-Mingyur Rinpoche
In a lecture to potential meditators in London, Buddhist Monk Mingyur Rinpoche explains the practice of meditation through his own story of dealing with childhood panic, explaining how to meditate and by offering the audience exercises to practice.
These are some of the key points I gathered from that lecture:
What Meditation and Awareness are:
- The essence of meditation is awareness.
- We are all aware
- Awareness is always there. The problem is we sometimes get lost in mental activity: thought, feeling, sensation and activity that we do not see it
- These things can cover the "space" like clouds or turbulent weather but awareness is still there unchanged behind them
- The practice of meditation involves recognizing and tapping into that space, that awareness again and again.
- One moment we are mindful and the next we are lost...we bring ourselves back to a state of being aware of being aware. Then we forget again and go off. We bring ourselves back to that awareness of being aware. It is a constant process of going from not being aware, to be being aware that we are not aware, to being aware we are aware.
- Back and forth and back forth until the little moments of awareness, of space become longer and longer...until awareness opens up into something grander bit by bit.
- It is a slow, mundane and sometimes boring practice of training the mind to recognize awareness...when we are aware of awareness.
- It is the formation of a new healthy, life enhancing habit
- As long as we can see a river (the mind) flowing past us we know we are not in it. If we were in it, we wouldn't see it and we would be swallowed up by it. We wouldn't want to be swallowed up by a dirty turbulent river would we? (Most of our monkey minds are such rivers). If we were going to fall into the river and we all will...from time to time...we want to make sure that river is calm so we can float along. Meditation helps to create a calm river...a calm mind.
- Don't resist anything!
- We must not resist thought, feeling, sensation or experience when we practice meditation. We must welcome and allow anything that is in our experience into our practice.
- He relays how he overcame severe panic attacks by welcoming panic without judgment...simply allowing it and being curious and interested in the sensations it provided...from a place of awareness.
- These intense emotional experiences that we sometimes judge as 'negative' can be powerful teachers, friends and supporters of our practice. Resisting them makes them persist. Befriending them makes them interesting things to learn from before they leave us...and they will.
- He explained that many of us misunderstand meditation and see it as a practice where we try real hard and we resist stress and negative emotion, call on breath and "Peace" to bring out relaxation...when it is not about struggle or resistance at all
- The more we resist the more whatever we are resisting persists
- 'Meditation can take place anywhere at and time even in the city'...it is just about bringing attention back to awareness
- He kind of made fun of the way I and other westerns sometimes meditate...with hands in Guyan mudra chanting peace or other mantras or focusing on breath. He just stressed that meditation doesn't have to be that structured or challenging.
- He said 'trying' and resisting just makes it more difficult to connect with our awareness of awareness
- He doesn't speak of breath awareness as so many practises do...I assume...and I can only assume...that is because of his panic ( and possible ADHD?) as a child. I can see body sensation would be an easier focus in those situations where awareness of breath may increase these feelings???
- He also closes eyes where other Buddhist teaching recommend opening the eyes and focusing on a spot in the visual field about 12 inches down from the tip of the nose( a form of Trataka from the yoga tradition?)
- I guess the key thing is then...do what works for you.
- If we simply make meditation about becoming more aware at any time or anywhere...it becomes so much easier (He does not use the term mindfulness)
- He encourages meditating in the beginning on body sensation...just becoming aware of sensations in the body from head to toe.
- He also says it is good to listen to sound...Buddhist bells in particular.
- The preferred way will depend on the individual but going back and forth between the two ways is recommended so one doesn't get bored
- Accept all emotional experiences
- don't try to relive a past experience that was joyful...past is past...create new experiences
- Remember that failure is a good thing...it is 'the mother of success'
Four trouble shooting remedies in practice:
- Watch: watch the sensation in the body, simply be aware of it
- Try Something Different: Change focus if necessary. If you find you can't settle with sound try body sensation and if body sensation becomes a problem because of the areas of concern you are focusing on...try focusing on a neutral part of body
- Step Back: mentally from the object of focus...become aware of what is watching it. Observe the observer
- Take a break: if it is still too much of a struggle to meditate which it should never be...take a break from it. Try physical exercise.
- Can be experienced as a physical sensation: top of head, tingling down spine or warm spreading sensation in core
- Can be experienced with extrasensory perception...light and colour etc
- Can be experienced as sensing energy around us from other people or things
- Or it can be experienced as being on an emotional roller coaster
- Experiencing this does not make us special, enlightened, wiser than the next...nor does it mean we are going crazy
- It is a normal response to effective meditation practice
- Need to recognize when we experience it...an indication we are opening up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukTaodQfYRQ
All is well!
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