it's quite a cacophony, It's quite delightful. And you're having a really interesting conversation with one person. What do you automatically do as a conscious being? What you tend to do is you sort of phase out or you're allowed to fade into the background all the other noises and blurs and colors and people dancing in your periphery. And you choose to focus in and funnel your attention onto this, This conversation, Her eyes, My eyes, Because I'm fascinated with this and I'm choosing to attend to it. Consciously, I'm picking up a million data points. I'm limiting my choice of awareness to a small subsection of them. That's being a conscious being. Now here's where meditation becomes so important. A lot of us in our life are being pulled by whatever seems most, Not even most important or not even most interesting. I'm going to say most aggressively apparent. So you might be on a beach in Hawaii in absolute grace and beauty and you might be drawn by the one irritating mosquito and that may become the larger part of your experience. You're not really imbibing in the turtles, In the feeling of the white sand under your feet. Your experience is being narrowed to a small chunk of your conscious experience. And if you're not good at shifting, You're kind of running around after this untrained consciousness that's going to decide what to focus on. I'm going to decide to focus on everything about my life that sucks. And there you are going, Oh, I'm a hapless victim to this now. Here we go in a blue funk and everything's terrible. And for myself, I suspect for the majority of us, There are times where it feels that way. People can say, Oh, We could go out for dinner. Oh, The restaurant will probably be horrible. Just when the mind is in that space, It can filter anything and turn it dark. This is why you might want to train the mind. So you can move the mind away from unhelpful, Unskillful, Unrewarding focuses and move it toward rewarding focuses. Back to the cocktail party. My chosen rewarding focus is this interesting, Intelligent conversation you and I are having. But if someone yells my name in the corner, Cheryl Fraser, My attention is going to quickly jump over there because we're conditioned to pay attention to the sound of our own name most of the time. And that's fine. That was a loud, Whether it's literally loud or compelling stimuli, And it pulled me off my object, Just like in meditation, Right? You were there 20 minutes ago or whatever, And you were choosing to attempt to focus your attention on physical sensation in your feet or your breathing. And then a thought went, And it pulled you off. No problem. That's because the mind is not very well trained. And when I say mind here, I'm now going to get more specific. The attending faculty of mind, Your ability to pay attention isn't very well trained because in conscious experience, To stay alive, Generally there's that, We're calling it, A million data points coming in. And your mind developed to keep you alive. That's useful. So it developed to kind of roam around your conscious awareness, To roam around and zoom in on things that could be harmful or dangerous or bad, Which is why we're often not very good at paying attention to one thing. Why meditate? Because the more you can train your attention to choose an object and stay with that object in a gently held focus, The more you have control of your experience. Whether you attend to the beautiful turtle or the white sand or the mosquito is ultimately up to you. The way our attention, Paying attention faculty of consciousness evolved, As I've mentioned a little bit, Is to scan and alight, To scan and alight. So our attention kind of scans the room and looks for someone we know and says, Oh, Hi. Or it scans the radio until we hear a song we like and then we stop and listen to it. This is okay. I am not saying there's anything wrong with that. But if we kind of sit in the back seat of our brain and let our attention scan and choose, Scan and choose, And we're not involved very much, Again, We're being towed around by our consciousness, Often down some pretty dark pathways. Ending up at the house we used to live in, Not where we live now. Ending up going over and over the details of that argument with our friend, Over and over that breakup from two years ago, Over and over dwelling in that old house, The house of pain, Misery and suffering. Or dwelling over and over in better times as we perceive them from the past when I was so happy when things were good before I lost my job due to them downsizing. Things were so good. You don't live in that house anymore. What good does it do to put your brain back in a place you don't live anymore? Does it make things better in the present moment? It really doesn't. It might trick you into feeling a little better in the present moment. If I'm having a miserable afternoon and I dream about a time when I was really happy and I remember it was so great when we went on that amazing time and I was so happy, It was before they died and it was beautiful, Am I feeling better? That's arguable. I may subjectively feel a bit better by dreaming about something that doesn't exist anymore, But it's sort of a fake better? Because I have to daydream about something that doesn't exist to kind of do a cover story to convince myself I feel good. Versus if, There's a little deeper teaching here, But if we can stay present with the fact that we are grieving, If we can stay present with the fact that I'm having a tough emotional experience in this moment, Instead of distracting ourselves from it by daydreaming about something better, Then we can cultivate the muscle to be with whatever is happening and still be okay. If we need to default to distraction to feel better, We're an addict. We're hooked on something outside ourself to make us feel better. A daydream, A latte, An orgasm, A trip to France. We need that to feel better. We're not in good shape. If we within the confines of our own mind, Which is all we've got, All our experiences are right here. Everything we experience is here, Not out there, It's not in France. When we're in France experiencing France, We're experiencing this. There is no outside. Our experiences in the totality of our mental emotional experience. If you're deeply asleep having a vivid dream of being in France, You're having the same experience than if you're actually in France. It's just in your mind. So these are some of the hints or bold statements as to why training the mind has value. I don't want to have to buy an airplane to France and get there and eat a croissant to feel better. I'd like to feel better right here, Right now. And then if I choose to go to France or not to France, It's all good. So training the mind is super important and don't worry if this is difficult. It's difficult for almost all of us. Apparently there's a few very gifted people who can just meditate like a son of a gun and most of us are not that gifted person. We're the ones who need to work and sometimes slog and sometimes struggle and sometimes say, Are you kidding? I can't pay attention to a single breath without being pulled by some of the million data points that are coming in. And I'm asking the mind to focus on a very narrow bandwidth of the data points. It's one of the reasons a lot of persons in their early meditation career and sometimes through their whole career, Very valid way to practice, Practice eyes closed. We're trying to minimize at least one of the five sense organs. We try to meditate a lot of the time in a reasonably quiet environment. We try to dial down the distraction of sound sensation. So we've dialed down visual. We've dialed down sound. We attempt to get moderately comfortable if possible. So we dial down the amount of distraction from the physical body. Often there's a fair bit though. And we try to maybe dial down scent and taste sensations if possible. But then we're left with the aforementioned sixth thing, Which is what we would call the sense of mind. In Buddha Dharma, There's what's called the five sense doors, The typical five senses we're all familiar with, I've just listed them. And then there's the sixth sense door, Which is the door of mind. Because for most of us as we attempt to train the mind to attend more steadily and more skillfully to what we choose to attend to, What is our biggest distraction? Thinking. Generally, Mind. I don't know if there's a million sensory data points coming in. Let's say there's a million mental data points coming in. Thoughts, Dreams, Planning your grocery list for after this, Worrying about whether or not Jane's still mad at me. All that stuff is in the mind and their vast distractions. Experience it for yourself. When you invited your mind to pay attention, As you were invited to do, To your feet, Were you able to lock and load in an uninterrupted way on the physical sensations in your feet? A few of you may have had a pretty deep locked and loaded experience. The majority of us did not. We had sort of a variable experience, Right? I was at the cocktail party, But then I was paying attention to this one, And then I'm kind of back to you, But that sounds more interesting, And no offense, And then back to you, And so on. Not easy. We need training. We need training to learn to sustain our attention. I'm going to talk a little bit about attention and awareness to give a context, And then I'm going to come back to how we sustain attention. I've already painted this picture, But I haven't added the word awareness to it yet. When I'm at that proverbial cocktail party, I have two things going on in the mind. You all do. Attention and awareness. So my attention. . . What's your name again? Erin. Erin. My attentions on my conversation with Erin, Or spirited discussion about the meaning of life, Or her new puppy, Whatever it is, It's really interesting. My attention, I'm choosing to attend here, But my awareness is not turned off. I still hear the music, And when it switches to the Ramones or something, I'm like, Yeah, I like that song, And then I'm back to Erin. So awareness doesn't get turned off. It's there, Clocking both my conscious experience and at a subconscious level, Millions of data points are still coming into conscious awareness. Attention is where we choose to direct the flashlight. Awareness is everything that's happening and everywhere around us. This is how the human mind and consciousness works. It's how you can drive home and be deeply involved in a conversation with your seatmate as you drive, And not be aware of your lefts and your rights and your turns and your stops, And still drive safely home, Because awareness is helping you drive safely, Even if you're attending with the majority of your conscious attention to the conversation with your buddy. We'd all be dead if these two things didn't work to some degree in conjunction. Why is this important? Because that's why, Until you train the attention piece more deeply, More precisely, Strengthen those muscles, That you're pulled all over the place by various data points in awareness. Attend aware, Attend aware. What do you want to do in meditation? By the way, If I haven't mentioned this to some of you that are a bit newer, A lot of the way I'm teaching this piece today is elucidated in the book, The Mind Illuminated, By Chulidasa. We will put this out in the next newsletter, If you forget, And remind you of that book. The Mind Illuminated, John Yates is his English name, Chulidasa is his Burmese monk name. The Mind Illuminated, He does a fantastic, Deep job. It's a very profound book. If you buy one meditation manual for the rest of your life, This is the one I would recommend. Just for instance, If you want to go deeper into this teaching. Attention and awareness. What are we trying to do when we pay attention to the breath? Well, First of all, We're trying to sharpen that flashlight and focus on the sensations of breath. And then something happens, Because we're not all that good at sustained attention, Which is not your fault, Because the human consciousness evolved to jump around and keep you alive and pay attention to things, Not to do this. So we need to train this. Fundamentally, When you sit down in that daily-ish meditation practice, Or here on a Saturday morning or in a retreat, And you gather your attention and you ask it to focus on the sensation of breath, For the moment we'll say choosing your nose, Chest, Or belly. I'm going to add a couple more techniques today. Focusing on breathing in, Focusing on breathing out. Oh, Did I turn the headlights off in the car? That is a moment of forgetting. Forgetting what? Forgetting that I've chosen to focus on the breath. In that instant, I forget my chosen purpose, My chosen task. When I forget, One of two things can then happen. One is I forget just for a second, Then I remember. When you're a little more on the breath, Or maybe the mind's a little less busy, A little less distressed or chatty, Breathing in, Breathing out, I wonder if I left the lights on. Oh, No, Back to the breath. That's a real good success, What I just mimicked there. Breathing in, Breathing out, Focusing, Focusing, Turning the lights on. Oh, No, Back to the breath. That's a really good little meditation moment, Because you're training, You have a brief instant of forgetting, And you come back to remembering. Remembering what? Remembering that I'm training the mind, And for this 30 minutes of sitting, I am intending, Intending, Intending. I have set my intention to focus on sensations of the breath. Did I leave the headlights on? Nope, Boop. Get rid of that, Back to the breath. For a lot of us, A lot of the time, It doesn't go quite that quickly. Where we're breathing in, Sensation, Breathing out, Sensation, Breathing in, Sensation, Distracting thought, I forgot, No, I'm back. If we don't catch it very quickly and come back, That's like one rep in building this muscle, Then we tend to move into something which we can call mind wandering. So I'm focused on my attention on the breath, Sensations of breath. Breathing in, Breathing out, I'm fairly locked and loaded. Breathing in, Breathing out, Fairly locked and loaded. Breathing in, Breathing out. I wonder if I left the headlights on. I'm not sure. I had them on because it was foggy on the way here, And then I think I turned them off when we stopped for gas. Did I turn them back on or not? What will I do if the battery's dead after class? Well what I'll do is I'll make sure I'll get out of class right away when Cheryl finishes to make sure to see whether I've got a dead battery. And then I'll, Neil seems like a nice enough fellow, I'll ask him if he'll come, You know, Give me a jump start in the car. Now you've of course lost the plot entirely. You're in mind wandering. Very familiar, Right? Very familiar. So to repeat this, This is really important. If you walk out of here and you start a meditation practice and you work with what I'm teaching today, You will start to see results if you log some hours. Which is, I'm choosing to allow all the stuff happening in awareness, Thoughts floating by and sounds in my sore ankle and all that's there, But I'm attending to sensation of the breath. I'm putting that in the forefront. It's the chosen conversation. I'm focused. I'm training. I'm with the breath for one or two or seven breaths. Then I forget, Did I leave the car lights on? Dropping it and coming back? Yahoo! That's like an A. Not an A plus. I don't give many A pluses, But that's an A. Breath, Breath, Breath. Did I leave the lights on? What if I did? What if I don't? I think I did. I'll ask Neil. I'll get a. . . Mind wandering, And that can go on for seconds or minutes, Right? I've certainly mind wandered for 20 minutes in a 30 minute sit. Like elaborate. Goodness, In retreats, I've written entire novels. I've renovated my house. I've planned elaborate weddings when I was single. To a person in retreat, I didn't know the name of, But just kind of like the cut of their jib or whatever. This actually has a name, By the way. It's called the Vipassana Romance. You're at a retreat. You've never met this person. You don't know their name, And they sit in front of you, And you fall madly in love with them in your head, And you spend much of the retreat planning your future. Then as soon as you're out of silence, You say hello to them, And they say hello back. You're like, Yeah, Oh no. Nope, Definitely not. Nope. This is what the mind does. That would be elaborate. Actually, I wish I was kidding, But the amount of weddings I've planned over the years in retreat to random people, It's really embarrassing. The fact that there's a phrase that reassures me a little bit that it's not just me. Mind wandering, Elaboration, Fantasy, Daydreams, Story making. Oh my lord, What's the chosen task? Pay attention to the sensation of breath. Don't renovate your kitchen. Pay attention to the sensation of breath. One instant at a time. One breath at a time. One inhale at a time. One exhale at a time. Breathing in, Breathing out. I wonder if I left the lights on. Nope. Uh-uh. Back to the breath. That's a big success. That's an A. Breathing in, Breathing out. I wonder if I left the lights on. Oh, No, No, No. Okay, Maybe I'll get Neil. I wonder if Neil's single. Maybe we could get married one day. Whatever. There's the mind wandering. And when you realize after minute one or 27 you're in mind wandering, That's a good solid B plus. A good solid B plus when you wake up from mind wandering. Big success because then you can begin again. You can begin meditating again instead of daydreaming. And that's terrific. And you shouldn't be mad and you shouldn't kick the puppy and be mad at the mind and say, Oh, Man, I was daydreaming. Oh, It's perfect. Your mind does what your mind does until you train it better. So it's this simple. It's difficult for most of us, But it's simple. The instruction here is not difficult, Is it? It's choose to pay attention to this single breath with as much focus as you're able. If you lose that intention and you forget, Try to come back quickly for an A. If you lose the intention to pay attention to sensation of breath and you forget and then you get into mind wandering for 60 seconds or 60 minutes, When you realize it, Come back and begin again. That's a good solid B plus. That's the instruction. It's deceptively easy, Actually. Well, Deceptively simple. Quite difficult for most of us to do because, As aforementioned, That's not the way your consciousness evolved. It didn't evolve to lock and load on this conversation. It evolved to go, Ooh. And due to technology and the way the world is rapidly changing, We're unfortunately, In my biased view as a psychologist, A Dharma teacher, A student of neuro-neurology, Unfortunately, The way we're engaging with devices and entertainment, As we're all, I think, Quite aware in the last five to 15, 20 years, Is training us to have even poorer sustained attention because it's multiple inputs at the same time. Something as simple as watching a television, An actual broadcasted television show. You used to actually watch the show and then go get a glass of water during the commercial and come back and watch the show. Now there's all these intrusive images and the next show, Like you're watching your show about elephants in Africa or something, And something comes up to say, Up next, I don't know, What's his name? James Bond's gonna kill a bunch of people and here's pictures of him shooting them. You're like, I just wanna watch elephants. I don't wanna watch people shooting people. We're being challenged in the neurocognitive attention sense much more than ever in human history by an exponential difference to not pay attention to one thing at one time. So that's not, It is what it is. It's what you do with it that matters, But it's why not to be a doomsayer, But to be a realist. Younger generations are going to have tremendous challenges with attention because of their brains being conditioned to go bink, Bink, Bink, Bink from thing to thing to thing, Even more so than the rest of us. There'll be way more anxiety and way more strife. So all the more reason to get kids and adolescents to practice meditation so that they can take their mind back, Choose when to engage in all sorts of things, Including multiple stimuli, But to be able to pay attention to one thing when they or we choose. I want you to go home really remembering this three-step teaching. We're going to practice a couple little techniques for a few minutes each and a bit to help you with it, Which is, Here's the three steps. Choose to focus on the sensation of breath. For the moment, I'm saying focus at the nostrils and upper lip, Just what sensations as you breathe in. You may or may not discern any sensation if you choose here. It's pretty subtle. You may notice a slight cool or warmth or tiny, Tiny, Tiny almost imperceptible air current. You may notice a bit of tickling as the mind gets more concentrated. You may notice a certain channel, Energetic tingles and whatnot. But for a lot of us, This is a difficult place to start. A few of you will take to it naturally and really like nostril focus. A lot of us start with belly or chest. If I'm using chest, I'm breathing in, I'm noticing any physical sensations there, Maybe a slight rising or falling, A slight sense of movement or a warmth or whatever. Same at belly. First step, Choose nose, Chest or belly. Focus on the physical sensation. Second step, Hopefully not, But let's be real, You forget. And the mind gets distracted by a physical sensation or a sound or an idea or a plan or a fantasy or whatever, A worry about leaving your lights on in the car, Whatever it is. You forget. Hopefully, Boom, You're right back. You get an A and you begin again with this breath. First step, Focus on breath. Second step, Notice you've forgotten and come back quick. And if you don't notice you've forgotten quickly, Which is very common, We don't, Then you'll end up in mind wandering for some smaller long period of time. When you realize you're in mind wandering, Wake up and come back to the breath. If you go home and practice that, Ideally 30 minutes every day or more, But heck, If you practice that five minutes, Five days a week, You'll start to train your attention and you'll start to notice that some of the time, It's not generally a linear process for most of us, But some of the time it is easier. Well, Okay, What else? That doesn't sound like a very good prize. That sounds okay, But along with learning to train your mind come some of the other things I referred to earlier in this little sharing today, Which are things like if the mind's ferreting away on a problem or a worry or a sad thing, You're a bit better at replacing the mind on what's positive or the fact that as sad as it is that this loss has happened, You'll be okay. You get to pull your mind out of the depths and place it somewhere more gentle. Tiny irritations. You stop for a cup of tea and you go in and there's a big line and you still can't be irritable about it. That's low grade, 3% irritation. And that's your mind reacting to a situation. And the more you train your mind, You can catch that and bring your mind to say, Well, I'll be here in grace, I'll do a little meditation or I'll observe the environment or I'll just be, Or I may choose to say, Hmm, Let me check with self. No, Being in the line right now isn't what I choose. I'll go do something else, But without the drama, Without the suffering, Simply because you're better at changing the channel, Changing the station from the negative or the worry station or the pointless daydreaming station or the whatever it is station back to what's my direct experience right now. That station, What is the direct experience of being in line at the tea shop and why can't it be pleasant? Can be that's in the mind, Not in the tea shop. So as mentioned, I wanted to give you a couple of other techniques that can either help with your breath meditation or wake it up, Make it a little more interesting because let's face it, Pay attention to the sensation of the breath at nostril, Chest or belly can seem rather uninteresting after a while. And sometimes it's quite helpful to have a little trick or a technique. These are classic meditation techniques drawn from Buddhist meditation and other forms of breath meditation that can help make it a little bit more interesting or help you pay a little bit more attention to the breath by giving you a little bit more to do than simply paying attention to breathing in and out of the belly. So I'm going to describe one and we'll try it for a few minutes and then I'll describe another one and we'll try that for a few minutes and then you can add these to your own practice and if you don't have a practice, You could choose to start and explore these techniques with any technique, The caveat I will give is these are meant to be helpful. Some of them won't be for some of us. You might try one technique and say, Oh, That made my meditation kind of fall apart. My mind got busier and more thinky and more distracted when I tried that technique. Great. That's a direct experience. Probably means that technique isn't helpful right now. There's no better or worse. It's what supports your practice. What helps you pay attention a little more easily or a little more deeply or for an extra breath. If it's supporting you, You'll feel that if it's getting in the way, Let it go and at different times in our development of our meditation, At different times in a retreat, At different times in a week, Some of these techniques will help and sometimes you'll feel that's not helping today. I'm going to go back to just bear awareness at the belly. The first technique, Some of you are very familiar with these, Is counting, Counting the breath. So it's pretty much simple as a way to help maybe keep you a little more attentive, A little more focused instead of simply saying, You know, I'm going to direct my attention to the breath at the belly. And I breathe in, Focusing on the sensation there. I notice there's a little gap at the end of the inhale. I exhale. You notice a fluttery kind of feeling in the middle of the belly on the exhale. I notice not much of a gap after the exhale before the inhale. That's the bare attention to sensation at the belly. Counting would go like this. I would breathe in. I would mentally count one and I breathe out and I'd mentally count one. You know what's coming. I breathe in and I'd mentally count two. I breathe out and I mentally count two. I breathe in three. The mind forgets. I think, Oh, Did I leave the lights on in the car? Last a moment of forgetting, As you now know. And then I begin again, But I start at one. So the idea is if you're very attentive to the entire breath in one and out one, And you're very attentive to two in and two out, And three in and three out, And then you think, Oh, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, You start again. Because you're training sustained attention. You're not punishing yourself for forgetting. You're actually training yourself to catch forgetting better. And I don't just mean being distracted by mental sense door. Sense door number six, Thinking, Planning, Worrying, Et cetera. If you're distracted by sound or a physical sensation, Your belly rumbles, You think, Oh, I'm hungry. That's a distraction. If you're distracted by the smell of flowers and you think, Oh, That's a distraction, And you begin again. Now, I want to reassure you that the majority of us will only get to about two or three breaths before forgetting. That's really, Really, Really normal. To actually get to 21 consecutive breaths where you do not forget breath as the object is considered the first level of the 16 stages of insight, Which are attainments in meditation. 21 breaths, In other words, Is a fairly high standard. And let me caveat that once I've had a sip. Personally, I could count to like a thousand easily and daydream the whole time. That's not what I'm talking about. Like if you could run on two channels, One, Two, Three, I wonder if I'm going to do four, Five, Six, And then I'm going to do the seven, Eight. That's not what we're talking about. So simply being able to remember that the amount you've counted isn't it. It's quite easy to count and daydream at the same time. So here's where you really pay attention to the quality of the mind. And it's one in and one out. One, Two in and two out. Forgot. One in and one out. Now if you're quite locked and loaded on the conversation of counting the breath and vaguely in the distance you hear a sound but it doesn't pull you off, You can stay with your count. You don't have to begin again. So an awareness of sound. But I'm here. I'm aware vaguely of that other sound but it's not distracting me. You can stay with your three, Four, Five, And then you'll probably go, Hey I'm doing well and then you start at one because that was a forgetting. Right? Hey I didn't let that sound distract me. Dang it! The mind will do this. And the chuckles are a good way to approach it because you shouldn't be mad at the mind. You should be curious and find it kind of funny and sweet and adorable and begin again. So for three to five minutes let's practice together with that counting technique. Choosing the chest, Belly, Or nostrils and adding, If you wish to explore this, Adding this count. One in, One out. Two, Two. Oh, Forgot. One, One. And just exploring that a little bit. We're good. . . . . . . . . . Good. I'm going to share one more technique with you and we'll practice that one for about five minutes. And this technique again is to help support our ability to intensify placing our attention on the breath. And some folks find this quite helpful, Others again gets in the way. So it's called, Essentially it's called following the breath and I like to use the image of a candy cane in the following way. On the inhale, You would attend as closely as you can, Partly to the direct sensation and sometimes it's a little bit imagining if you can't feel that sensation, Of the breath's pathway as though it's coming in the nostrils, This is the short end of the candy cane, The candy cane is curling up like this and then coming down your spine, The long stem of the candy cane is coming down your spine. So on the inhale, It's as though you imagine two streams of air coming in to the tip of the short part of the candy cane, Coming up your nostrils through the center of your forehead, Curving down and coming down, This is all on the inhale, I'll show in a moment, Coming down, Down, Down into the belly. There's a whole bunch of different ways to do this we're not going to get into right now if you know about central channels and all that stuff that's for another day, Welcome to practice that way. But for now, We'll say bringing it down, The tip of the long part of the candy cane ends in your belly. So it would be like this, I'd be inhaling and attempting to pay attention as closely as I could to the physical sensations by following the breath on the inhale and then following the breath on the exhale. So it would be breathing in, I'm breathing in and feeling the sensation or imagining this curving down, Coming down in front of my spine, Ending in the belly on the inhale and then on the exhale, I'd imagine the breath coming back up in front of the spine, Curling and coming out on the exhale. And you're attending as best you can to any actual physical sensations in that length so to speak. And some places you'll feel them and some you won't and that's absolutely fun. So you might imagine coming in, Out, In and out. So we'll practice with that for about five minutes or so and then I'll ring the bell. Following the breath, Just exploring whether that helps you pay closer attention to the breath because for some of us that makes it more compelling, More interesting. It sort of gives us more to do which makes it easier to keep the attention on breath meditation. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Good. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Reviews

Enjoy these teachings.

Excellent explanation and examples.

Absolutely love this talk, so insightful thank you 😊 xx

Fantastic explanation of meditation.

The most in-depth explanation I’ve ever heard. The first time the 21-breaths & ‘levels of attainment’ were touched on. Would like to explore further : )