We've all felt it.
We're settled in.
Our posture is settled.
Our breath is getting calm.
We're ready to meditate.
And then suddenly,
The neighbor's lawnmower,
Your roommate's telephone,
The video game the kids are playing in the next room,
Or maybe it's something less dramatic.
Just the sound of a ticking clock.
A cough from somewhere else in the meditation hall.
A child's laugh from the street outside.
Either way,
You don't have to have been meditating for long before you experience distraction.
It happens.
Taking us away from our awareness.
Pulling us away from our mindfulness,
Our concentration.
And what can we do?
Try to block it out?
If you're like me,
That becomes its own distraction,
And in the end a losing battle.
Usually leaving me frustrated.
More distracted than ever.
Now these distractions arise from our senses.
And the Buddha spoke of six.
The five that we normally consider.
Sight,
Hearing,
Smell,
Taste and touch.
To which he added the mind itself,
Which presents us with the perception of thought,
Just as our ears bring us sounds or our eyes sight.
Perceptions and sensations come to us through our senses.
And as we sit in meditation,
They throw us off our groove.
They can set us in the patterns of aversion,
Irritation,
Even resentment.
Thanassaro Bhikkhu,
A well-known Theravadan monk and author,
Wrote,
When you follow certain trains of thought,
Such as these,
You develop the habits that go along with them.
So when we react negatively to what we perceive as distractions,
Thanassaro asks,
Are we developing the thing our meditation is meant to develop?
Are we developing calm?
Or are we developing turmoil?
Are we developing mental stability?
Or are we developing restlessness?
So let's see if we can get to the heart of this.
If we're being distracted by what our senses perceive,
Let's consider the platforms,
If you will,
Through which these perceptions present themselves.
What some refer to as the sense doors,
The eyes,
The ears,
The nose,
The tongue,
Our skin,
And the workings of our mind itself.
In the Anapanasati Sutra,
The Buddha asks,
What is the way to develop and practice continuously the method of full awareness of breathing?
He goes on to say,
It is like this,
The practitioner goes into the forest,
Or to the foot of a tree,
Or to any quiet place,
Sits stably,
Holding his or her body straight,
And practices like this,
Breathing in,
I know I am breathing in.
Breathing out,
I know I am breathing out.
But this is the modern world,
And we can rarely depend on that,
Let alone even find it.
Pico Inalio acknowledges this in his writing,
Noting that a busy,
Noisy environment is not an ideal setting for engaging in meditation practice.
In contrast,
What he urges us toward is to learn to handle whatever noise or perceptions manifest during our practice.
And this is where some speak of the idea of restraining the senses,
Or sense restraint.
Now we should certainly make a wise choice as to where we practice,
But we can also learn to allow sensorial perceptions that arise to become part of our practice.
This can be related to the theme of sensory restraint,
Which requires us to not grasp at the characteristics of what we perceive.
The task,
Inalio says,
Is to steer clear of reacting to sensorial perceptions in ways which pull us away from our concentration.
But the point is not simply avoidance.
With the proper cultivation of mindfulness and of our sense faculties,
He says,
We can remain within the realm of experience,
But step out of our reactivity to it.
There are several things to consider which might help us here.
One of the first things is to simply drop the idea of silence as something that belongs to us,
Something that we are entitled to.
With that attitude,
Naturally,
When our silence is broken,
We'll react negatively.
Another helpful idea is to just set an intention when we set down to meditate,
An intention to practice with effort and sincerity in this time and this place.
This simple action and the remembrance of it can do much to help us return to our practice when perceptions arise.
But the other thing to think about,
Really the main thing,
Is this idea of sense restraint,
Which is common in teachings on meditation in early Buddhism.
We're encouraged to consider the idea of gatekeepers at the doors of our senses,
The eyes,
The ears,
Etc.
,
Guardians at our sense doors.
Consider,
What if a sensation at any one of these sense doors,
A sound,
A smell,
A thought,
What if it were met directly by the presence of mindfulness?
What if a sensation were met at the moment of its arising and understood for what it is?
A sensation,
Just that and nothing more,
Something which can divert our concentration or not?
We can think of mindfulness as a gatekeeper of the senses,
A gatekeeper at the sense doors,
Using mindfulness to help us not grasp after sensations,
Including our thoughts,
To not cling to our perceptions of what's happening around us,
But rather to understand that our perceptions,
Things which seem like distractions from our mindful awareness,
Are rather part of what we are mindfully aware.
Not separate from us,
Not separate from our meditation,
But rather part of it.
With mindful awareness,
We allow sense impressions to find a place in the background of our awareness on the periphery of our concentration.
Like our minds do when we filter out unnecessary perceptions over time,
Like the sound of a train that we hear night after night,
We can take sense perceptions,
Once seen as distractions,
And simply let them find a place in our meditative awareness to be simply part of our experience,
Rather than something which intrudes upon it.
This is the strength of mindfulness,
And part of its intended function in meditation practice,
To stand as a gatekeeper at the sense doors,
Not to keep things out,
But to help things find their proper place to be,
So we can continue to bring our presence,
Our attention,
To the reality of our breathing,
And our development of concentration.
