How To Practice

Congratulations to Tuesday’s election winners. For me it was a practice moment: feeling joy and hope, and not turning those into something else with regard to the losers.

Which is a practice I can’t do without my basic, present moment attention practice. Which always begs the question of how to cultivate that. If mindfulness is present moment attention, courage, and grace, how do we cultivate the first one?

It’s simple (and not easy): we give ourselves time for stillness. To me this is mostly like giving myself a treat every day. Mostly but not every time, because sometimes I struggle. I eye my meditation cushion warily, as if it’s dragging me away from the fun.
But actually, sitting down anyway is always the right choice for me. Even if I set my timer for just five minutes, I feel relief.

Transcript

Hey everyone,

It's Judy Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 509.

Let's just take a moment together and either appreciate or feel however we feel about the election.

I'm guessing there's a little hope,

A little joy,

And can there also be some compassion for those who feel differently?

Okay,

So we're looking at the Noble Eightfold Path and we're on Step 2,

Wise Mindfulness.

How's my sound,

By the way?

Anybody,

Everybody okay?

Yes?

Good.

Thanks,

Michael.

Okay.

So we're looking at the Noble Eightfold Path.

We're on Step 2,

Which is Wise Mindfulness.

Step 1 again is Wise Effort,

That effort that's not too tight,

Not too loose,

And also infused with joy.

The what of mindfulness is various things and where I'm landing is present moment attention with courage and grace.

And then that brings us to this question of the how,

How to cultivate present moment attention,

How to summon courage over and over to be with the difficulties that arise and the moments when we stumble,

And then how to practice grace.

And the nice thing is there is a how.

So with learning how to practice law,

Even with research and writing courses and clinics,

It's still a lot of learning on the job and not so much how to in law school,

At least.

It's nothing like internships for doctors,

For example.

I mean,

We have a little.

But with present moment attention,

The first part of Wise Mindfulness of the how,

We have instructions.

And while not all mindfulness traditions offer them explicitly,

For example,

In my experience,

Zen is more opaque.

There are basic instructions or examples,

At least,

For how to practice.

And as far as I'm aware,

The most widely studied and practiced instructions are the Satipatthana Sutta or the Sutta on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.

And so working with these,

We can learn to cultivate present moment attention by paying attention to four things,

The body,

The tone of each moment,

The mind,

And then things that we encounter that either inhibit or support or offer frameworks for cultivating present moment attention and insight,

Which is the upshot of Wise Mindfulness,

And I'll say more about that later.

So each of the four foundations,

For me anyway,

It's a lifelong study.

I haven't mastered them.

I know I won't master them in this lifetime any more than I'm going to master present moment attention as a whole.

But that's what makes it so interesting,

For one thing.

And also why it's so important to be joyful,

And I'd even say playful,

As we work with each of these foundations.

Because otherwise,

I don't know about you,

But for me,

It's easy to get discouraged or frustrated,

Especially with these perfectionistic legal minds that we might have.

And then there's another reason why it's important to be playful.

There's probably a bunch of reasons,

But here's another one that I can think of why it's important to be playful and joyful as we cultivate present moment attention and courage and grace,

Which is the ancient teaching that whatever we think and ponder becomes the inclination of the mind.

Right?

And I see that at work all the time.

Now,

I'm in a grumpy mood,

And then my grumpiness infuses the moment and the next one and so on until,

You know,

It's a grumpy day.

Or I'm feeling gratitude,

And then gratitude flows into or even pervades my next encounter or my day.

And that's to say nothing of lifelong habits and a kind of steady-ish state of fear or frustration or,

On the other hand,

Joy can create.

So as we practice with the four foundations,

The how of cultivating present moment attention,

To me,

A keystone of the undertaking is to have a light heart,

Right?

An earnest heart,

Because the cultivation is crucial for our own well-being and I also think for the world.

But still a light heart.

So keeping that in mind,

Here are what those foundations are in very,

Very brief.

Here's mindfulness of the body.

Again,

A lifelong study and practice,

But it's basically using the body as a place to bring,

And here's what I put in my notes,

Stay our attention,

You know,

Like stay in one place,

Meaning we choose some part or function of the body.

So the breath as it's flowing in and out,

Or the ears as they're hearing,

Or sensations as we scan through the body.

And there are other instructions as well.

So for each time we sit down to practice,

We choose one and then using it as the object of our attention,

We invite our attention to come there and stay.

So stay with the sensation of breathing,

Or stay with sounds as they arise and disappear,

Or stay with bodily sensations as we scan from head to toe or toes to head.

With the second foundation,

We invite the attention to how each moment feels.

So does it feel pleasant?

Does it feel unpleasant?

Does it feel like not much at all?

And this is a different kind of present moment attention because we're being with how we feel within this narrow but quite consequential understanding of is this moment pleasant,

Unpleasant or neither.

With the third foundation,

We invite the attention to the mind.

And it's not its contents so much,

But simply whether thoughts or emotions are present.

Watching thoughts and emotions as they arise and pass away.

And then with the fourth foundation,

We invite the attention to the qualities that support our practice,

To the qualities that don't,

And to various frameworks for cultivating insight.

Which again is what arises as we train the attention to come to and stay in the present moment.

And again,

I'll say more about that another time.

Not so complicated,

But also not easy,

Right?

We live in a distracting world to say the least.

And then the mind is inherently distracted.

So we train to come to and stay in the present moment,

But the attention,

The mind has other ideas,

Which is why we have to make it a point to spend some dedicated time every day in stillness,

Training the attention to come to the present moment and stay.

Same as doing scales on a piano,

Same as hitting balls from a pitching machine,

Same as writing memo after IRAC memo,

Right?

It's a skill,

Which like playing music or hitting balls or practicing law,

It can also be lost if we stop practicing.

Maybe not lost altogether,

Maybe we have enough of it that there's a memory in the body,

But the practice of it or the reliability of it,

I guess I would say.

So these are instructions for a lifelong training,

Lifelong learning.

And initially the best most of us can do,

Or at least this was true for me,

Is to light on the place we've chosen as our object of attention.

It's like a hummingbird on a flower,

Right?

And it can feel that precarious too,

Like any wind,

A wind of distraction,

Like a thought or emotion or a wind in the environment,

Like the news or even regular old wind itself will knock us off the present moment and into a story of some kind,

Some thought pattern,

You know,

Something that argues for the headlines in the mind.

Over time and with practice,

The attention learns to settle and then even when it gets distracted to return to its object,

Which becomes more and more of a refuge than anything else.

And then I think of it more like a bear.

I'm up at Tahoe,

So I'll say a bear burrowing into her warm cave for the winter,

Right?

So the how of courage and grace are a little different.

Next time or two,

I'll share what I know,

What I'm still learning about how to cultivate those qualities and also a little bit about the why of wise mindfulness,

The inside part.

But for now,

Let's play with the cultivation of present moment attention.

All right,

So find your posture and choose a posture that you can stay still in for nine minutes more.

And then if it helps the mind to not be distracted,

Close the eyes.

Especially if you have a screen in front of you,

Close the eyes or just lower them three quarters of the way down and unfocus them.

And then let's just pick the breath for today rather than having a lot of choices to deal with.

Let's pick the breath.

Pick the breath,

But if the breath does not feel like a safe object for your awareness,

Then you can shift to sound.

But I'm going to give instructions for the breath.

So begin to notice the breath as it's flowing in and out of the body,

The actual physical sensation of breathing.

And maybe it's easiest for you to notice that as the air flows in and out of the nostrils.

Or maybe an easier place for you is to sense the chest rising and falling or the belly filling and emptying.

So I guess there is a choice here.

So pick one of those three.

And then just with the kindest invitation,

Like your very best friend said,

I'd love to take you out to lunch.

Just with the kindest invitation,

Invite the attention to that physical place in the body where the breath is easiest to attend to.

And then just pay attention as the breath flows in and out.

And unless the mind happens to be very,

Very steady today,

It's going to wander.

And no problem.

Just when you notice that,

Just come back to the breath.

And if the mind is very steady today,

Then that's wonderful.

And if the mind isn't particularly steady,

That's also wonderful.

It's all in the noticing,

Just noticing and then making the choice to come back to the breath.

And one element of posture that can help with that is a smile.

So doing this with a light heart.