Mindful Leadership & Formless Meditation

What is mindfulness awareness meditation, the "wisdom of achieving nothing" and why would we "sit still" for extended periods of time.

Transcript

As I said earlier,

One of the defining elements of mindful leadership is this fundamental gesture of sitting still for extended periods of time.

I've been doing it for a long time,

It's still,

It's kind of weird.

What are we doing?

Particularly in business,

It's very counterintuitive.

Business is about objectives,

Momentum,

Achievement.

So it's almost like,

Well,

Why would we want to sit still for extended periods of time if we're leading an organization?

Despite this counterintuitive quality,

This is fundamental.

It is absolutely key.

And what I'd like to do now is go through some of the details.

What is mindfulness awareness meditation?

Why would we do something like this?

In order to understand mindfulness awareness meditation,

The first thing you have to do is understand the motivation.

With a lot of the research,

We're finding there's enormous benefits to mindfulness practice.

It repairs the immune system.

It grows part of the brain that regulates the emotions.

It accelerates emotional intelligence like self-awareness,

Self-regulation,

Positive self-regard.

In psychotherapy,

Some of the most difficult emotional disorders are worked with through this simple act.

We could go on and on about all the benefits from the practice.

But the irony is,

If you come to this practice in order to collect those benefits,

The likelihood is you're going to misunderstand what you're doing.

This is not about becoming a better version of ourselves.

This is about being familiar with who we are.

And that motivation was what I call the wisdom of achieving nothing.

Typically,

I'm doing the meditation because I want to achieve something,

Or I want to get some return on my investment,

Or I want to get some benefit.

That's not what this is about.

This is not about getting an ROI on our effort.

This is about achieving nothing,

Which can be very disturbing for people.

I don't want to sound too cute.

But it's true.

This is about becoming familiar with our experience.

Recognizing exactly what's going on,

And noticing that we're expressing qualities of who we are that we may have overlooked.

So the motivation for coming to the practice is key.

And it's not about becoming a better version of who we are.

It's about becoming familiar with who we are already.

And in the process of doing that,

We may discover something we've overlooked.

In fact,

I can guarantee you,

We will discover things we've overlooked.

That's number one.

The second thing is,

I'd want to define mindfulness awareness meditation very specifically.

And while I'm not a scholar,

The best way to understand it is really to define meditation into two basic categories.

There is what's called form-based meditation and formless meditation.

There are literally thousands of form-based meditations.

And what distinguishes a form-based meditation is it uses certain techniques in order to achieve an objective.

One that's very popular is tonglen.

And you use a very specific series of techniques in order to generate loving kindness,

A sense of generosity toward others.

It's a beautiful practice,

But it's a form-based meditation.

You can use mantras.

You can use visualizations like in qigong or tai chi.

You can use body movements to bring about certain levels of physical health.

We could go on and on.

And there's many profound form-based meditations.

And if you're going to practice those,

It's very good to learn it from someone who is the master of it,

Who's been taught well,

And can impart those disciplines well.

Formless meditation are meditations that use little or no technique and don't seek to achieve anything at all.

So again,

Formless meditation uses little or no technique and does not seek to achieve anything at all.

Mindfulness awareness meditation is a style of formless meditation.

It uses relatively no technique,

And we're not trying to achieve anything.

Why do we use relatively no technique?

Part of it is the technique that you use,

You're going to want to let go of at some point in the practice.

So the less technique,

The better.

It's almost like riding a bike.

You're going to drop the training wheels.

You're going to drop everything.

You want to just ride your bike.

You don't want a lot of technique.

The style that I'm about to give you the instruction in uses very little technique,

But the technique that it does use is very profound.

And I'm going to give the meditation instruction in a moment.

This instruction comes from a tradition,

The Kagyu Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism,

And it is literally called shi ne log tong.

Shi ne meaning calm abiding,

Log tong clear seeing.

So this is calm abiding,

Clear seeing.

You can loosely translate it as mindfulness awareness or shamatha vipassana meditation,

But those terms of shamatha vipassana are used differently in different traditions.

If they're Theravadan or Vajrayana or Zen,

They're used differently.

But in this case,

The form of meditation instruction that I'm about to give comes from the Kagyu Nyingma School entitled shi ne log tong meditation.

I'm using these terms like shi ne log tong or shamatha vipassana because that's the tradition,

But you don't have to be familiar with them.

Really it's a very simple practice.

It's widely referred to as mindfulness,

But to be accurate,

It's mindfulness awareness.

But a lot of those technical terms,

They're not that important.

It's a very simple practice and I will give you the instruction.

In order to understand formless meditation,

What we really need to explore is how we apply effort in our everyday life.

And typically we apply effort in order to get somewhere.

And that's very natural,

Very common.

If you recall back when you were in sixth grade,

You might recall where you wanted to be.

Many of us wanted to be in eighth grade because that's where all the cool people were.

We always wanted to get somewhere.

We get to eighth grade,

I want to get to high school.

The same thing through high school.

We want to get to college.

And for me personally,

I have to say it's very sad in college.

I see so many people who've gotten to college and they're trying to graduate.

Quick,

Let's go.

You've got to get the internship,

Get the marks,

Get the AP,

Graduate,

Get the job.

And what I often see is this effort of trying to get somewhere.

These young people are actually speeding past their education rather than having it.

If we look at effort in the way that we typically apply effort in everyday life,

We're trying to get somewhere.

We're not only trying to get somewhere,

We're trying to get there fast.

And this is kind of marbleized into who we are.

We all know this and everyone who has a device out there knows this.

As soon as you turn your device on,

That little circle happens and it goes around and around and around.

Twelve seconds,

14.

5 seconds,

Max 16 seconds in.

Things are cool.

But after that,

There's a sense of impatience that we are deserving to have some other experience.

For me,

It's waiting in line to get my coffee.

People are designing their coffee up there and I'm waiting and I deserve not to wait in line.

There's this speed and an impatience with our experience.

And when we arrive there,

We typically want to be someone else.

We want to be skinnier.

We want to be richer.

We want to be more loved.

We want to be younger.

So this effort of trying to get somewhere,

Get there fast and become someone else,

By definition is not bad.

In fact,

It's beautiful.

You take a young woman who goes to college,

Works very hard,

Graduates as a physician.

She has an MD and she can then help others.

So this effort of trying to get somewhere and become someone else,

By definition,

Isn't wrong.

But in the tradition of mindful leadership,

It has a profound blind spot.

And the blind spot is in the effort of trying to get somewhere,

We forget how to simply be somewhere.

And in the effort of trying to become someone else,

Someone who's richer,

Smarter,

More loved,

More successful,

We forget how to be who we are.

Very simple.

This effort of being who we are,

Where we are completely has grown flabby and has been overwhelmed by this linear effort of always trying to achieve,

Always trying to accomplish.

And what mindful leadership is about is cultivating and strengthening this effort of being who we are and letting that weave into our effort of accomplishment to bring a sense of sanity and openness to that experience of achieving.

In order to reawaken this quality,

This effort of being who we are,

Where we are,

We do this practice of mindfulness awareness meditation,

Which is very simple.

We just sit there.

Reviews

Good introduction to the practice and the concept.

Thanks for this enlightening words. Namaste.

So simple. So good. Thank you

Very good! Encouraging. Thank you. 🙏🏻

Hah! The instruction is exactly as it should be. Thank you, Michael Carroll.

Great talk, maybe too short. I’d like to listen to some more each day: does anybody know where to find any?

Very clear and helpful.

This is excellent! Thank you!

Clear talk on meditation I have heard. I realize I always have an agenda to have a peaceful experience and if I don't I am doing it wrong.

More please! I wish your book was on audible