Today's lesson is going to be on mindfulness meditation and dharana.
Understanding mindfulness meditation from a conceptual,
Intellectual perspective is quite simple and straightforward.
We start with the concept of meditation.
Meditation at least for the sake of this course is the mental landscape when it is devoid of thought.
It is the experience of not thinking.
It is the empty space that exists between thoughts.
It is the profound experience of consciousness,
Uninhibited with mental activity.
And perhaps it is truly who we are,
Without mental or social conditioning.
So often in our culture we associate ourselves with who we believe ourselves to be,
With our thoughts.
But for millennia,
Ancient mystics from cultures all around the planet independently discovered that who we truly are is consciousness itself.
So imagine you are sitting at a movie theater and on the screen are the experiences of your life.
You are witnessing your human existence.
You experience every thought,
Every feeling,
Every sound,
Every sensation.
Hopefully you find the movie entertaining.
But at the same time,
You are aware that you are not the movie.
You are that which is observing the movie.
This is the first step in meditation.
Understanding that the thoughts are not who we are.
Who we are is the consciousness that is observing the thoughts.
But we have to go one step further to fully enter a meditative state.
Eventually,
With practice,
Even the observer leaves the theater.
For to think yourself the observer would be another thought appearing on the screen.
At its most profound,
Meditation is the experience of the movie theater when it is completely empty.
It is the experience of objective reality that is not infused with subjective thought.
Mindfulness meditation is an ancient technique of meditation that comes from the oldest direct lineage of Buddhism called Theravada.
It is a completely secular technique,
Meaning it can be practiced independently of any faith or religious association.
For it is merely a methodical approach to observing the thoughts of the mind.
It is a profound process whereby we become aware of our own awareness.
In every moment,
Our brain is being bombarded by thoughts,
Feelings,
Emotions,
And physical sensations.
There are so many inputs,
In fact,
That the brain has developed the unique ability to filter most of our experiences into the subconscious.
Thoughts and feelings exist on a spectrum from subtle to gross.
The gross thoughts are yelling the loudest and are the easiest to hear,
While the subtle thoughts are ignored.
As we practice,
The gross thoughts are the first to settle,
The first to recede,
And what's left are the mind's subtle whispers.
Most of our suffering is caused by subtle subconscious thoughts that tell us we're not good enough,
Or that we're ugly or dumb,
Or that we're scared,
Or countless of other whispers that just don't serve us.
Even the pleasant thoughts and experiences create a challenge in that we don't want them to end,
Which leads to a perpetual and counterproductive cycle of chasing happiness.
The first step in letting go of these voices,
In rewriting our programming,
Is to start by hearing them.
The only way we can hear them is to sit quietly and observe our mind.
In mindfulness meditation,
We observe without any objective or goal.
Or put another way,
The objective is to observe.
Nothing more.
Without any force,
The thoughts of our mind will eventually begin to diminish,
Until we're left with pure sensation,
Which too will eventually cease until we dissolve into the empty space of infinite consciousness or expansive awareness.
This is a long and sometimes difficult path that requires patience,
Determination,
And great discipline.
There are days when our meditations are so pure and clear that we are excited to get back to our seat,
And then the next day may be riddled with overwhelming amounts of mental chatter that leave us frustrated and exhausted.
Don't despair.
This is a well-paved path,
Tested,
Tried,
And true.
It will work,
So stick to it.
The mechanics of mindfulness meditation are quite simple as well.
Almost all of our meditations will have a point of focus,
An object of meditation,
Something the ancient yogis called dharana.
This will allow our mind to focus on one thing so that we can bring our hyperactive mind from a place of many thoughts to a place of one thought.
So for instance,
In one of our early meditations,
We will be focusing on our breath.
We focus all of our attention on the sensation of breathing.
We feel our chest rise and fall.
We feel the air pass in and out of the nostrils and out past our upper lip.
We feel what it feels like to breathe.
That's it.
Breathing in,
I know I'm breathing in.
Breathing out,
I know I am breathing out.
And then,
After some breaths,
Our mind wanders.
Maybe soon we're in a spiral of thoughts.
We're so captivated by these thoughts that we completely forget our entire intention of sitting and meditating.
Instead,
We're thinking about the trip we took on the beach or what we're going to have for dinner.
This is where the value of guided meditations comes in,
As I will be periodically reminding you about our focus of meditation.
One of the primary tools we use in mindfulness meditation is a bell of mindfulness.
The bell can be a literal bell,
But it can also be taken figuratively,
As my voice will often act as the bell of mindfulness that reminds us to return to our meditation.
When you hear my voice,
Just notice where your mind is without any judgment and come back to your point of focus.
We will do this again and again and again.
And with time and practice,
You'll find that more often than not,
When you hear my voice,
You will still be focused on the dharana,
On the object of meditation,
With that which you are working.
That's it.
That's the practice.
We sit and we focus on our dharana.
As thoughts come,
We become aware of them coming,
And we become aware of them passing,
And we return to our point of focus.
Breathing in,
I know I am breathing in.
Breathing out,
I know I am breathing out.
I am breathing out.
Thank you.
