The kind of noting described so far could be done anywhere, but an alternate or additional form can be used off the cushion, which is to describe actions being performed. For example, the practice of focusing on the breath is often noted with the "rising" and "falling" (of the diaphragm), or sometimes "in" and "out" if noting the breath at the tip of the nose.
Walking can be noted as "stepping", or during slow meditative walks as a sequence of "lifting", "moving", "placing", "pressure", etc. Getting a glass of water, there might be "reaching" for the cabinet handle, "grasping" the handle, "pulling" the handle, "reaching" for the glass, "holding" the glass, "moving" the glass, "reaching" for the faucet, "turning" the faucet, "moving" the glass, "filling" the glass, "reaching" for the faucet again, "turning" the faucet, "raising" the glass, "turning", "sipping", "tasting", "swallowing", etc.
Next: Getting It Done
Table of Contents for How to Meditate
Friday, November 3, 2017
Second Stage - More Detailed Noting
A second stage might be to begin to flesh out the feeling component into basic physical sensations like "pressure" or "tension", as well as basic emotions such as "anger", "joy", "sadness", and "fear", and to flesh out thinking into a few categories like "planning", "wondering", "remembering", or "imagining".
We don't have to go crazy with a million notes, but I will list a few more here for reference. Pick and choose what works for you.
Feeling physical sensations: pressure, tension, release, itching, tingling, twitching, pulsing, throbbing, warmness, coolness, softness, hardness. It doesn't have to be complicated. 99% of the time I find myself using pressure or tension.
Feeling emotional sensations: Besides basic emotions such as anger, joy, sadness and fear, there can be related subcomponents:
Related to anger: disgust, frustration, annoyance, rage, irritation.
Related to joy: love, bliss, exhilaration, wonder.
Related to sadness: depression, grief, hopelessness, despair.
Related to fear: anxiety, worry, surprise.
There is also a category of mind states that might not fit neatly into thoughts or feelings, such as amusement, curiosity, compassion, relaxation, tranquility, anticipation, apathy, boredom, etc.
Experiencing thinking: thinking, remembering, imagining, planning, visualizing, wondering, analyzing, judging.
I would say that when I am noting, I am probably using less than 20 notes on a regular basis. It's just a tool to keep us aware, and it doesn't take tremendous variety to go beyond the benefit of a simple mantra.
Next: Third Stage - Grasping and Resistance
Table of Contents for How to Meditate
Getting In Touch With Emotions
Realize that when you are having an emotional experience, there may be many things going on. There could be a primary emotion such as anger. Easy enough. But there could also be tensions in the body that are related to the anger. One of the better habits to cultivate is an ability to quickly (or slowly) scan through the body and notice where there are any tensions. Often, a fair amount of that tension can be let go of immediately, once you are aware of it. In addition to the emotion of anger, and the body tensions associated with anger, there could also be angry thoughts or something subtler like a grumpiness. If you're experiencing dissatisfaction, gently explore the body, the emotions, the mindstates, try to understand where that is, what it is, what you are really experiencing.
Understand that I'm not suggesting you intellectually analyze your emotions or try to figure out the "why" behind them. Why is not so important. I'm encouraging you to actually feel your feelings. For some people it might be useful to probe a little deeper, i.e. maybe there is a surface emotion, which is enough for basic noting practice, but maybe check to see if there is anything deeper. I don't normally advocate "hunting" for objects of awareness in noting, rather just note what is there, but if emotions are tricky for you, it might be worth poking around a bit. Are you noticing all of the emotional material? Are you avoiding or resisting any emotional material? Be curious, and try to make sure you're feeling everything that is there, that you aren't skipping over or ignoring something.
It may be worthwhile to remember that when you are experiencing anything related to emotions, maybe check out the other parts of the body-emotions-thoughts complex, and see what else can be noticed and possibly let go of.
This is similar to the idea of breaking things down into their component parts. What is this sensation made of? Where is it in the body? Does it change? These are questions to be asked and answered without words. Feel this stuff. Adyashanti once made the analogy of being like a mad scientist, exploring the feelings that you are resisting or fearing. What is that nasty depression like when you break it down in this way or stop fighting it? Or that rage or fear? Plunge into it and first try to just let it be what it is and break it down, or simply experience it again and again. Let it be what it is. Be curious, as curiosity is a great tool for maintaining awareness. What are the basic sensations, where are they in the body, what does that feel like, what are the thoughts, might I be able to let go of some of that? Could I let that be without resisting it? Do this until you begin to do this wordlessly.
I hesitate to get too deeply into the beliefs underlying emotions, because we are trying to break everything down into component parts, and simultaneously we're trying to avoid going into stories and narrative. For our purposes the why is not so important. However, I should mention that on this emotional axis and the body-emotion-mind experiences that are woven there, there is typically an underlying belief, an opinion, an assumption, often a fear, that lies beneath resisted phenomenon. Letting go of the underlying belief can facilitate the letting go of all the various sensations. If you are aware enough of your own psychology to go down that road, I recommend keeping the concepts to simply noticing something like "my parents were controlling", and then go right back to noting basic phenomenon. Nothing to see here, move along - it is just phenomenon like any other. Psychological analysis can take place outside of formal meditation practice.
So the recommendation for things you are resisting is to lightly and continuously, repetitively, explore the usual suspects of body, emotion, and mind, investigate without creating a bunch of stories, let go of what can be let go of, and ultimately let everything just be with as little resistance as possible. The background of the meditative path is one of relaxation, which is about letting go of the tensions that we are often unconsciously creating.
Sometimes we may be dealing with something that is more persistent or troublesome emotionally. This requires more of the same. The pointer is to work in a very continuous way on feeling, accepting, allowing, acknowledging, welcoming, surrendering, opening up, making friends, being receptive, holding the space, letting be, letting go, etc. This aspect of treating everything that comes up in a non-judgmental way, relaxing with it, allowing it, is a very important part of the practice.
Next: Alternative Noting
Table of Contents for How to Meditate
Understand that I'm not suggesting you intellectually analyze your emotions or try to figure out the "why" behind them. Why is not so important. I'm encouraging you to actually feel your feelings. For some people it might be useful to probe a little deeper, i.e. maybe there is a surface emotion, which is enough for basic noting practice, but maybe check to see if there is anything deeper. I don't normally advocate "hunting" for objects of awareness in noting, rather just note what is there, but if emotions are tricky for you, it might be worth poking around a bit. Are you noticing all of the emotional material? Are you avoiding or resisting any emotional material? Be curious, and try to make sure you're feeling everything that is there, that you aren't skipping over or ignoring something.
It may be worthwhile to remember that when you are experiencing anything related to emotions, maybe check out the other parts of the body-emotions-thoughts complex, and see what else can be noticed and possibly let go of.
This is similar to the idea of breaking things down into their component parts. What is this sensation made of? Where is it in the body? Does it change? These are questions to be asked and answered without words. Feel this stuff. Adyashanti once made the analogy of being like a mad scientist, exploring the feelings that you are resisting or fearing. What is that nasty depression like when you break it down in this way or stop fighting it? Or that rage or fear? Plunge into it and first try to just let it be what it is and break it down, or simply experience it again and again. Let it be what it is. Be curious, as curiosity is a great tool for maintaining awareness. What are the basic sensations, where are they in the body, what does that feel like, what are the thoughts, might I be able to let go of some of that? Could I let that be without resisting it? Do this until you begin to do this wordlessly.
I hesitate to get too deeply into the beliefs underlying emotions, because we are trying to break everything down into component parts, and simultaneously we're trying to avoid going into stories and narrative. For our purposes the why is not so important. However, I should mention that on this emotional axis and the body-emotion-mind experiences that are woven there, there is typically an underlying belief, an opinion, an assumption, often a fear, that lies beneath resisted phenomenon. Letting go of the underlying belief can facilitate the letting go of all the various sensations. If you are aware enough of your own psychology to go down that road, I recommend keeping the concepts to simply noticing something like "my parents were controlling", and then go right back to noting basic phenomenon. Nothing to see here, move along - it is just phenomenon like any other. Psychological analysis can take place outside of formal meditation practice.
So the recommendation for things you are resisting is to lightly and continuously, repetitively, explore the usual suspects of body, emotion, and mind, investigate without creating a bunch of stories, let go of what can be let go of, and ultimately let everything just be with as little resistance as possible. The background of the meditative path is one of relaxation, which is about letting go of the tensions that we are often unconsciously creating.
"get comfortable with being uncomfortable"
Sometimes we may be dealing with something that is more persistent or troublesome emotionally. This requires more of the same. The pointer is to work in a very continuous way on feeling, accepting, allowing, acknowledging, welcoming, surrendering, opening up, making friends, being receptive, holding the space, letting be, letting go, etc. This aspect of treating everything that comes up in a non-judgmental way, relaxing with it, allowing it, is a very important part of the practice.
Next: Alternative Noting
Table of Contents for How to Meditate
General Theory
At first the verbal quality of the notes themselves might be relatively primary in awareness. It's a new task where we have to focus on the words and choose them, and it may take some time to learn to label experience effortlessly. The underlying goal is to pay attention to what is happening, and there can be more than one thing happening at once. Just try to label what is more or less predominate, and understand that not everything will get formally noticed. Try to notice what you can.
As you become familiar with the practice and you've learned a decent palette of notes, it should become as easy as picking out the color red on a palette of primary colors. As it gets even easier, the goal is to put most of your attention on the objects themselves, the actual experiencing of seeing, hearing, feeling, and very little on the mental/verbal note. Perhaps something like 5% of your attention might be on the note itself. Noting is a tool, but the goal is to be continuously mindful of the primary objects, the actual seeing, hearing, and feeling. Almost your full attention should be on the objects, moving from one object to the next, maintaining continuity of mindfulness like stepping from one lily pad to the next, keeping continuously aware, relaxed, open and non-conceptual.
Notes should typically be kept simple - one word, straight to the point. We're not trying to go into long descriptions, stories, or concepts, in fact we're trying to avoid that. All we need is a simple pointer, a placeholder, a check mark to see that we're doing the main job of mindfulness. Although we are using a tiny bit of conceptualization in the form of the note, as long as we keep it simple and are well practiced, there is very little conceptual processing, and it can become second nature.
We can also see noting as a process of breaking our experience down into its component parts, seeing what we are made of. There are a lot of ways to break down our experience, one concept is that it all comes back to the 6 sense doors - the 5 basic senses plus thought. Everything can be labeled as seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling, and thinking. While you are meditating, forget your ideas and assumptions about a body or your life, what the room looks like, or what is outside. Just keep dissecting your experience into little bits, the basic building blocks of your experience.
It is helpful to view all experience, the objects of awareness, as processes happening in the present, here and now. To that end, notes are often verbs ending in "-ing", the present participle in grammar. Even when they are not, it is implied, as everything is a process. For example if we note pressure or angst or relaxation, what we are really noticing is feeling pressure or feeling angst or feeling relaxation.
Absolutely everything can be noted, everything can be put into the note-o-matic experience processor. If you are having trouble coming up with a note you can always relax and note "this" or "don't know" or "blank" as a catch-all, but in such an instance maybe you could also look a bit deeper, perhaps noting "searching" or "wondering" or perhaps because of that struggle there may be "anxiety" or "frustration" or "grasping", and maybe even "resistance" to that frustration. Don't go crazy searching for the right note, but understand that over time you can become aware of more of what you are experiencing. Certain relaxed spaces may seem at first to be empty of gross sensation and thought but might be noted as relaxation, peace, tranquility, etc.
Next: Getting In Touch With Emotions
Table of Contents for How to Meditate
As you become familiar with the practice and you've learned a decent palette of notes, it should become as easy as picking out the color red on a palette of primary colors. As it gets even easier, the goal is to put most of your attention on the objects themselves, the actual experiencing of seeing, hearing, feeling, and very little on the mental/verbal note. Perhaps something like 5% of your attention might be on the note itself. Noting is a tool, but the goal is to be continuously mindful of the primary objects, the actual seeing, hearing, and feeling. Almost your full attention should be on the objects, moving from one object to the next, maintaining continuity of mindfulness like stepping from one lily pad to the next, keeping continuously aware, relaxed, open and non-conceptual.
Notes should typically be kept simple - one word, straight to the point. We're not trying to go into long descriptions, stories, or concepts, in fact we're trying to avoid that. All we need is a simple pointer, a placeholder, a check mark to see that we're doing the main job of mindfulness. Although we are using a tiny bit of conceptualization in the form of the note, as long as we keep it simple and are well practiced, there is very little conceptual processing, and it can become second nature.
We can also see noting as a process of breaking our experience down into its component parts, seeing what we are made of. There are a lot of ways to break down our experience, one concept is that it all comes back to the 6 sense doors - the 5 basic senses plus thought. Everything can be labeled as seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling, and thinking. While you are meditating, forget your ideas and assumptions about a body or your life, what the room looks like, or what is outside. Just keep dissecting your experience into little bits, the basic building blocks of your experience.
It is helpful to view all experience, the objects of awareness, as processes happening in the present, here and now. To that end, notes are often verbs ending in "-ing", the present participle in grammar. Even when they are not, it is implied, as everything is a process. For example if we note pressure or angst or relaxation, what we are really noticing is feeling pressure or feeling angst or feeling relaxation.
Absolutely everything can be noted, everything can be put into the note-o-matic experience processor. If you are having trouble coming up with a note you can always relax and note "this" or "don't know" or "blank" as a catch-all, but in such an instance maybe you could also look a bit deeper, perhaps noting "searching" or "wondering" or perhaps because of that struggle there may be "anxiety" or "frustration" or "grasping", and maybe even "resistance" to that frustration. Don't go crazy searching for the right note, but understand that over time you can become aware of more of what you are experiencing. Certain relaxed spaces may seem at first to be empty of gross sensation and thought but might be noted as relaxation, peace, tranquility, etc.
Next: Getting In Touch With Emotions
Table of Contents for How to Meditate
Third Stage - Grasping and Resistance
Once a basic palette of notes is established, most of what we experience is being noted. But I've left out another important dimension (or two). The primary thing here is to focus on one's reaction to experience in terms of what we might call grasping and resistance. This is an area that is more or less covered in traditional Buddhist terms by noticing that things may be perceived as "pleasant", "unpleasant", or "neutral". This gives us some information about how we are built, what our biases are, and what reactions are coming up. This dimension is sometimes based on inherent qualities, and sometimes learned.
The dimension of pleasant and unpleasant is closely related and almost identical to what might be the most important takeaway from this section, the overall awareness of "grasping" and "resistance". For most practical purposes these will line up, as we will grasp for things that are pleasant and resist what is unpleasant. So we can kind of think of it as one dimension. But just to be accurate, notice that occasionally, for example when long term goals are involved, we might find that these don't line up. An endurance athlete may learn to grasp for the intense unpleasantness of pushing into the "red zone", knowing that this is how they win.
The dimensions of pleasant/grasping and unpleasant/resistance begin to tell us a lot about our relationship with our experience. The goal of meditation is in some ways to become okay with all experience, and so when we notice that something is unpleasant and we are resisting it, we can actually note the resistance itself, let that resistance just be there like it is like any other object in experience, and see if maybe we can let go of some of that. And if we can't, we let that be okay too.
It becomes very important to notice grasping and resistance as these are the areas where we really learn to surrender and let things be. Sometimes this can be difficult if we have conditioned ourselves to avoid unpleasant experiences. We may immediately, perhaps unconsciously, in a habitual way, distract ourselves away from unsatisfactory experience. The remedy is to develop practices to keep ourselves continuously aware, and to notice these sometimes subtle movements. Notice the movement away from the unsatisfactory and feel the unpleasant sensations. We're not cultivating or dwelling unnecessarily on the unpleasant, we're just giving these sensations the fair share that they always deserved, and we're getting the feedback from those experiences that we've been missing out on.
And although we've spun the pleasant side as, well, pleasant, it turns out that if we are desiring or craving something, there can actually be an anxious, furtive, needy quality to the grasping, a sense of lack or want that we may eventually come to see as unpleasant. People tend to notice this long after dealing with the more typically unpleasant side of things. Once again, more to let go of.
Noticing "grasping" and "resistance" are a major key to unraveling ourselves. Other similar words would include craving and aversion, or contraction. Use what works.
Next: General Theory
Table of Contents for How to Meditate
The dimension of pleasant and unpleasant is closely related and almost identical to what might be the most important takeaway from this section, the overall awareness of "grasping" and "resistance". For most practical purposes these will line up, as we will grasp for things that are pleasant and resist what is unpleasant. So we can kind of think of it as one dimension. But just to be accurate, notice that occasionally, for example when long term goals are involved, we might find that these don't line up. An endurance athlete may learn to grasp for the intense unpleasantness of pushing into the "red zone", knowing that this is how they win.
The dimensions of pleasant/grasping and unpleasant/resistance begin to tell us a lot about our relationship with our experience. The goal of meditation is in some ways to become okay with all experience, and so when we notice that something is unpleasant and we are resisting it, we can actually note the resistance itself, let that resistance just be there like it is like any other object in experience, and see if maybe we can let go of some of that. And if we can't, we let that be okay too.
It becomes very important to notice grasping and resistance as these are the areas where we really learn to surrender and let things be. Sometimes this can be difficult if we have conditioned ourselves to avoid unpleasant experiences. We may immediately, perhaps unconsciously, in a habitual way, distract ourselves away from unsatisfactory experience. The remedy is to develop practices to keep ourselves continuously aware, and to notice these sometimes subtle movements. Notice the movement away from the unsatisfactory and feel the unpleasant sensations. We're not cultivating or dwelling unnecessarily on the unpleasant, we're just giving these sensations the fair share that they always deserved, and we're getting the feedback from those experiences that we've been missing out on.
And although we've spun the pleasant side as, well, pleasant, it turns out that if we are desiring or craving something, there can actually be an anxious, furtive, needy quality to the grasping, a sense of lack or want that we may eventually come to see as unpleasant. People tend to notice this long after dealing with the more typically unpleasant side of things. Once again, more to let go of.
Noticing "grasping" and "resistance" are a major key to unraveling ourselves. Other similar words would include craving and aversion, or contraction. Use what works.
Next: General Theory
Table of Contents for How to Meditate
First Stage - Basic Noting
A brief word about posture. Posture is important only in the sense that we need to be reasonably awake, alert, and free of pain. From the standpoint of lower back health we might also want to sit in a reasonably healthy posture as long as we're going to be sitting for a while, so some kind of decent upright posture is typically recommended. On the other hand you could even meditate lying down, but it will be more likely that you might fall asleep. You don't have to sit on the floor, or on a meditation cushion, or in a lotus position, or with your fingers in a certain position. Sitting in a chair is fine.
A first stage of noting might be to note all phenomenon, the objects in your awareness, as either "seeing", "hearing", "feeling", "thinking", or if you're having trouble picking a category, perhaps "don't know" or simply "this" to represent whatever you can't quite put a label on. Try to maintain a pace of around once per second or so, keep to a steady rhythm, and just do it, do it no matter what. Noting may seem a bit clumsy at first - it is - it has perhaps more of a learning curve than other techniques, but it just takes some practice to get used to it and develop a palette of notes. Persistence tends to work here, it took me a few months to really feel natural about it. I persisted because a number of fairly intelligent and reasonable people said that it worked really well for them.
You don't have to note forever and always. If your meditation gets quiet and stable and you can sit without technique for a while, go ahead. Just be aware, and if you find yourself wandering, go back to the technique again.
Note what you are aware of regardless of whether there is much of anything there or not. So if your attention is on the visual component, say the back of your eyelids, you would note "seeing" regardless of whether you are seeing something specific or it is pitch black. Your attention is in the direction of the visual component so you note "seeing".
Noting is typically done silently for practical reasons (group sits, etc.), but noting out loud is actually a powerful and recommended practice. It is much harder to drift off into thought while noting aloud. When you can, try using out loud noting when you are having trouble staying aware.
Next: Second Stage - More Detailed Noting
Table of Contents for How to Meditate
A first stage of noting might be to note all phenomenon, the objects in your awareness, as either "seeing", "hearing", "feeling", "thinking", or if you're having trouble picking a category, perhaps "don't know" or simply "this" to represent whatever you can't quite put a label on. Try to maintain a pace of around once per second or so, keep to a steady rhythm, and just do it, do it no matter what. Noting may seem a bit clumsy at first - it is - it has perhaps more of a learning curve than other techniques, but it just takes some practice to get used to it and develop a palette of notes. Persistence tends to work here, it took me a few months to really feel natural about it. I persisted because a number of fairly intelligent and reasonable people said that it worked really well for them.
You don't have to note forever and always. If your meditation gets quiet and stable and you can sit without technique for a while, go ahead. Just be aware, and if you find yourself wandering, go back to the technique again.
Note what you are aware of regardless of whether there is much of anything there or not. So if your attention is on the visual component, say the back of your eyelids, you would note "seeing" regardless of whether you are seeing something specific or it is pitch black. Your attention is in the direction of the visual component so you note "seeing".
Noting is typically done silently for practical reasons (group sits, etc.), but noting out loud is actually a powerful and recommended practice. It is much harder to drift off into thought while noting aloud. When you can, try using out loud noting when you are having trouble staying aware.
Next: Second Stage - More Detailed Noting
Table of Contents for How to Meditate
Intro to Noting and Meditation
The style of meditation I most often recommend is called noting. The technique of noting style meditation is to notice what you are aware of, and to label it with a simple "note" such as "seeing", "hearing", or "feeling". By doing this at a steady, frequent pace, about once every second or so, it forces you to be continuously aware and present. As you practice, it requires you to be mindful, because each moment you must prove that you are mindful by naming what you are uniquely aware of in that moment.
Noting could be seen as a more powerful form of mantra, in this case a dynamic or adaptable mantra. Rather than repeating the exact same word or phrase, each moment we must come up with a unique description of what is more or less predominate in our awareness at any time.
This practice is one of the more effective at interrupting the mind's natural inclination to go off and think about the next thing.
Some may be put off by the structure of it, or the verbal nature of it. My advice is to train the mind with high quality practice by whatever means you can. If that's noting practice, fine. If you can just sit without any technique, and by pure natural talent and willpower you can be present and aware during 95% or more of your formal meditation practice, then maybe do that. I list many techiques for this kind of mental skill training in Basic Meditation Styles, find what works for you.
But I would definitely look for something that gets the quality high. Quality in the sense of a high percentage of time aware and present. My belief is that getting the practice very pure, at least for a few important developmental years, may be pretty useful on the path, not that you should be hard on yourself for any lapses. As my guitar teacher pointed out, practice makes permanent. If your mindfulness practice is extremely sloppy, and you're spacing out left and right, to some degree that is indeed the mind that you will make permanent.
For some, it may even be that the very effectiveness of noting technique ends up putting them off. Noting can be very good at getting in the way of our natural conditioned desire to think, and the mind can find that frustrating, while at the same time being a new and difficult task. The underlying neurology wants to think, to daydream, to fantasize. It doesn't want to go on the equivalent of a thought "diet", and as a result many consciously or unconsciously prefer half measures.
People often seem to feel that they should just be able to "wing it" without technique. They drop the technique and end up doing a lot more of all that daydreaming that their underlying neurology wants to do.
My recommendation is to just have some reasonable awareness of how you are doing on your percent awareness meter, the percentage of time you are actually present and aware in practice, and be careful not to trade short term desire or inertia for long term peace and tranquility.
Regarding thought, there's a fine line in that we don't really want to create aversion to thought. One of the basic themes that comes out of the contemplative path is that everything is okay just as it is. That's true, and we can bring something of that into every moment, but the problem is that we have spent perhaps a hundred thousand hours overemphasizing thought and our identification with it, and it will take some attention to remedy that.
One piece of practical advice is, for perhaps a few years, lean a bit more into bodily sensations. If you can let go of thought a bit, and can pay a little more attention to what is going on in the body, you are restoring a kind of natural balance. We have unconsciously prejudiced ourselves towards thought, and we're not going to be able to immediately let go of that. We need to pay more attention to the body, kind of an affirmative action for the sensate world. There is nothing necessarily wrong with thought, but we are essentially prejudiced bigots with respect to it, so affirmative action is required.
Advocating a relatively hardcore kind of effort can lead to problems for some people. They may become overly concerned about practicing correctly. "Am I doing it right?" or "Oh no, I've spaced out again!" The way to practice is to learn the simple basics and then be nonjudgmental about the results. If you're practicing in the direction of being continuously aware, relaxed, open, and non-conceptual, you are practicing correctly. If you space out, that is very much to be expected, particularly at first. More about that later, but the basic advice is don't beat yourself up about it.
It's also worth mentioning that the more effective a practice is, the more likely it is that someone will eventually stumble across some buried psychological problems. In the same exact way that enough psychotherapy or experimentation with psychedelic drugs will likely bring your psychological issues to the forefront, so will intense meditation practice. Sitting around daydreaming, not so much. But this is the path, to learn to become okay with all the parts of ourselves. As layers are peeled back, sometimes it will be tender underneath. You have to acknowledge and surrender to that tenderness, that pain, until you are okay with that newly uncovered layer, and then you continue and perhaps begin to peel off yet another layer.
Again, you're up against maybe a hundred thousand hours of practicing grasping at thought. When you do drift away and come back, understand how natural that is, and understand it is a good thing you came back to the present. This is what we want - to come back to here and now, so be pleased with the coming back part, and just go right back into your practice, your technique, and maybe this time with a little bit of extra energy or intent. Back to it, back to it, again and again and again. You keep putting the puppy on the newspaper, and eventually it learns.
Next: First Stage - Basic Noting
Table of Contents for How to Meditate
Noting could be seen as a more powerful form of mantra, in this case a dynamic or adaptable mantra. Rather than repeating the exact same word or phrase, each moment we must come up with a unique description of what is more or less predominate in our awareness at any time.
This practice is one of the more effective at interrupting the mind's natural inclination to go off and think about the next thing.
Some may be put off by the structure of it, or the verbal nature of it. My advice is to train the mind with high quality practice by whatever means you can. If that's noting practice, fine. If you can just sit without any technique, and by pure natural talent and willpower you can be present and aware during 95% or more of your formal meditation practice, then maybe do that. I list many techiques for this kind of mental skill training in Basic Meditation Styles, find what works for you.
But I would definitely look for something that gets the quality high. Quality in the sense of a high percentage of time aware and present. My belief is that getting the practice very pure, at least for a few important developmental years, may be pretty useful on the path, not that you should be hard on yourself for any lapses. As my guitar teacher pointed out, practice makes permanent. If your mindfulness practice is extremely sloppy, and you're spacing out left and right, to some degree that is indeed the mind that you will make permanent.
For some, it may even be that the very effectiveness of noting technique ends up putting them off. Noting can be very good at getting in the way of our natural conditioned desire to think, and the mind can find that frustrating, while at the same time being a new and difficult task. The underlying neurology wants to think, to daydream, to fantasize. It doesn't want to go on the equivalent of a thought "diet", and as a result many consciously or unconsciously prefer half measures.
People often seem to feel that they should just be able to "wing it" without technique. They drop the technique and end up doing a lot more of all that daydreaming that their underlying neurology wants to do.
My recommendation is to just have some reasonable awareness of how you are doing on your percent awareness meter, the percentage of time you are actually present and aware in practice, and be careful not to trade short term desire or inertia for long term peace and tranquility.
Regarding thought, there's a fine line in that we don't really want to create aversion to thought. One of the basic themes that comes out of the contemplative path is that everything is okay just as it is. That's true, and we can bring something of that into every moment, but the problem is that we have spent perhaps a hundred thousand hours overemphasizing thought and our identification with it, and it will take some attention to remedy that.
One piece of practical advice is, for perhaps a few years, lean a bit more into bodily sensations. If you can let go of thought a bit, and can pay a little more attention to what is going on in the body, you are restoring a kind of natural balance. We have unconsciously prejudiced ourselves towards thought, and we're not going to be able to immediately let go of that. We need to pay more attention to the body, kind of an affirmative action for the sensate world. There is nothing necessarily wrong with thought, but we are essentially prejudiced bigots with respect to it, so affirmative action is required.
Advocating a relatively hardcore kind of effort can lead to problems for some people. They may become overly concerned about practicing correctly. "Am I doing it right?" or "Oh no, I've spaced out again!" The way to practice is to learn the simple basics and then be nonjudgmental about the results. If you're practicing in the direction of being continuously aware, relaxed, open, and non-conceptual, you are practicing correctly. If you space out, that is very much to be expected, particularly at first. More about that later, but the basic advice is don't beat yourself up about it.
It's also worth mentioning that the more effective a practice is, the more likely it is that someone will eventually stumble across some buried psychological problems. In the same exact way that enough psychotherapy or experimentation with psychedelic drugs will likely bring your psychological issues to the forefront, so will intense meditation practice. Sitting around daydreaming, not so much. But this is the path, to learn to become okay with all the parts of ourselves. As layers are peeled back, sometimes it will be tender underneath. You have to acknowledge and surrender to that tenderness, that pain, until you are okay with that newly uncovered layer, and then you continue and perhaps begin to peel off yet another layer.
Again, you're up against maybe a hundred thousand hours of practicing grasping at thought. When you do drift away and come back, understand how natural that is, and understand it is a good thing you came back to the present. This is what we want - to come back to here and now, so be pleased with the coming back part, and just go right back into your practice, your technique, and maybe this time with a little bit of extra energy or intent. Back to it, back to it, again and again and again. You keep putting the puppy on the newspaper, and eventually it learns.
Next: First Stage - Basic Noting
Table of Contents for How to Meditate
Meditation Overview
Meditation at its simplest is about training awareness. Training the mind to be present, aware of what is here and now as opposed to being lost in thought. We find ourselves in the predicament of having been unwittingly conditioned for many tens of thousands of hours towards thinking as our default, and we have ended up greatly attached and identified with those thoughts. As humans, we exist in an ocean of conditioned concepts. Meditation seeks to undo this conditioning by practicing awareness of the here and now, and within that awareness, letting go of everything that can be let go of.
In a way, the first key is merely remembering - remembering to be mindful in this way. This is an easy concept, but difficult in practice. Because it is so difficult, I generally recommend techniques that are relatively structured, that provide some kind of regularity or feedback to keep one continuously aware. If the style described here isn't your thing, there are many other approaches such as those outlined in Basic Meditation Styles.
The goal is to train the mind back to a kind of "zero point" - aware but not attached to experience, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, opinions - something like the mind prior to all the conditioning and baggage of human culture.
Next: The Easy Way - Do Nothing
Table of Contents for How to Meditate
In a way, the first key is merely remembering - remembering to be mindful in this way. This is an easy concept, but difficult in practice. Because it is so difficult, I generally recommend techniques that are relatively structured, that provide some kind of regularity or feedback to keep one continuously aware. If the style described here isn't your thing, there are many other approaches such as those outlined in Basic Meditation Styles.
The goal is to train the mind back to a kind of "zero point" - aware but not attached to experience, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, opinions - something like the mind prior to all the conditioning and baggage of human culture.
Next: The Easy Way - Do Nothing
Table of Contents for How to Meditate
How To Meditate
This is primarily in-depth instructions on the "noting" style of meditation I recommend, although there is much that applies to any form of meditation. I also have a simple one page description of some simple forms of meditation that would be a good foundational set of practices in A Simple Way to Start.
If you feel that maybe this noting approach isn't really your thing, but you'd like to know more about meditation, a highly recommended and largely non-dogmatic book that can give you a good feel for the territory is Mindfulness in Plain English, by the monk Bhante Gunaratana. Also, the 45 minute audio of basic instructions given by the nun Andrea Fella is a great introduction. Those are great resources for learning an unstructured style of meditation.
The noting style is sometimes called the Mahasi or Burmese style, after the monk that developed it. This style is more or less the main style of mindfulness or vipassana that is taught in southeast Asian Theravada Buddhist communities.
The last page below (Mahasi Style Noting) contains links to audio that explains the style.
Personal instruction
If you feel that maybe this noting approach isn't really your thing, but you'd like to know more about meditation, a highly recommended and largely non-dogmatic book that can give you a good feel for the territory is Mindfulness in Plain English, by the monk Bhante Gunaratana. Also, the 45 minute audio of basic instructions given by the nun Andrea Fella is a great introduction. Those are great resources for learning an unstructured style of meditation.
The noting style is sometimes called the Mahasi or Burmese style, after the monk that developed it. This style is more or less the main style of mindfulness or vipassana that is taught in southeast Asian Theravada Buddhist communities.
An abbreviated version of this style is to
notice what is roughly predominate in awareness and label it, about
once per second, as either "seeing", "hearing", "feeling", or "thinking", or "don't know".
The last page below (Mahasi Style Noting) contains links to audio that explains the style.
- Meditation Overview
- The Easy Way - Do Nothing - letting go
- Why Use the Noting Style?
- Intro to Noting and Meditation
- First Stage - Basic Noting
- Second Stage - More Detailed Noting
- Third Stage - Grasping and Resistance
- General Theory
- Getting In Touch With Emotions
- Alternative Noting
- Getting It Done - there is gold here
- Mahasi Style Noting - and additional resources
Personal instruction
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