Les 1
Sitting Still
Give yourself a few minutes of silence and simply be present to whatever arises into your consciousness. Become aware of the sitting posture and of the breathing and during the day try to stop, maybe just a few seconds, to be aware of the palm of your hands touching an object.
Les 2
Slowing Down
To really let go of worries, and unnecessary thoughts and emotions, we need to see with no doubt that we are not all those transient processes happening inside of us. And that is possible when we feel a space, the space of awareness, between us and all those processes. To develop such a space, slowing down is the key. If you feel you can’t stop and sit, walking meditation can help you.
Les 3
Breathing
Once we have realized that the mind is full of contents totally out of our control, we need an anchor for the wandering mind. Breathing occurs in the body and it is a reliable object of observation, because it is always there available for us at any moment. So any time you realize your mind is going on its own, catch it gently and bring it to the breathing just for a few seconds.
Les 4
Being Kind
A key ingredient for developing mindfulness is kindness. We should not force the mind to stay on one object, because that would produce more tension. We need to train the mind gently, so that with time it naturally goes on the object of observation: and our first choice is the breathing. Awaken our innate kindness is the purpose of today practice. Remember to repeat a few kind words to yourself every once in a while.
Les 5
Focusing
To develop a sharp pointed and stable mindfulness we need to train the mind to stay focused on a single object of observation moment by moment. To do that we have chosen the breathing, which is a moving object, moment by moment the breath feels different. At every moment though many things happen and we can then shift our pointed attention to another object, for example the feeling of the palm of our hands or other part of the body. Consciously choose where to shift your focus of attention, and don’t let the mind wander from an object of observation to another according to its own conditioning.
Les 6
Noting
When a sound happens or a sensation in the body arises, note it and name it briefly with just one word: for example “sound” or “tension”. Nothing should arise and pass unnoticed. While trying to keep your attention on the breathing you realize how your mind wanders a lot. It seems to have a life of its own. Congratulate then with yourself, because each time you catch the wandering mind you are in that very moment of catching it mindful and aware of what’s happening. Once you have caught the distracting phenomenon by naming it, let it go without getting involved into thinking about it, and go back to the breathing or the next event that's happening right now.
Les 7
Sensing
Dispel the myth that during meditation only peace and tranquility should be experienced. Mindfulness is the art to be present to whatever is here in this precise moment, and we all know that life brings joys and sorrows. It is indeed the ability to live with all life’s tastes that can bring deep peace and a strong unshakeable tranquillity. So during meditation be aware of all the sensations that arise: pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Acknowledge each one of them, know it, accept it and let it be just the way it is, without trying to manipulate or change. Be aware of your expectations and your “not wanting”. During the day be aware of how many likes and dislikes drive your day.
Les 8
Attention
The act of breathing can be divided in two phases: breathing in and breathing out, two simple movements. Refine your attention by following closer these two acts in the movements of your chest or abdomen. If boredom arises then try to awake your inner child curiosity and look closer to the experience of breathing-in and then of breathing-out. Is there a tickling? Or is it hard: like it was lifting something very heavy? It doesn’t really matter what you feel. What matters is your awareness of what you feel right now. Be smart and use the little breaks of the day to go back to the breathing and feel it with a scientific attitude like you were using a microscope.
Les 9
Joy
Observing your internal landscape you might notice all kind of emotions and thoughts at any given moment. Try now to consciously seek and activate joy within you. Joy is always there available inside of us, and we can consciously choose to feel it any time we want. To get in contact with your inner joy you can think about something that brings you joy, it may be something very simple, and then nurture it by writing down a list of all things that can make you joyful. By doing so we activate the experience that joy is a quality present inside of us and can be felt as sensations moving in the body. Once we have fully realized that even if triggered by external events joy does not depend on them, we can decide to feel joy at any time, regardless of what’s happening outside.
Les 10
A Calm Body
A calm mind lies in a calm body. We can all easily verify that fear and anger agitate the body and the mind, but we may have overlooked that also excitement, that can appear pleasant on the surface, has an intrinsic turbulence that agitate the mind and takes us far away from mindfulness. We then need to train ourselves to be able to enjoy pleasant states without losing awareness of the present moment and thus going out of control. Try to catch yourself during the day in a moment of intense pleasure, maybe eating your favourite food, can you be still and mindful? Or the excitement takes control of your mind and you don’t know anymore what you are saying or doing?
Les 11
An Interesting Pain
Our instinct is to get rid of a pain as soon as it arises. We don’t like unpleasant states and we immediately try to push them away somehow. Unfortunately this is not a good strategy in the long run, because it creates a refusal in the mind, a state that brings unhappiness. To experience peace, the mind needs to embrace and accept things as they are. Any time a tension or a pain manifest in the body try to watch it and feel it with curiosity: how is it? Is it burning, moving or pressing? Is it hot, warm or cold? In this way you can acknowledge there is a pain, but you are not fighting against it, on the contrary you are exploring its very nature with the curiosity of a child, developing a wholesome quality in your mind.
Les 12
Insight
The more you observe the movements of your breath, the more things you’ll discover. For example there might be a pause at the end of a breathing phase. Try to note it. Is there a pause at the end of the breathing-in? Or is there a pause at the end of the breathing out? And how is that pause? Can you describe your feelings or sensations in a simple way? You’re simply exploring yourself the way you are right now, in this very moment. Let go of the idea of what you should be, or of what the situation should be. We are simply witnessing the present moment, using the breathing and the body sensations to anchor the mind here, and thus knowing things as they really are, not as how we’d like them to be.
Les 13
Peace
We have already explored how calm and tranquillity are always available inside of us, like any other emotion or mental state. To be able to face unpleasant emotions and mental state we need then to know the path to peace, so that in the midst of an emotional storm we can draw fully from that peace. That does not mean that we deny or reject unpleasant states, on the contrary if these happen we need to acknowledge them, but we can go through an unpleasant phase with a strong deep sense of peace at the bottom, even if on the surface everything is ruffled. Try to let go of the impulse to judge and discriminate an unpleasant situation. How do you feel?
Les 14
Gratitude
The perfect antidote to contraction and closure is gratitude. Write a list of all the things you are grateful for. It can be anything: very small simple things you happen to have in your daily life or great achievements or the gift of lovely people around you. Then read the list every morning after you wake up. Starting the day grateful and open to life, instead of moaning and complaining, has a strong impact on your mind. Is like changing point of view and seeing the same things in a completely different way. You'll then be ready to the next steps: opening your heart to real unbiased love.
Les 15
Embracing
In the past sessions we have progressively trained the mind to accept whatever arises: being it pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Today we are going deeper into that capacity: to open our mind to whatever is present and embrace it. To be able to do so, we need to look at our internal states with the kindness of a mother with her newborn baby. That is the consideration to adopt towards our inner states: caress them and embrace them gently.
Les 16
Loving Kindness
The more we close ourselves to the experience of pain and sorrow the more we get away also from joy and peace. In order to experience the full spectrum of human emotions we need to be open to whatever life brings us. As our instinct is to run away from a physical tension or an unpleasant sensation, we should watch and know that attitude. To help ourselves be with unpleasant experiences we use the Loving Kindness meditation. Starting by wishing well-being to one-self, we plant a good intention in the mind, that opens the heart.
Les 17
Caring
Our mind attitude is everything. It determines whether we feel good or bad, regardless of external events. So to strengthen good intentions in the mind and a warm feeling in the heart, we can send well-being wishes to a dear one, thus extending the loving kindness practice. This helps to connect to our heart and refine that attitude of benevolence that is fundamental to be able to be with unpleasant experiences.
Les 18
Befriending
The more we practice Loving Kindness meditation the more we comprehend that a good inclination of the mind and a warm heart make us stronger. Today we will send well-being wishes to a neutral person: someone we feel indifferent towards. We usually don’t feel any particular emotion, because we neither like, nor dislike these people, but today we are going to intentionally send them a good wish from the heart. This action strengthens our understanding that everything happens inside of us, independently of external causes.
Les 19
Befriending An Enemy
The enemy we are going to befriend is the anger that lies inside of us. A farther step in the Loving Kindness meditation consists in sending wishes of well-being and happiness to someone we don’t like or with which we are in conflict. It might take a strong effort for some people to actually disconnect the image or the ideas we have about that person and be able to feel love inside regardless, but the liberating feeling one can experience at the end is worth trying. A reporter once asked the Dalai Lama whether he held anger towards the Chinese government. He replied “They have taken everything from us, should I let them take my mind as well?”
Les 20
Universal Love
We have explored how to be really able to love oneself and others, and thus life or reality in general, we need to love all parts of ourselves, even and especially the aspects that we don’t like. Once we have experienced, at least once, that kind of acceptance and we have opened our heart, we can step into the last part of the Loving Kindness meditation: wishing happiness to all sentient beings. This gives us a taste of unconditional love, a state that can heal us profoundly and thus ultimately heal society. Taking care of our inner wounds and developing love is the only way that can bring real peace to the world.
Les 21
Purifying The Mind
Thoughts, emotions and sensations pass through the body like clouds in the sky. They do so all the time, and without mindfulness they pass unnoticed. A strong developed awareness of the present moment allows instead to catch a rising thought, and then to decide if it’s worth spending energy on it, or if it is better to just drop it and go on with something more useful and fulfilling. Today we will try to catch a rising thought playing like the cat with the mouse.
Les 22
Healing
During meditation we are simply observing all the mental and physical states that are going on in the moment, instead of instantly reacting to them, as we usually do, when are we are not mindful. In the past decades science has studied the mechanisms that are responsible of the beneficial effects seen with mindfulness meditation. It seems its therapeutic effect, in other words the healing power, comes from de-sensitizing conditioned responses.
Les 23
Taking Responsibility
In the past sessions we have explored how individual well-being leads to collective and planetary well-being. A daily practice of meditation becomes then a huge responsibility. The more you nurture peace inside yourself the more you contribute to a wiser and better world. Bringing your attention inwards you start to realize how everything happens inside. This is not something you need to believe in, verify if it is true for you, according to your own experience. And remember that every problem is an opportunity for growth, if we know how to look at things.
Les 24
Seeing
We owe to Buddhist psychology the development of a method to become self-aware: we start with awareness of breathing, then of body sensations, then of mental states, thoughts and emotions, and then of all conscious contents. Vipassana and mindfulness meditation consist in seeing all that is happening inside of me right now without commenting, without activating the chattering mind. We are not meditating to reach an ideal goal, we are meditating to train mental presence.
Les 25
Welcoming
By paying a finer and closer attention to your internal landscape you might find things you don’t like: thoughts, emotions and sensations that you wished you did not have. But since they are there, you must be brave and take a look at all those scorpions and spiders and cockroaches, and accept the fact that they are present. The mere act of accepting is usually enough to let them disappear, since everything is always moving and changing inside and nothing stays for long. While trying to fight against them usually makes them bigger, because it means believing in them and giving them power. Accepting instead is a form of love, and love turns things brighter.
Les 26
Simply Being
All we have done till now should have developed the right effort also called the effortless effort, that is the capacity to be still and awake and alert and fully present to whatever arises into consciousness. Today we will just sit, or walk slowly, in silence without any effort at all. To experience that state we might oscillate first between the two extremes of excessive tension and excessive distraction, but after having oscillated we will fall into the centre of effortless effort.
Les 27
Widening
You might have started this journey thinking you were going to take care of “yourself”, of “your” anxiety, “your” fear, and so on. At this point you should have realized how sitting still for a while following your breath, or walking slowly and doing things with mindfulness, has an impact on you as well as around you. This realization can improve the practice itself by widening the space of awareness. Let’s feel this huge space inside that gets bigger and bigger till it embraces the entire universe.
Les 28
Detaching
To simply be one needs to be detached from all the happenings. This doesn’t mean being disinterested. On the contrary one sees and perceives all that is happening with so much clarity that does not get involved into unnecessary thinking or reacting to events. To develop such a wise attitude we need to be alert any time we fall into rumination or obsessive thinking, and after acknowledging it we need to cut the habit to have a personal involvement. It is just thoughts or emotions flying around the mind, it is not me. We must aim at seeing things clearly without being personally involved. This attitude allows the mind to immediately perceive right away what is good for ourselves and others.
Les 29
Letting Go
Any time we remain attached to something we suffer. Either we are attached to something we like or we are fighting to push away something we don’t like, in both cases we are not flowing with life, and we get stuck. The ability to let go is the ability to deeply feel a joy or a sorrow without wanting it to remain or to go away. Knowing that everything is temporary and not lasting, because change is the nature of things. We can enjoy a pleasant situation and feel the sadness of an unpleasant one, and thus live fully and free from ideas and expectations. This does not mean that we cannot have intentions or motivations, and that we passively live without moving. The quality of our intentions and motivations is crucial to how we react to events. We can develop good intentions, and let go of the results.
Les 30
Dissolving
It is only when the ego disappears with all its wanting and not-wanting that we experience real peace and freedom. Freedom from concepts and ideas that are all personal and not have anything to do with universal truths. Doing nothing to feed the ego is thus the task of today. Sitting and listening to whatever happens with no judgment at all. It might be the birds outside or a noise in the stomach inside. Whatever happens I’m going to let go any idea of good or bad. I'm simply witnessing life as it unfolds.
