Mindfulness Meditation, Part 2 in Types of Meditation Series

Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness Meditation builds on my previous post Types of Meditation Part 1, about breath awareness meditation, both are excellent meditation techniques for beginners.  Anapana sati (breath awareness) is the basis of mindfulness, the latter’s focus is just narrower and is excellent for building one pointed concentration.  Once you feel pretty stable on the breath in any particular session broaden your awareness.

The breath will remain your home meditation base always.  But as you are sitting, you may hear sounds if they are predominant then allow your attention to be with it and add a soft mental label.  In the case of sounds, use “sound” or “hearing.”  Stay with it if it holds your awareness.  The moment the sound diminishes or you feel your awareness wandering, go back to watching the breath.  Then using a label, “in out” if watching the breath at the nostrils or “rising falling” if you are watching the breath at the abdomen.  Then you may feel a sensation, label it if it catches your attention “itchy” or ‘”tension,” or “tingling” whatever it is.  When it is no longer predominant go back to the breath.  The breath is your home, where you can rest.

Don’t spend time worrying if your label is best, for example don’t worry whether “itchy” or “feeling” is better, just trust what first comes into your head.  Check Types of Meditation post sections: “before you start meditating” and “meditation posture” for basic technical instructions, especially for beginners.

Benefits of mindfulness meditation:

• Increased sense of calm and balance
• Ability to flow, deal with changing phenomena (stuff) during the day
• Lowered blood pressure
• Patience

Common Meditation Difficulties:

It doesn’t really matter what arises in your mind.  For beginners, that can take a long time to really get.  The mind is filled with all kinds of stuff, “nice” thoughts, negative thoughts, worry, hurtful thoughts, and stuff  you will be embarrassed to see.  But none of that is the point.  It’s all just stuff.  Go back to your breath if any thought or emotion becomes overwhelming.  The return to the breath is not to avoid anything;  but what you don’t want to do is to get caught in the content, the “story.”  So you may remember a difficult argument you had a few years ago.  It starts replaying in your mind.  Try not the get caught up in it again, and what you said and what he/she said and why they were wrong. In other words try to avoid simply rehashing or reliving the story all over again when you have set time aside to meditate. Don’t get caught by what arises in your mind.

A common metaphor is to imagine your mind like a clear blue sky.  A cloud or a bird passes through it.  They don’t in any way mar it’s clarity.  The sky is undisturbed by whatever passes thorough it.  It’s bigger than all that arises within it.

Where does this fit in? This type of meditation is used across various “schools” of Buddhist training and has been adapted into general “new agey” type settings and medical type clinical programs to improve health,  as it’s a wonderful basic, sound type of meditation.   It also is similar to some types of Zen meditation, though there they do not use labels on the experience, they simply are aware as in “bare awareness” meditation.

RESOURCES:

What is Mindfulness by Diana Winston (free audio)

Introduction to Meditation by Joseph Goldstein (free audio)

Questions or comments are welcome! Namaste.