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February 9 - June 19, 2021
what clinched it was the day he told me the Buddha had said, “Don’t take my word for anything I teach, don’t accept it on my authority. Come and see for yourself.” Kema explained that everything the Buddha taught was available to anyone willing to take the time and train the mind to discover it for themselves. This sounded like science to me!
I am a non-dualist. Primarily as a result of meditation experiences, but supported by rational analysis as well, I hold strongly to this fourth alternative view. There is only one kind of “stuff,” and both mind and matter are mere appearances.
Meditation is a science, the systematic process of training the mind.
Although pain and pleasure are an inevitable part of human life, suffering and happiness are entirely optional.
The Buddha said that, with proper training, it should take no longer than seven years,
For householders who practice properly, it’s possible to master the Ten Stages within a few months or years.1 What you need is a regular daily sitting practice of one to two hours per day in combination with some of the supplemental practices described in the appendices.
The primary challenge is not to be distracted or distressed by the variety of extraordinary experiences during this Stage: unusual, and often unpleasant, sensations, involuntary movements, feelings of strong energy currents in the body, and intense joy. Simply let them be.
When the eyes perceive only an inner light, the ears perceive only an inner sound, the body is suffused with a sense of pleasure and comfort, and your mental state is one of intense joy. With this mental and physical pliancy, you can sit for hours without dullness, distraction, or physical discomfort.
All you’re really “doing” in meditation is forming and holding specific conscious intentions—nothing more.
intentions lead to mental actions, and repeated mental actions become mental habits.
Repeating simple tasks with a clear intention can reprogram unconscious mental processes. This can completely transform who you are as a person.
This is the very essence of meditation: we reprogram unconscious mental processes by repeating basic tasks over and over with a clear intention.
When the mindfulness of a samurai warrior fails, he loses his life.
The condition in which the mind “stands back” to observe its own state and activities is called metacognitive introspective awareness.13
Think of consciousness as a limited power source. Both attention and awareness draw their energy from this shared source. With only a limited amount of energy available for both, there will always be a trade-off between the two.
Attention and awareness draw from the same limited capacity for consciousness. The goal is to increase the total power of consciousness available for both.
• Your lips should be closed, your teeth slightly apart, and your tongue against the roof of your mouth, with the tip against the back of your upper teeth.
Start with your eyes closed and angled slightly downward, as though you were reading a book. This creates the least tension in your forehead and face.
Whenever we refer to the “breath” as the meditation object, we actually mean the sensations produced by breathing, not some visualization or idea of the breath going in and out.
Let your eyes rest in a position that serves your imagination, but don’t actually try to direct your eyes to the tip of your nose or your abdomen. That will just create discomfort.
Some people find it easier to do two shorter meditations of twenty to thirty minutes each day. This is fine at first, but I strongly recommend at least one daily forty-five-minute sit as a minimum. This will provide a solid basis for your practice.
You can’t overcome all discomfort by adjusting your posture. Eliminate what you can, but accept what remains as part of your practice.
All the mental skills needed in meditation are innate abilities. Meditation trains certain “mental muscles.”
Even serious cases of attention deficit disorder don’t prevent people from achieving the highest goals of meditation.7
Most novice meditators are surprised by how unruly the mind is.
If you find it hard to perceive the ends of the in- and out-breaths clearly, it helps to identify the pauses first, then work backward. Once you’ve found the pauses with some certainty, as well as the start and end of each part of the breath cycle, try observing all these points with equal clarity.
The mind is a collective of mental processes operating either through consensus, or through a very temporary dominance of one process over the others.
With practice, the number of sensations you recognize will increase. It’s possible to consistently identify between four and maybe a dozen or more sensations with each in-breath, and a somewhat smaller number for each out-breath (the sensations are subtler).
When you focus closely, the mind naturally tends to drop awareness of bodily sensations and external stimuli. Don’t let this happen, because you’ll become more vulnerable to both forgetting and drowsiness.
As you follow the entire breath cycle, begin connecting by observing the two pauses closely, and notice which is longer and which is shorter. Next, compare the in- and out-breaths to each other. Are they the same length, or is one longer than the other?
Once you reach Stages Four and Five, your introspective awareness will have improved enough that you can start connecting the details of the breath cycle to your state of mind.
To strengthen introspective awareness, use labeling to practice identifying the distraction in the very moment you realize you’re no longer on the breath. For example, if you catch yourself thinking about your next meal or something that happened yesterday, give the distraction a neutral label such as “thinking,” “planning,” or “remembering.”
For instance, set your intention at the pause before the out-breath to observe the very beginning of the out-breath. At the beginning of the out-breath, set the intention to observe sensations near the middle. And at the middle, set your intention to discern the end of the out-breath.
people who have cultivated mindfulness are more attuned and less reactive. They have greater self-control and self-awareness, better communication skills and relationships, clearer thinking and intentions, and more resilience to change.
Recognize when a subtle distraction has the potential to become a gross distraction before it happens. Then tighten up your focus on the breath so the subtle distraction doesn’t draw you away.
S = P x R. The amount of suffering you experience is equal to the actual pain multiplied by the mind’s resistance to that pain.
As the mind grows calm and everyday distractions fall away, significant material from the unconscious starts to well up into consciousness.
Without getting caught up in your subjective experience, try to find a label that accurately describes the emotion (e.g., anxiety, guilt, lust) and quality (e.g., intense, vague, agitating).
You will have many more opportunities: the material will continue to return until you can greet it with full acceptance and equanimity.
You’re purifying your mind of all the afflictions you’ve accumulated throughout your entire life.
people have less peripheral awareness of what’s going on in their minds than they do of things in the external environment.
A strong intention to perceive anything results in more perceiving moments, and vice versa. This, in turn, has a strong effect on the activity and energy levels of the mind.
The solution to any loss of mindfulness is to increase the total power of consciousness. That means increasing the proportion of actively perceiving versus non-perceiving mind moments.
As a general rule, the more mindful you are in the moment, the more difficult it is to be either startled or surprised.
The best way to detect subtle dullness is by making introspective awareness stronger. The key to doing that is intention.
An unconscious intention that has been repeatedly supported as a conscious intention can give rise to automatic actions.
Metacognitive introspective awareness is the ability to continuously observe not just mental objects, but the activity and overall state of the mind.
Just as different kinds of waves arise from the ocean, different kinds of Consciousness arise from the Unconscious Mind.
Just as the ocean and its waves cannot be separated, so too in the mind the Unconscious and the Consciousnesses cannot be separated.
When you can clearly observe all the breath sensations occurring in the body at once, you are so fully engaged that there’s no attention to spare for distractions.
