2.0 Instruction: Developing Stability with Sensations of the Breath

Part 2.0 of 10. A progression of brief sessions of instruction for developing stable attention, still awareness, and global compassion. Recorded live.

Transcript

The first step in the progression is developing the base of relaxation and balancing that relaxation with clarity.

Then the next step of the progression is that when it is appropriate,

And only when it is appropriate do you begin to develop or to concern yourself with stability.

And when is it appropriate?

It is appropriate only when you can begin to concern yourself with stability without losing your relaxation.

What does that mean?

You're not freaking out about it.

You're not overly striving.

It's not unbalanced effort.

You're not demanding of yourself.

I should be better at this.

I haven't been able to keep my mind on my object.

So,

At that point you are developing that furrowed brow,

The unbalanced striving.

So,

That's not appropriate.

So,

When it is appropriate,

Meaning that you can remain chill about your pursuit of this,

Meaning that it's going to happen naturally,

If you can maintain a balance of relaxation and clarity,

Then the stability begins to happen more naturally.

So,

This is the fundamental skill for beginning to take control over your reality.

William James said,

For the moment what we attend to is reality.

And so the way that we do that is taking control over our moments of perception.

Can we choose what to attend to?

Or are we just having chosen for us what we are attending to?

So,

What we are going to do is,

First of all,

There are two elements in developing stability.

The first element is choosing an object to attend to,

Placing your attention on a chosen object.

And then secondly,

It's sustaining your attention,

Training to sustain your attention where you have voluntarily placed it.

Those two elements.

We'll talk a bit now,

First of all,

I'll just say sustaining your attention where you have placed it is a lot more difficult than placing your attention.

But it is important,

First of all,

Does it matter where you choose to place your attention and the experience of 2500 years of meditators is that,

Yes it does.

So,

Even in the Galukpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism where it's not usually taught,

But the breath is the chosen object.

The Buddha said this,

Asanga said this,

Jaishankapa said this,

Pabanka Rinpoche said this.

There is a range of meditation objects that you have to choose.

There are the ten kasinas,

As the Buddha called it.

And if your mind,

And all of the meditators say that if your mind is prone to rumination,

To discursive thought,

The best object is the breath.

And the breath is a very good object for two reasons.

It is constant enough,

Meaning that it's the same breath after breath after breath,

Meaning that your introspection can tell you,

Are you on your object or not?

Well,

Am I on my breath or not?

Well,

The answer is yes,

I am on my object because I'm still on the breath.

But the other wonderful thing about the breath is that it is ever changing,

It is dynamic.

The beginning of the in-breath is different than the end of the in-breath.

Every breath cycle is different.

And so this keeps you engaged.

So the breath helps you to the stability or the continuity helps to promote stability of your attention.

And the ever-changing nature of it helps to support clarity.

We are going to now in this next meditation begin to work on breath meditation,

Meaning we are going to choose the object that we are going to focus on.

And that means that we are going to narrow the scope of our attention once again.

In the previous meditation,

It was we were maintaining our peripheral awareness,

First of all,

And just aware of we were attending to the sensory present with no food in front of us,

No taste.

That means that there was no taste coming in,

No smell coming in,

And with eyes closed,

No visual stimulation.

That left only the two sense fields,

Tactile and sound.

And then we narrowed the scope of our attention,

Again,

To only the tactile.

So that meant sound also remained in peripheral awareness with thought also of the six sense fields.

Thought also was in peripheral awareness.

Sound,

As we progressed,

Also remained in peripheral awareness.

So the wonderful thing about sound then is that that can help you to maintain peripheral awareness.

The sound of the air conditioner in the background,

If you can remain aware of that without that capturing your attention,

Without your attention focused on that,

Describing it,

Liking it,

Not liking it,

Saying I wonder if we should turn that off during sessions,

Oh I wonder if there's a colder setting on that,

On and on and on.

That means your attention has been captured by it.

If it's awareness that is attending to it,

It's only,

It's bare attention,

It's only sound,

No conceptual elaboration.

And the beauty of that is that sound then can help you to maintain peripheral awareness.

And as we will talk about in the next session this is also the center of your introspective awareness.

So sound helps you to maintain awareness in general which begins to give you real time reports about your attention.

But we are going to maintain our peripheral awareness now and narrow the scope of our attention again now from all of tactile sensations where we left the last meditation now to its only tactile sensations that change as the breath enters and leaves your body.

So there are,

If you are attending and two sensations of the breath,

You can feel that either sometimes around the face,

Maybe the nose,

The upper lip,

You might feel it,

Your chest expanding,

Rising and falling,

Could be the abdomen,

Could be even sensations on the back or where,

You know,

Unexpected places.

This is going to be the progression.

We are going to narrow the scope to tactile sensations wherever they occur in the body that change with the breath.

So we are continuing to narrow the scope and now all other tactile sensations remain in peripheral awareness where they,

Along with sound,

Along with thoughts,

All of these things you can be aware of without them capturing your attention.

The attention just keeps getting narrowed and narrow to first of all tactile sensations wherever they occur that are associated with the breath in the body and then we are going to narrow the scope of your attention again.

We are now really beginning to give a target to your attention and that is the tactile sensations of the breath at the abdomen.

So we are going to narrow the scope only to the sensations,

The sense of touch,

The somatic sensation as the,

Especially while you are in Shavasana,

Very what are called coarse sensations,

Meaning they are easy to find and they keep your attention because they are coarse.

The rise and fall of the abdomen,

Very pronounced,

There is a lot of motion there compared to where we are going anyway with more subtle sensations.

So give your full attention then eventually only to,

As we progress through the twelve minutes of the guided meditation,

We are going to narrow the scope only to tactile sensations at the abdomen.

Now inevitably your attention is going to wander and sustaining your attention where you place it is more difficult than choosing,

Than placing your attention and choosing where to place it because attention is,

Where our attention goes is based on an unconscious weighing process and because it is unconscious we can't force it.

We can't determine,

I am going to keep my attention on this successfully.

But we can influence that unconscious weighing process and the there are a couple of ways that we can influence it.

The first is with intention.

So when you consciously announce an intention to yourself,

I am going to remain engaged with the tactile sensations of the breath all the way through the full cycle of the breath.

When you just basically form that intention,

That announces to that information in consciousness is available to all the unconscious sub-minds that are clamoring to get your attention.

So first of all,

Intention is very important for influencing the unconscious weighing process that determines where your attention goes because your attention will be captured by things that influence it,

Captured by things that it deems to be more important or more alluring,

More attractive,

Whatever.

But we influence that weighing process by saying this is important.

This is important to keep my attention on the tactile sensations of the breath at the abdomen.

And then another thing that determines,

That helps to influence this unconscious weighing process is your attention is when you discover that you have been shanghaied,

Your attention has been shanghaied,

Meaning that it has been captured,

Gone off wandering.

So the first of those,

This is summarized in the four Rs,

Your response has to become reflexive.

So when you discover that your attention has wandered,

First of all,

The first R,

Release your grasp on the object,

Fully disengage from the distracting object.

The second one,

Rejoice.

Ah,

I am lucid again.

This is it.

This moment of rejoicing is extremely important for training awareness what is important to attend to.

It becomes crucial,

This taking a moment of pleasure.

And what is it that you are actually enjoying in this moment?

It's recovered lucidity.

Now I am lucid again.

This is it.

And then the third R is return to your chosen object.

That means I have to remember.

What was my chosen object?

Oh yeah,

Tactile sensations of the breath at the abdomen.

And then the fourth is to,

The fourth R is to reaffirm your intention.

And your intention is to remain fully engaged with the tactile sensations of the breath all the way through the full course of the exhalation.

Because the exhalation is the key to stability.

The inhalation is the key to clarity.

The exhalation which we are working,

Stability is what we are working on now.

The exhalation is the key to stability.

The full cycle of in-breath and out-breath.

After the in-breath there is a gap,

A slight pause before the exhalation begins.

In that gap,

After the inhalation,

Reaffirm your intention also with every cycle of breath.

Reaffirm your intention to remain engaged with the tactile sensations of the breath all the way to the pause at the end of the exhalation.

So,

We'll put that all into practice now in a eleven minute guided meditation.

Then we'll take a six minute break and then you'll come back and do all of that in a silent twenty-four minute session.

So find your comfortable position and I would suggest again,

Shavasana is good for this,

But you begin to,

Now you have some choice.

If you're feeling drowsy,

A little lax,

Then you might choose to do this meditation position in the seated position because the seated position provides more clarity.

So,

You're going to take a deep breath in and out,

And then you're going to take a deep breath in and out.

Reviews

Wow, what a thorough and clear talk. Now I'm going to do the actual guided meditation that follows!