Dealing With Distractions And Building Concentration - Zen Talk With Daizan Roshi

In this talk, Zen teacher Daizan Roshi discusses how to deal with distractions in our meditation practice, and how to cultivate deeper concentration. He follows the advice of the Buddha, who said (as recorded in the Dhammapada), "The mind is fickle and flighty - it flies after fancies wherever it likes and is difficult indeed to restrain. But it's a great good to control the mind - a mind self-controlled is a source of great joy."

Transcript

Perhaps the first thing,

Or at least a very early thing,

That anybody who starts a meditation practice encounters is the mind,

And particularly the tendency of the mind to wander off.

Right back two and a half thousand years ago,

The time of the Buddha,

The Buddha himself in a text called the Dharmapada,

Which is perhaps the most popular Buddhist text in the world.

It's got a series of little verses and phrases summarising the teaching.

He's got a few statements,

For example,

The mind is wavering and restless,

Difficult to guard and restrain.

Let the wise man straighten his mind as a maker of arrows makes his arrows straight.

He also says,

Like a fish which is thrown on dry land,

Taken from its home in the waters,

The mind strives and struggles to get free from the power of death.

The mind is fickle and flighty.

It flies after fancies wherever it likes.

It is difficult indeed to restrain,

But it's a great good to control a mind.

A mind self-controlled is a source of great joy.

Now I'm writing a book at the moment about meditation and mindfulness practice from a Zen perspective.

This morning I was reviewing some of the research.

Almost every month now there's new research around the effects and the benefits of meditation and mindfulness practice.

And some of this research hasn't been very good quality.

Some of it is a little bit questionable,

But one area which seems to be beyond question is that somebody who develops a meditation practice becomes much,

Much better at concentrating and doing what's in front of them,

At learning to control the mind.

Well,

Surprise,

Surprise,

That's pretty obvious.

That's front and center really of our work.

But I wanted to explore a little bit this area of destruction concentration because it is so present and so prominent for us.

Now the mind is a extraordinary human possession,

And has many levels to which it can be developed and trained.

When we think of training the mind in terms of meditation and mindfulness practice,

I think we can think in two major ways,

Or two,

If you like,

Two dimensions or two contrasting approaches perhaps.

Now the recent research on the way the mind continues to change,

To develop,

To learn throughout our life,

What's called neuroplasticity,

Has thrown up a very close kind of parallel between,

If you like,

Mental fitness and physical fitness.

We're all very aware that physical fitness is something you can develop,

But you need to maintain mental fitness is the same.

We're all also very aware that you can develop physically in the area of strength.

You can develop physically in the area of speed.

You can develop physically in the area of flexibility.

There are different dimensions or different physical capacities that you can develop.

Similarly,

There are mental,

Different mental faculties,

If you like,

That can be developed.

Now the kind of layman's eye view on meditation practice is that we learn to kind of completely clear the mind of all thoughts.

The mind becomes clear as a bell,

Utterly focused,

Utterly concentrated with no distractions arising whatsoever.

Now once in a blue moon,

You might find yourself landing there.

There are practices which are developed,

Which are there to develop this kind of very narrowing,

Very narrowed focus of the mind.

And going back to our little quotation,

The Buddha is saying,

A mind self-controlled is a source of great joy.

We can learn how to develop this sharp,

Clear focus of the mind.

When we do so,

We touch into very blissful,

Very beautiful,

Very peaceful states of both body and mind.

But this kind of development is not massively useful for everyday life.

If you are anything like the rest of the population of London,

Your everyday life is busy.

Lots will be going on,

Internally and externally.

If you are walking through life with a narrow point focus,

You are going to miss so much.

There is another way of developing the ability to focus and concentrate the mind,

Which is non-exclusive in the sense that we are not excluding areas of experience.

If you imagine your mind as like a crowd of children,

Your job is to kind of look after this crowd of children.

You are sat in the middle of the room,

The children are running about,

You are very aware,

You are very present,

You are very focused in the sense that you know what is going on with these children,

But you are not trying to force them to sit on their school chairs and not move.

You are letting them run about.

You can actually allow the mind to be like this.

For example,

When we are using the breath as our focus point in the meditation.

The breath can be an anchor when you rest your attention on the breath.

For example,

We can do it right now if you become aware of the deepest place within your body where you can feel this rising and sinking of your breath.

Perhaps you may feel it in your lower ribs,

Perhaps you may feel it down into your solar plexus or even down into your lower belly.

Just wherever is the deepest place you can feel the rising and sinking of your breath.

And if you just rest your attention here,

Just tuning in,

Being aware of this rising and sinking.

Now we can do this while still retaining an open mind,

An open awareness,

An open quality of presence where we are perfectly well aware of the aeroplane flying overhead,

The cars driving past,

The thoughts arising and passing,

The emotions,

The physical experiences.

These can all come and go and we can allow them to just do what they need to do whilst resting our attention on this rising and sinking and making this the centre of our attention.

Now when we develop this quality of focus,

This open quality of focus,

This is very transferable into everyday life.

If you can do this in your own mind and in the chaos of your own experience,

You can do this in a busy office,

In an overheated newsroom,

In a chaotic traffic situation.

It's very transferable.

Now when we turn our attention inwards in our meditation work,

It can sometimes be almost a little bit dispiriting quite how chaotic things are,

How we get pulled about,

Buffeted about by the thoughts,

The emotions,

The feelings,

Everything that's going on.

Sometimes I show people how to meditate and they come back a week later saying they actually feel they're getting worse at it day by day.

We're engaged in a training process.

Now a baby has to learn to stand up and learn to make its first step or two and then learn to walk and then eventually learn to run.

In the same way with your mind,

You first of all learn to bring your mind to rest on a particular object of focus,

Perhaps your breath.

That's like the baby standing up.

Now as we know,

The baby lands on its bum ten times,

A hundred times,

But gets up again.

It doesn't matter.

Each time it falls down,

It just gets up again.

If we just do this,

Don't worry about falling over,

Don't worry about trying to conform to an ideal,

Then we find we become better and better able to stand.

We will still fall over every now and again.

We will still get distracted every now and again,

But we become better,

If you like,

More skilled or more focused,

More able to hold our focus.

And then we become able to explore the process of walking,

Actually maintaining this over time.

And then our practice can refine again.

We can begin to run.

We can learn what it means to run.

All the way we will fall over here and there.

Destruction is part of the process.

But once we can begin the process of learning to run,

Just using this physical analogy,

Then the whole world of sports and athletics opens up for us.

We can explore soccer,

Tennis,

It doesn't matter,

All sorts of things.

Similarly,

If we go through this process of training the mind,

All sorts of potentials can open up.

And you can choose,

Really,

What you want to develop from then on.

People can explore boosting their health,

Their well-being.

They can explore developing greater levels of insight into life.

They can explore becoming more resilient to the stresses and strains of modern life.

Many,

Many,

Many different areas.

But just as the baby learns to stand and then walk and then run,

This simple work of facing the distraction of the mind and coming back again and again and again,

Without letting that dampen our spirits,

That will actually do the work of giving us our basic level of skill.

Now,

One process that I found helps people develop this ability to concentrate,

This ability to have the mind stay where they put it,

Is to use a meditation diary.

I tend to use a little notebook about this size.

And the way of working with focus and concentration is very simple.

Every time you sit down to meditate,

And I strongly recommend you make it a daily practice,

Every time when you sit down,

You resolve at the beginning,

I'm going to develop my concentration as best I can.

And then you do your practice.

And then at the end,

You simply note down in your meditation diary roughly what percentage of the time you were able to keep your attention on your objective meditation,

Your breath,

Whatever it was,

As opposed to being distracted.

The very simple process of tracking how you're doing sends a very powerful signal to the mind,

Clarifies your intentions for the mind.

And you'll notice quite rapidly your concentration,

Your ability to leave the mind in a certain place and have it stay there will strengthen and develop.

You'll become able to walk and eventually you'll become able to run.

As you develop this human skill,

The Buddha himself said,

You will find a source of great joy,

A source of great joy that's internal,

That nobody gives you,

Nobody sells you,

It's yours.

So this simple work,

This putting in the groundwork will pay off many times over.

Reviews

Every so often, I feel the need/desire to go back to square one with my practice. I always learn something new. This talk helped me reorient and think about my practice in new ways. I appreciate your insight.

Thank you very much for encouraging me to focus more. It‘s a great talk with good examples.

Very clear explained. Thank you. I loved the comparison of the mind with a fish which is outside the water agitating its whole body because it has lost its center, in this case the water. Our mind may be agitated like that in big cities as well. Meditating on one point brings us clarity and calms the mind kindly. __/ __

Very useful

To the point and emphatically delivered😃 Thank you Daizan🙏🙏🙏

Easy to follow, very useful practical advice!
Thank you so much🙏

Very enjoyable thank you Namaste 🙏🏻