Tara Brach - 2015-02-11 - Part 1: Basic Elements of Meditation Practice

Episode Date: February 14, 2015

2015-02-11 - Part 1: Basic Elements of Meditation Practice - This two-part series offers a clear and fresh understanding of practices that cultivate mindful awareness. The first class examines our attitude towards practice and gives guidance on posture, establishing an anchor for attention, and learning to concentrate and collect the mind - “coming back.”  The second class focuses on the practice of mindfulness - “being here,” and the component qualities of clear recognition and an allowing non-judgmental presence. 

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Namaste and welcome. In this class and the next, we're going to be exploring the basic elements in a meditation practice, the elements that really make meditation, something that can transform our hearts and our consciousness. and it's interesting just to watch how rapidly more and more popular meditation is becoming and it's kind of a good news, bad news thing in the sense that people are so hugely stressed that there's almost this crisis in a sense of living on a treadmill, not really touch into the meaning and the beauty of life

and a lot of depression and anxiety that brings people to meditation. And the good news is there really is an evolving of consciousness whereby something's waking up in many, many people that wants to keep on waking up and is using these practices to help them. So, of course, this has all been really reinforced and supported in modern neuroscience studies, thousands and thousands of studies that describe how our, immune system gets supported and how much more emotional resilience we have and cognitive clarity and improves memory and all the things check it off the list that are mattering to people.

I sometimes think that my next book should be something like lose weight, improve your sex life and be intuitive about the stock market. Learn to meditate. That would make it. So some of you are aware that there's all different ways that the culture is being invited in. You just practice five minutes a day for three weeks and you'll get X, Y, and Z.

And it's very American, you know, how it's being done. There's one psychotherapist from the Bay Area who went to Las Vegas and brought back a sign and he put it up in his office and it says you must be present to win. So, So in a deep way, the training of our hearts and minds validates what mystics from all

face, from all continents have been saying over the eons, which is when we slow down and we start listening to the life that's right here, we get access to a very deep and natural intelligence and a quality of open-heartedness that leads to being happy and really leads to inner freedom. And I think in a deep way that's really what draws us. So the challenge, as we know, that both makes us need meditation and makes it really hard to meditate is that we're quite hooked on speeding away from the present moment. just think of our culture. It is so fast-paced and busy that it's very rare to arrive and just luxuriate in what's right here now. We're usually on our way somewhere else. And one of my

favorite stories really comes from a cartoon I saw with a family in a desert, and there's three camels, and the parents are on one, and the kids are on the other, and all the belongings is on the third. And what you see is that the child is asked his father's son. And what you see is that the child has asked his father something. The father's responding saying, will you stop asking if we're almost there for crying out loud? We're nomads. So one of the things I think about a lot is the way Thomas Merton described this kind of pace that we are living in. And I'm going to read you just a line or two. He says the rush and pressure of modern life or a friend. perhaps the most common form of contemporary violence,

to allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone and everything is to succumb to violence. I think we kind of know it that we are violating our natural rhythms in our habits of the way we are, are chasing after things and protecting ourselves and overthinking and overworking. And we also know that we're missing out. I think one of the greatest kinds of despair that people bring to me is a sense of skipping the surface,

that they're kind of racing through their lives but not really arriving. And what's the finish line? We know that it's like a flash ultimately, and then we feel a sense of missing. out. Story I share when I remember Washington, D.C. in 2007, a cold January morning in one of the metro stations. Some of you might remember this.

A man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. And during that time, about 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on the way to work. And only six people. And only six people stopped and listened for a short while. Several children tried to, but their parents kind of hurried them along. And no one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell.

He was one of the greatest musicians in the world. He was playing one of the most intricate piece has ever written, and he was playing on it a violin worth $3.5 million. He had just played the previous night in the theater in Boston where seats averaged at $100. So he was playing Incognito in this metro station, And this was a social science study that the Washington Post collaborated in to really see what happens when people are kind of on their way somewhere else,

have a goal in mind, or busy or speedy, and there's something beautiful to be experienced. What happens? And we can really ask ourselves that, that how much do we race by in this life, where there's an opportunity to feel love or connection, or wonder or beauty or mystery or serve or whatever it is, how much do we race by the moments?

So I'm sharing that story because for me in a way it captures some of what in a deep manner draws us to training our attention so we can be here more. One of the phrases, I think, that captures the training and we're going to be exploring the elements of a meditation training comes from Rumi. And he asks a question, and it is, do you pay regular visits to yourself? So you might ask yourself that, do I pay regular visits to myself?

I mean, how often do I really check in? Come home to the moment. So the first thing is I'll be emphasizing formal practice as we go through this in the next class. But everything will be exploring applies to all the moments of our day. In fact, if our practice is just aimed at sitting on a cushion for whatever minutes during the day, it becomes a little compartment and there's no real integration to touch our lives. So we'll consider some of the elements. And the first one that I think is probably the beginning, middle and end of it all is the quality

of intention around a meditation practice. And I'm going to ask you to, because many of you listening, I know, are already practicing, to sense, well, what's my attitude towards practice? How do I approach it? And it's kind of interesting. If you think of, you know, do I make regular visits to myself, what is the energy behind making those visits? Are we doing it because we should?

Are we doing it because in some way we feel to be a good person or it's part of our self-improvement project? And it's kind of interesting to consider. My sense is for most of us it's layered and that we have a layer of should because we carry in this culture most of us a sense of expectation about what kind of person we should be. So that's kind of in there, marbled in. And then there's a much deeper level where we get really sincere, where we can feel our hearts touched, where we know on some way.

level, if we were at the end of our lives looking back, that it would matter that we could have the quality of presence that let us feel a sense of love, our wonder, our creativity, or full aliveness. We know that matters. So it's interesting to start examining because if we can catch that sense of should when we sit down to practice. then we can start dropping under it. So let me ask you this, just to kind of check in with those of you that are here. How many of you feel that you don't meditate regularly enough? This is honest time.

For those listening to the podcast, that's most, about 90%. How many of you feel that your meditations generally aren't as good as you wish they would be? 50-60%. Okay. How many of you feel that you're really accepting and appreciating your practice just as it is these days? There's a smattering. And we go through seasons. Sometimes we are in the season where we've really dropped our judgment.

But I'm spending time on this because over the decades in teaching, I found that those that have their practice surrounded by judgment, sometimes they keep going, but it's very plateaued. but often they end up giving up. So it either gets into a routine or people give up if there's a lot of judgment. Why? It doesn't feel good to feel like we're not doing something well. It just doesn't feel good.

I can share from my own experience that the first handful of years that I was practicing, I was definitely using meditation as part of the self-improvement project of become a more perfect person. And it was very perfectionism was a part of the kind of practice I was doing. We were trying to purify ourselves. And there was a sense of the ego as being a bad thing we were trying to overcome. It was kind of an immature version, I think, of spirituality. But nonetheless, I was trying really hard to do it right.

And I remember I'd go visit different spiritual teachers. And I had this notion that it would take about six years of practice to be enlightened. and I have no idea where I had that notion from, if I tried really hard, you know, striving away. So I'd ask different teachers, well, what else can I do to do this more perfectly? And most of them were wise enough just look at me in the eye and say, just relax.

And I go, okay, just relax. And that would become my next project, you know. So what I really learned from that was that if my idea is to keep on having it be better, there's going to always be a sense of a flawed self. I'll never get there, because there's always a standard that we can't meet, and I'd be completely in that prison of, you know, unworthiness.

It's not good motivation for practice. This is Tikna Khan. He visited a San Francisco Zen Center some years ago, and they asked him that question, how do we improve? Here's his response. You guys get up too early for one thing. You should get up a little later, and your practice is too grim. I have just two instructions for you this week.

One is to breathe, and one is to smile. You get the sense, the attitude. The attitude needs to have true dedication, come from that sincerity that this means the world to me and a quality of lightness, of friendliness, of good humor, patience. So that's the first piece. And to keep on scanning inside yourself, like how am I approaching this? I can say that when I looked at people and followed people over the years,

those that keep on being in the flowering of spirituality, of healing, of opening from meditation, are those who are really drawn out of a deep sincerity, a wholeheartedness, not out of a striving or a guilt or a should. Part two, okay, the training. How do we pay attention? And if you travel all around the world and you check out all the different kinds of meditations, they're generally two groupings.

And one of them is concentration, which really has to do with collecting the attention on purpose. You know, the mind gets scattered coming back and often uses one object, such as the breath, as we did in tonight's meditation. It could be the breath, and there's other objects you can use, sound, mantra. But the purpose is to quiet and collect the mind. That's one domain of practice.

And the other one you might consider as mindfulness or insight where rather than collecting the attention and focusing on a single object, you're opening the mind in a very conscious present way to notice what's happening moment to moment. So it's not controlling. It's wide open with an intention of clear recognition. What's happening without any judgment? Those are the two domains, and many traditions combine them in different ways. And the practice that I have found for myself

and that I mostly teach brings those two together in the sense that concentration and several other supportive practices help to create the groundwork, a kind of quietness and a collectiveness that then allows us to open into mindfulness. That's the way we'll be exploring it in these two classes, that we'll spend the rest of the evening or the rest of this class talking about how do we collect our attention

in a way that allows us to be here enough to notice what's going on. One of the things to say is that one of the big misunderstandings that comes up in meditation training is that the goal, goal is to stop thoughts or the goal is to always stay with the breath. And really, if there's such a thing as a goal, it's to inhabit a fully awake presence or awareness, a fully awake heart. And one of the wonderful stories of the Buddha's awakening is right after he had the night under the Bodhi tree, he had that profound awakening and started teaching. And he was moving through the countryside and people would see him.

And he had a kind of glow and they'd say, are you a healer? Are you a wizard? Are you a mystic? And each time he'd say, no, I'm not that. And finally he just said, I'm awake. There's not an identity. There's just, we're really coming home to our natural, luminous awareness. and the expression that arises out of that presence is naturally low.

So, we begin by collecting ourselves because we are so conditioned to be busy and scattered. And I like to divide in a way the language I find useful is that we're learning to come back. So the rest of this class is how do we come back? And then that sets the groundwork for being here. Coming back and being here. So the first step in coming back is establishing a posture that's really supportive for presence. Now, in formal practice, it's often a sitting posture,

and you can begin to feel your posture now. We'll practice together just as we're exploring this. Basically, we want the posture to be what, be what will be the ideal environment for an alert and relaxed awareness. Which means sitting upright is really helpful, often without supporting the back. And it's fine if you need back support, but you'll find that often the most upright posture is not sitting back leaning against something, and that there's a sense of balance. I sometimes will invite people to lean forward a little and then lean back a little or lean to one side, lean to the other,

and then discover what is really that balance-centered experience, upright and balance. And then if you close your eyes, you can feel from the inside out in that uprightness and that balance. There's a sense of graciousness, a sense of dignity that comes with that. as you're exploring posture, you can sense the groundedness where you feel the contact points where your bottom is sitting on a chair or cushion. Just feel the sense of gravity, groundedness there where your feet are touching the ground. So you feel yourself on the earth and yet upright, feeling the space around you also. And then importantly with the posture, we relax. So once we're upright, there can be a tendency to tense ourselves to hold ourselves there,

using the muscles that are needed to be upright, but then relaxing what we can, letting the shoulders fall away from the neck a bit, softening the hands. So we relax. And then just let the senses be awake. So you're listening to and feeling the life that's here. This is part one in the supports for mindfulness, that we establish a posture that works for us. And although we're sitting together right now, it's important to know that any posture, you can meditate in any posture, and that many people like doing standing meditation, I do that often, walking practice, lying down practice. There can be some challenges with lying down practice, such as the inclination to fall asleep, but hey, you know, it's something we can do.

So once we've established the posture, then in collecting the mine, we choose an anchor. And an anchor can also be considered as a home base. And the purpose of having an anchor is then when the mine drifts, you have a way to come back. You kind of know, oh, I left my home base, coming back home. And there are, again, many options for anchors, but the most common around the world is the breath. And so we tend to emphasize the breath, but if for you, you find that the breath, for some people that have had trauma, the breath actually brings up trauma. For some people, the breath is too subtle and they need a more gross or easy to access anchor. So I'm going to give you some other options too.

But if it's at the breath, you can choose wherever the breath is easiest to detect, which means that you might be choosing the in-flow, outflow at the nose. You might sense the rising falling at the chest or the expanding, contracting at the belly. Some people like to feel the whole body opening with the in-breath and settling with the out-breath. That can be really helpful. If you're at the belly, and you might try this right now, just close your eyes and put your hands on your belly. Just one hand is fine.

Just feel that you're breathing into the belly and that you can let the hand help you to stay present with the gentle opening and settling that you feel and the sensations in the abdomen. Now, as I mentioned, for some people, the breath isn't the best anchor, or else some people like to combine the breath with feeling some sensations in their hands as a way to really make it a little more grounded. So you can experiment with that if that's helpful. For some, listening to sound is easier. It's fine to experiment, but what I'd suggest is that once you have decided on your anchor

to stay because like any other practice, it'll deepen. And if you keep skipping around, it's like planting seeds and having something grow, then uprooting it and trying to plant it somewhere else. It won't really establish deep roots. So pick an anchor and then trust that you can collect your attention around whatever you choose. So we've gone so far as establishing our posture, picking an anchor, a kind of a home base for presence. And now the practice is how do we keep coming back and collecting and deepening presence with that anchor? Because what happens when we're beginning to just be with the breath as it moves in and out? Within a few moments, the mind springs off, right? So I sometimes think

of this as remindfulness that we're remembering, oh, Oh, yeah, I was going to be here. I was going to be paying attention to the present moment. I'm gone. And so we notice thinking is going on, and then the practice is just to witness, oh, this is a thought, and gently arrive again. Let me just speak a little bit about thoughts,

because, again, as I mentioned, one of the misunderstandings is that thoughts are kind of the enemy and we're trying to vanquish them, And far from that, we're simply trying to notice them because usually we're inside them and we don't notice them. And then as one meditation teacher described it, he was asked to describe the world, and he said, hmm, lost in thought, you know.

We're lost a lot. In fact, one person described it that we have 60,000 thoughts a day and 98% of them we had yesterday, the same thoughts. It's like this is one of my favorite cartoons is this man's driving a car and he's about to enter the desert and there's a big sign saying you and your own tedious thoughts next 200 miles but we know it don't we

that there's a kind of familiar cocoon of thoughts that keep on swirling through and while we have to think to survive and to thrive and wise reflections are part of all spiritual paths, we way overdo the thinking thing, you know. And I sometimes think of if anybody was whispering into my ear, the garble that goes on in my own head,

you know, I wouldn't put up with it for a moment. But we're constantly inside this, you know, narrative. And it ends up often being a narrative that's fear-based that makes us not feel good. So there's a lot of power. It's a lot of power in this practice of coming back. It's an amazingly powerful thing in our lives to have a choice not to be lost in the same narratives that perpetuate the same patterns for years and decades.

We believe our thoughts and that's the challenge. We're hooked on them. We're actually thinking that what we're thinking is real. What are they really? Now, thoughts are sound bites, their little mental images, are there mental images chained together into a little movie form?

So we're kind of watching a home movie in there and thinking that's the living reality. So what I find, especially when people attend a retreat, because at retreats, there's enough quieting that becomes really clear that thoughts are happening, but they're not the real thing, you know. And often I'll have people say at the end of the retreat, I realized my thoughts aren't who I am.

I don't have to believe my thoughts. When you get that glimmer or that deep realization that you don't have to believe your thoughts, you're touching into profound freedom. So that's one of the gifts of learning to come back is that you start getting that, oh, it's a thought. I can come back to this living reality right here. Now, the key to returning,

the key to, we'll get lost over and over again. The mind just keeps on drifting off. The key is, again, the attitude you have when you realize you've been lost. How many of you have noticed that when you realize you've been lost, and thought something in you is either disappointed or judgmental towards yourself. Anybody?

Yeah, I didn't even have to ask a hand raise on that one. We tend to think, oh, I'm doing it wrong. But the given, the mind secretes thoughts like the body secretes enzymes. That's what minds do. So we're not trying to get rid of them. Our habit over tens of thousands of mind moments, millions, billions, is to be lost in them, we're getting the knack of going,

oh, I was inside that movie. Okay, come back. It's like Julia Child says it. She has a great line. She says, if you drop the lamb, just pick it up. Who will know? Not only do, you know,

not judge yourself, you can actually use the waking up from thoughts as a moment to plant a seed of real friendliness. I go, oh, okay, waking up. grateful. And then interest, what's really here right now? That changes really, that attitude change makes a big difference. The gift, again, as I mentioned, of this coming back, is that we start

getting a sense of confidence that we have a pathway back home. I remember many years back, I was, when I first started doing yoga and meditation, I was kind of at one, at a gathering where we're doing a number of hours of it. And I remember at the end of the gathering, going outside and walking, it was at nighttime kind of walking and being aware of the stars and being aware of the sound of the wind that was blowing and realizing, wow, my body and my body and my mind. or in the same place at the same time. That's a gift.

It's not so common and it's possible. So let's practice a little bit of this coming back. Let's give it a little bit of time, see how we do. We begin as we've been exploring with just the intention for this short sitting right now. So take a moment as if it's for the very first time sensing into what your deepest intention is right now, letting these moments matter as much as any moments in your whole life. And then check your posture and make whatever adjustments help you to feel that you're in a position that will really allow you to be present. And part of establishing that posture is giving yourself the gift of relaxing.

So many of us find that when we recheck our body, we've unconsciously tensed again. So notice where the tension is. For most of us, it's pretty chronic in the shoulders. So if you can soften and let the shoulders relax back and down some, that can be helpful. sense that you can bring awareness to the shoulders and that whatever tangles or tightness is there kind of float in that awareness. Notice where else you can relax the body

including softening the hands, relaxing in the heart area, softening the belly. Let your senses be awake right now so that you're listening to the sounds around you, aware of the sensations in your body, and then discovering or identifying really the anchor that you'd like to rest your attention in.

For many it's the movement of the breath, bringing the full awareness to wherever the sensations are most easy to detect. We generally choose an anchor where it feels pleasant or at least neutral the sensations. So begin to sense. and it sometimes describes one pointed attention that you can really rest fully, the full awareness, your mindfulness, right with the sensations of the breath just as it is. For some of you it may be that your anchor is the breath but also feeling sensations in the hands as a kind of further way to stabilize your attention. Some of you may be listening to sound, whatever it is, offering a full and intimate attention.

Let your intention be to notice when you can if the mind has gone off into thoughts and when you do notice to pause and open the attention. Just sensing what's right here, your summit can be helpful when you wake up from a thought to just note, to mentally note, thinking, thinking, a little whisper in the mind just to acknowledge the thinking's been going on. Sometimes when you wake up from thoughts you can notice the kind of thought, worrying, fantasizing, planning, and then re-relax open. Let your senses be awake, taking your time.

You don't have to rush back to your anchor, but take your time and as you're ready, gently arrive again, feeling the movement of the breath or whatever the anchor is, gently landing. As you're resting in the breath, for some people they find they're actually controlling the breath. There's a sense of tension around the breath and if that's the case, then try relaxing a little more. And bringing a receptivity, it's almost as if you're listening to the breath, letting it be just as it is. For others, it's hard to connect with the breath, actually feel the breath of sensations

from the inside out then. So you're really sustaining the contact with the breath moment to moment. It helps to notice and know when the breath is coming in and know when the breath is going out that will deepen mindfulness, knowing the beginning of the breath, the ending of the breath, feeling the breath with the whole body's awareness. These last few moments sense the possibility of relaxing a bit more, fully resting the attention with your anchor, fully here. Okay, a few comments on this part of the training.

Perhaps my favorite metaphor is that it's like training a puppy. When you think about how you train a puppy, what qualities you need, patience, consistency, just being really friendly about it. And as we know, the dog will go pee in the corner. Well, our minds do worse. It says the mind has no shame. It just does everything. The mind will keep leaving and doing its thing.

it's just a practice of noticing and in time the noticing faculty gets more and more alert and strong and clear and then there's this natural kind of relaxing back that happens so we keep coming back and coming back

it's like that necklace there's an ad for necklace I saw it's got a shape of a dog bone and it says sit stay heal and we begin to heal as we stay here. The conditioning, as I mentioned, is to leave. I like to think of it like we're on a bicycle, and the more stress we are, the faster we're pedaling, and we're pedaling away from the present moment.

We're always on our way. And so we're trying to learn to not pedal so fast, not be so caught in the spinning in our mind. So we can eventually just take a pause and really arrive in the space and the awareness and the tenderness, really, that's right here. So in a way, it's really a labor of love. As I mentioned, if it's striving, it won't work.

But it does take the 10,000 hours. It's like any mastery. We know that, whether it's the piano or whether it's some sport or art or whatever it is, it takes 10,000 hours. It takes a commitment. And I love, there's one piece of the Buddhist teachings where he says, I wouldn't ask you to do this if it weren't possible, to truly find that happiness and peace and freedom in this practice of coming back and being right here.

I wouldn't ask you to do it if it wasn't possible. We can decondition the busyness of our minds. We can find those spaces where the light shines through. So this is the practice and a couple of kind of logistical pieces that I think are really helpful to remember is that for each of us it really helps to commit to an everyday, because nature has rhythms, and the cycle of the day it really matters. It'll draw you back to yourself. It's a real gift to the soul because you'll just find you're more and more here with your own being.

And I remember for 10 years I lived in an ashram, and it was very easy to meditate every day because 60 other people were meditating, and I almost felt embarrassed and ashamed if I didn't show up early in the morning to do it. But I was still in my striving type A thing then, so I would have done it anyway. But then when I had my son,

at a new infant, I was kind of living with my husband, but not part of the ashram, I hit a phase where it got really, really difficult. And I kind of spaced a bunch of days would go by and I wouldn't really have said, and then I could start really feeling the difference. I just didn't have that same kind of gravitational re-arriving and presence. And so I made a commitment and it was to practice every day no matter what. And I had a back door. And the back door was it didn't matter how long. It didn't even matter what posture, but mostly didn't matter how long,

which meant that there were times that I would get to the end of the day and I would sit on my zafu on my cushion, and I'd close my eyes and I'd take a few full breasts and establish my posture and just notice what it was like, and I would offer love to myself in the universe, and that would be it. I'd go to sleep in it like three minutes, you know. But really it was more of a trick, because once I find I start to settle, something in me starts, falling in love with being back, coming home again, and I stay longer. So I'd like to invite you

to consider this commitment of every day no matter what, but give yourself a lot of flexibility so it doesn't become a should. It becomes some way to keep re-inviting yourself home, just giving yourself that taste. You can do it standing or walking, lying down, if you need to. But it's really that practice of coming back and being here, you know, reconnecting with your heart. And it comes from this longing to live fully and to love fully. It's like with that Joshua Bell story, each one of us wants to be here for those moments. We don't want to miss out. There's a saying that enlightenment is an accident and practice makes us accident prone. So we'll close with a very brief reconnecting, if you will.

We've been exploring in this class beginning to train these hearts and minds to get more collected, to quiet, to arrive. So we'll close in that spirit just to sense your intention as you move forward, your intention around practice, what matters to you about it. You might even envision in a very practical, concrete way tomorrow the next day, what your hope is, what your aspiration is for practice. And then bring yourself right here. It helps to feel your breath. Please do.

Feel the aliveness in your body, your heart. Notice what happens if you bring a very genuine friendliness or kindness to your experience right here and now. Close with a poem from the poet Donna Faults. It only takes a reminder to breathe, a moment to be still, and just like that, something in us settles, softens, makes room, makes space. for imperfection. The harsh voice of judgment drops to a whisper and we remember again that life isn't a relay race, that we all will cross the finish line, that waking up to life is

what we were born for. As many times as we forget, catch ourselves charging forward without even knowing where we're going, that many times we can make the choice to pause, to breathe, to be and to walk slowly into the mystery. So thank you and namaste. Appreciate your attention. We'll continue the next class. Tonight was coming back, the next class being here. Blessings.

The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Walsings. Washington, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.