To begin this period of meditation together,
Please find a place where you can be undisturbed and quiet for the next 30 minutes.
It's helpful to find a position that allows the body to be still and the mind to be alert and wakeful.
Though many people enjoy the stability of a cross-legged position on the floor with a zafu or meditation cushion,
No special equipment or position is really needed to accomplish this.
Meditation can be done perfectly well in a straight back chair.
As in the body scan,
The quality of awareness that you bring is more critical than the position in which you place your body.
It's helpful as you begin any period of meditation to bring an attitude of openness,
Allowing and acceptance.
This is a time of non-doing,
Of just being,
Taking refuge in the stillness and the quiet and allowing each moment to unfold just as it is,
Moment to moment.
A vacation from multitasking and self-improving and fixing,
Making better.
A relatively brief respite,
A time of allowing each moment to present itself to you and to discover it.
So let's begin as we did with the body scan by bringing a general awareness to your mind and body in this moment as a way of aligning the mind with the body,
Knowing that you're here now.
No matter what the state of your body or mind,
It's possible to meditate.
If the mind is very agitated as you begin to sit,
Just notice that as best you can,
Allow it to be just as it is.
When you're ready,
Bringing your attention now down to the abdomen,
Feeling the movement of the breath,
The rising and falling of the belly with each in-breath and out-breath.
Feeling the sensations of expansion and contraction in the walls of the abdomen,
Perhaps noticing the feeling of the clothing around your waist as you breathe,
Understanding that it's natural for the mind to wander.
It's not a mistake if your mind is doing whatever it's doing.
Your job is simply to bring it back to the breath as soon as you become aware that it's wandered.
Many people find it helpful to use a very quiet label in the mind of rising on the in-breath and falling on the out-breath,
Almost like a whisper in the mind,
As a way of keeping the mind steady and connected with the object of awareness,
In this case the breath.
So that the label in the mind is maybe 5% of your experience,
And the actual feeling of the breath is 95%.
How gentle can you be with your own mind as you bring it back each time it wanders?
How allowing can you be of whatever state the mind is in at this moment?
Now,
See if you can move your attention to your ears to explore the experience of hearing and to allow this to become the object of your awareness.
Hearing the sound of my voice,
Hearing any background sounds in your environment,
Hearing the silence.
Notice if you find yourself reaching out towards the experience of hearing,
Towards sound.
See if you can pull back and allow the experience to come to you,
Allowing your attention to the experience of hearing,
Perhaps using the attitude of curiosity to really explore with a fresh mind just what it feels like.
What is this experience of hearing?
Where and how do you feel it?
Again you might find it helpful to use a very quiet label in the mind,
Hearing,
Hearing,
As a way of both keeping the attention connected with the object of awareness.
Also,
As a way of disidentifying with the story about what you're hearing.
Noticing if certain sounds give rise to cascading thoughts.
Using this label of hearing can be a way of coming back to the bare experience,
Separate from the thoughts about it,
Or the thoughts that it might give rise to.
For the next few moments in the sitting meditation,
We'll be including thought as an object of awareness,
So returning once again to the breath,
Allowing your attention to the breath and allowing your attention to rest there.
As soon as you notice that you're thinking,
Rather than returning the attention immediately to the breath,
Turn your attention to thinking itself,
As if you were taking a spotlight,
The spotlight of your awareness,
And turning it from the breath back onto thought process itself.
See if you can know that you're thinking without being lost in the story of the thought.
Here,
Again,
A quiet label in the mind can be very useful in sharpening your awareness of what it is you're actually doing,
And also in creating a kind of spaciousness in the mind that allows you to observe thinking without being identified with it.
This can be a general label,
Thinking,
Thinking,
Or if you find it useful,
A more specific label like worrying,
Or planning,
Or judging,
Or analyzing.
Chances are,
You'll notice that your mind perseverates in a typical direction,
Perhaps planning or judging.
See if you can simply observe these tendencies of mind,
And notice what happens to thought when you observe it.
If it simply pops like a bubble,
Or floats through like a cloud,
Just bring your attention back to the breath until another thought comes along,
And it will.
As you begin to explore this landscape of thought,
You might find it helpful to remember the distinction between contour and content.
By labeling thoughts as planning or judging,
We can pay attention to the contour of thought,
Rather than getting involved in the story or the content of thought.
He said,
She said,
I have to remember this,
Put this on my list.
As you've already been sitting for 20 minutes or so,
You may have had some physical sensations that called your attention away from the breath,
Or whatever object of awareness we were paying attention to.
Often the body is quite unaccustomed to being still.
So for the next few moments,
We'll allow physical sensations to become the object of awareness.
Beginning,
Again,
By paying attention to the breath.
And again,
No need to look for them or create them,
But rather,
As soon as you become aware of a physical sensation,
An itch,
Or some kind of discomfort in the body that pulls your attention away from the breath,
Rather than simply forcing your attention back to the breath,
Allow that sensation itself to become the object of awareness.
When a sensation in the body becomes strong during meditation,
We have several choices.
We can respond automatically,
As we do in everyday life,
And shift,
Or itch,
Or do whatever we need to do to relieve the discomfort.
Or,
We can bring our attention right to the center of the feeling,
And notice what happens to it as we pay attention to it.
And of course,
If there's a strong discomfort,
Giving yourself complete permission to do whatever you need to do to make yourself comfortable.
In the context of meditation,
Bringing as much awareness to this process as you can,
Giving yourself at least a moment to feel the feeling before you address it.
And if you're able to,
Stay with it,
With your awareness,
As long as you comfortably can,
As long as the mind can stay balanced and open as it observes and pays attention to this physical sensation,
Stay with it and see what happens to it.
Here again,
Using a quiet label in the mind that might be throbbing,
Or itching,
Tight.
Using a label in the mind can again be another way of not getting involved in the story of the pain or the discomfort,
Of beginning to untangle the stories in the mind from the feelings in the body.
And as feelings in the body give rise to thoughts,
Bringing as much awareness to this connection as you can,
And bringing the attention back to the body.
For the remaining few minutes of the sitting meditation,
Allowing your attention to rest on the experience of the breath.
And as thoughts arise,
Sounds,
Or physical sensations,
Allowing your attention to move to whatever is predominant in your experience,
To notice it as best you can,
And simply return to the breath when that experience is no longer predominant.
This completes the 30-minute sitting meditation.
