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Meditation Phsche
Grayman
Veteran
What do you do with your thoughts and emotions during meditation? What do you envision or imagine? What image or scene is in your minds eye? Ive heard and found things about the physical process but how would you describe the mental and emotional in detail?
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In emotions and thoughts in detail, each is an individual.
My practice is Soto Zen.
I do not intentionally give a thought or an emotion an associated image because the purpose of my meditation practice is to allow them arise and pass without trying to manipulate them in any way. To give them such an association is to invite our habituated impulses to mold them for identities purpose.
So you hide them, ignore them, disband them, burn them, suffocate them, gently invalidate them; what do you do with them?
Let them float, bounce, limp, run crazily in zig zags by. Leave them alone. Do nothing to them. Leave them unmolested. It's quite a new idea, isn't it?
An analogy often used is that you watch thoughts and feeling float through your mind like watching clouds drifting across the sky.
It takes practice to do this without grasping those thoughts and feelings..
I always liked the analogy to being a sieve. That when you meditate, thoughts arise, but they go right "through" rather than allowing your mind to grab them and create a story from them. I sit, and when a thought arises, I mark it as "thinking" and let it go. It floats away (sensation, not visualization) like a cloud, or a ripple on water. It dissolves. Sometimes it happens immediately, the thought is there then it is gone, and sometimes it takes longer.
I am with @karasti.
A mild description for me.
I spend ever waking moment in thought. For years I was driven by curiosity and questions. I seek the answers to every question brought forth. I am uncertain of what it is like to not think to leave a thought alone. The idea creates anxiety within me. It brings forth the question of what if it never comes again. Wht if that was a truth I let go to never be known or understood and forever lost to me. My frustration is not that I think too much but that I can only think about one thing at a time. Like water over a damn the ideas overflow past me leaving me with only a portion of them in actual use. My drive has led my mind to and past mental exhaustion leaving me at nights facing the of banging of thoughts with incoherence like the verge of madness. Headaches driven through my mind and neglect in my body. I surpassed this. I have reached a point of discovering vast relativity in all thought of meaning where meaning loses its substance. Thought is no longer my creation but a being of its own. If values and thoughts are but the whims of wind steming from all places what thoughts define me? I have lost myself in relativity.
In all this how could I possibly relate to you?
You are doing so beautifully, right now. In your writing above, for instance, I followed where you led and you led well. On the verge of madness, realizing thoughts think themselves and your 'self' is more of a whim than a reality? I'm right there
That's not easy stuff to have shoved in your face without a context, which is why you must have ended up here lol.
Through stillness.
What you describe is what in Buddhism is a busy mind, chattering like a monkey, jumping from one intellectual branch to another.
A calmed and tamed mind is still able to intellectualise, to solve problems but the process of turning it from our master to our friend is part of why we sit with our minds.
This is the point of a formal practice, such as meditation.
There are thoughts that are worthy of following. That is what contemplation is. Buddhism or just meditation, is not about not thinking. It is about training your brain to figure out which thoughts are important. It clears the way for contemplation and insight, gets rid of the gunk. I have many "valid" thoughts ever day, but I have a lot of them that aren't, too. Things like "WHY is this person driving 40mph on the highway? I wonder if we are out of dog food. I forgot to hang the new shower curtain. Crap! Forgot to charge my phone. Lost my pen. Mmmm I want chips. OH! My favorite show is on tonight! GAWD why won't the phone stop ringing? I hate folding laundry." And so on .It is THAT story line that we cease to stop. Because one second we are thinking about why the person is driving slow, and then by the time we arrive at our destination 5 minutes later we are angry and our whole morning is ruined all because we ran with the dialogue in our heads about how DARE someone interrupt our lives by driving so slow. One 5 minute dialogue like that can impact our mood or emotions for an entire day, some of them even longer. We don't have to follow the crazy train into the chasm of negative emotion.
It is about learning to turn that stream off, so more meaningful things that change your life are allowed in. And so that you can control it. Most of us, are controlled by our thoughts. They run on automatic mode and we feel we cannot control it. We can. That is what we are learning to do...train our minds to do what we truly want/need them to do.
Thoughts that define what we think of as "me" are exactly part of the reason that "me" doesn't even really exist. It takes time and training. But it does work.
The more you meditate, using the tips that others have given you, you'll find that the grip that the thoughts have on you, will start to ease off.
But since you're a bit panicky about letting the thoughts go, here is an exercise you can try. It is an exercise in just observing. Pick something to look at that you don't have a lot of attachment to. So not your favorite car, but maybe a tree. Just spend 10 or 15 minutes just examining it. Look at the bark. See how tall it is. What shape are the leaves. You might find yourself forming thoughts, maybe wondering what species it is, or if it is native to the area. If you start some kind of thought like that, tell yourself that your job is just to look at it, without forming any conclusions. That is sort of what the mind is like when meditating.
My Soto Zen tradition encourages us to just listen. So when I hit the cushion later this afternoon I will be aware of the noise of the bobcats digging at the construction site next door. Sometimes it's loud, then some rumbles are added, then it changes again (maybe it's backing up or something.) It's just noise and that's all it is.
Nothing, other than simply observe them appear and disappear. Which is really not something that is intentionally done, but rather simply a byproduct of being aware of what is happening. Of course, sometimes you unintentionally latch onto them and are taken into some fantasy world, but then that passes and you come back to reality.
The only thing that is intentionally done is to follow the breathing. When a thought appears, and you have noticed that your attention has gone off the breathing, return your attention to the breathing. The key to the lock of the mind is found in the breathing IMO. The key to who you really are is found in the breathing IMO.
My thoughts currently are much different than this. You are associating negative emotion with it that is not the case for me.
I see a driver going 40mph in a 70.
Thoughts:
young learner: anxious and terrified
Old man or woman cannot see well: anxious and terrified
A woman with children: stressed and constantly distracted being safe trying not to go off the road
A person on a cell phone: distracted maybe upset by bad news maybe just unable to focus
Emotions: undefined, to many possibilities
Decisions:
Stay behind him even though I may be late
Go around even though it may be unsafe
Go on the side and drive on the pull off
Action: wait until conditions clear up unless another driver behind me gets close and rides my bumper showing impatience then reevaluate for the most safe condition.
I am passing and see it is an old man and his wife with him hanging over the wheel
I see its an old man hunched over the wheel with his wife.
Thoughts:
_ Create and formulate his person in my head and then give him my consciousness.
Im an old man freiends and family die and remind me of my mortality and I deal with loss. I am married and am not ready to give up on life for her sake as well as mine. It is hard when you cannot do what you once could. I am terrified about entering the DMV and taking the eye test. I was afraid that it would be just one more thing to point my downward spiral. I fear that it will be soon before I am in a home and it is worse because I have always taken care of my wife and it is getting harder to take care of myself. I want to be a man not someone people have to take care of. I am trying to see the signs and the lines and my depth perceptions not what it used to be. I am anxious and cannot bring myself to drive any faster. I must just relax and do what I can so I do my best to do just that._
I pass and hope some upset driver does not meet them in an accident simply because they cannot understand that there is little to be gained from thoughtless impatience.
Insert mind into angry driver:
Im not going to write all this out again but it is like above...
Other thoughts include
projects, lives questions, answers to political issues, understaning people, understanding religion and how it defines people, reviewing how to help the people I love deal with thier issues, discovering how to troubleshoot broken things, creating new ways to make me my feelings and my life more efficient in achieving goals
These thoughts must be objective and cannot be swayed by to many irrelevant emotions... has zero anxiety. Going to sleep is like sitting down after a long jog.
In all this, at the end of the day I have ignored who I am. Who am I and what do I want? Am I happy or sad. I just am and I am purpose. I my mind has much 'thought' and some emotion but I do not own it and it does not own me. It determines action and consequence but it is indifferent to my identity. Why are my desires so few and undefined like grasping the wind when I feel the others like holding a heavy rock. Thier desires are their burden and their gift, their sadness and their happiness. The lack of mine have set me free but so alone and ununderstood.
learning/knowing how to put yourself in other's shoes, is compassion. The above is how I trained myself out of the negative thought train. But spending 10 minutes in the head of the driver isn't much better than spending 10 minutes being angry at the driver. In time, you should be able to shorten the story.
"Person is driving 40 on the highway. Now I'm really going to be late. Oh well, I should have left earlier, maybe the person is elderly, sick, has an unruly child in the car, or whatever. " and then just be done and let it go. It takes practice to be able to do so. You will learn to catch yourself in the process of getting wound up in a story, positive or negative, and once you learn how to do that, you will be able to put the brakes on, use the Cliff Notes version of the long story and move on. After further time (I am not there yet) even the shortened Cliff Notes version of talking to yourself about a situation will disappear, too, and you will just automatically know the right thing to do in whatever situation without having to think about it so much.
Yes, but it was not 10 minutes it was a flash of visuals plays and emotions defining concepts in a blast that occurred when I saw the car and the rest again when passing. I was simply showing why I thought that thought valid. .... Well I guess I was also trying to show you the bombardment of thoughts but only got to describing the few and then felt it was taking too long so I didn't bother elaborating my intentions.
It seems like a lot for a few thoughts I guess but they are images so they say a 1000 words:)
The blaring of my mind comes from the connections. One image relates to another two images and relates to another two for each of those and my thoughts grow like a tree from root. When I have another take root then by the end of the day I have a forest.
The flash of who the old man was came to mind, I then had a flash of my dad and how he feels about retiring, a flash of my neighbor who is losing her eyesight and her dog too and cannot drive, a flash of a nursing home and the smell of it and the people in it and the people visiting it and how each of them feel about their loved ones, a flash of my wait at the DMV and the people behind the counter who are stressed and bitter. A flash of this a flash of that a flash of different people in a forum discussion a flash of relations to them a flash of a flash of a flash......
I see a melted wire -> flash and I see an electron going through a wire that is too small and it rubs on the sides of if it creating friction until the wire heats up and the walls start to burn and the sheathing on the outside melt and the wire breaks off. That is a flash.... How do I stop that except by not looking at the wire? And when I see the flash I see relations to where I learned it the people there and then I get more flashes on where they may be at......
It is endless and without pause but why is it bad? I fear that if I train my mind to cease this, I will not have flashes and then I will lose my creativity, my ability to solve problems and understand things.
You stop it by training your mind. If you are out of shape, and you want to get super fit, it takes a lot of discipline and dedication, it takes having the right information to make the right choices in how you want to train, and it takes time. Lots of time. Training the mind is harder. And takes more time. You do it by starting. Now. And tomorrow, you do it again. And 3 years from now, you are still doing it. And 20 years from now, still doing it. You make progress along the way of course.
Ideally, if possible, you find a teacher.
Why, though, are you asking your questions? You don't seem like you are so sure you want to stop, and if you don't want to, then why are you here asking how? It's not good, or bad. But you don't lose your ability to be a human being because you slow your mind down. Honestly, those who are farther along the path have more creativity, not less. They are FAR better problem solvers. Heck, in the 3 years since I started my practice, even I am a better problem solver having a somewhat clearer mind. I certainly don't not understand things, again, quite opposite. I understand them better. It improves the ability of your mind to do what it is supposed to do. It doesn't make you a vegetable.
@Grayman
Another view of a practice is that it's a way of allowing all sense gate data input to unfold without us activating our ego habituated impulses to control that data.
The usual way that we control that data is by focusing on one sense gate to the exclusion of the others.
If "thinking" is the self appointed alpha dog of your senses then trying to think your way free of it will simply continue to empower it's alpha status.
How would you stop empowering your thought preferences to allow your eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body data to receive equal billing?
How would you soften your predominance of thought identity so as to allow forms, sensations, activities and consciousness to freely share the stage?
If you find it difficult your first time, One thing I like to do is find any discomfort or anxiety in your body and feel it. Focus on feeling it from the inside and it will be easier to breathe. I find this a good exercise to clear blockages of energy.
I want to understand and I want to sharpen my mind so that I can obtain greater conclusions in life. I don't want to stop excersizing my mind. To me if you lift weights you build muscle. If you think you exercise your mind but everyone here states it is different and that confuses me and makes me hesitant.
I think 'How' provided me with a good understanding. He is right. My thoughts leave me unbalanced and the rest of my senses suffer for it.
The body grows and heals during periods of rest. The brain is the same. And for most of us, even sleeping is not the rest the brain needs because we are still processing everything from the day in the form of samsaric dreams. Thoughts shouldn't control us. Allowing them to run all over is like an untrained puppy. When you train the puppy, you control it. Same with mind. Then you get to direct things much better.
Thanks for sticking in there with me everyone. I can be a burden of questions. Perhaps that is in part due to the burden of thoughts in my mind.
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I keep my thoughts and emotions at bay. I try not to envision or imagine anything. I try to keep my minds eye open to whatever it sees. I would say that the mental and emotional aspect of it is that it does feel like you're doing something that actually helps you a great deal.
What is your answer to your burden? According to your 'well exercised mind' theory you should be able to work it out. The answers should be of value to all of us . . .
It turns out that it needs a rest so I give you an answer later.
Questions on meditation now include:
How long? How often?
If I am getting bored what am I doing wrong?
How long: 30 - 40 minutes
How often: About 5 days a week (give or take a day)
Boredom ideas:
Change it up - try meditating on certain images e.g. buddha, someone that you love?
Try counting the breath from 1 to 10 on each out breath. How does each number resonate in your mind?
Try walking meditation.
Try sitting or not sitting with others.
Mix it up - you don't need to do the same thing every time you sit.
Good luck!
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How long doesn't matter, keep it simple.
How often depends on your schedule. I reccomend daily.
Sit with boredom, it's the only time we get to see it while meditating. Other times we're just rampant in feelings, thoughts, and dealing with stress.
As often as you want to, for as long as you are willing to. There is NO specific concrete answer and it's one of those situations that doesn't need one. You call the shots there. You will progress as fast as you are capable of, according to your karma among other things. There is no specific, stamped and certified 'way'.
Maybe it would benefit you, with your type of mind, to pick a Buddhist 'vehicle' and stick with it, and allow it to structure you and answer those questions for you.
Many people need that kind of structure, it's perfectly normal and anyway, why not do something the way that best suits your temperament?
If you are getting bored you are doing it right, actually. Exploring boredom is part of the meditation experience.
My therapist told me once to imagine myself sitting beneath an overpass, with the cars going by overhead. The cars were the various thoughts or emotions going through my head. She said "You don't have to get in every single car. You can let them go by."
That takes practice, but you can do it. It's hard to let go of how precious we think our thoughts and emotions are. We are like dogs salivating at the sound of a bell -- conditioned behaviorally. A trained mind in any Buddhist 'vehicle' does not see thoughts or feelings as too precious to allow to fly by. I suspect it will be a genuine relief to you to be able to allow even a percentage of all that to just go by
It is a bad habit to ask questions instead of take action. It's just a habit, not a necessity. If a million questions arise, they are not precious either. Let them go by unanswered. Millions and billions of questions don't need answers for your life to improve and your priorities to straighten out.
Seems like almost a whole book on here of answers. I believe you can only go so far without a teacher.
The way I was practicing would be to acknowledge that your attention has wandered and return to your object of meditation.
I might add that after years of trying, I am still a begginer.
Hi @Grayman! Meditation will certainly help you turn that stream-of-consciousness tap off a bit.
Don't overthink things, don't split every hair, don't grapple for answers. Let yourself go a bit. Relax. Sit back and enjoy the landscape, as I like to say.
Don't define goals for your practice. Enjoy and you'll be amazed at how the universe will groove into place by itself, without any effort on your part.
If you strain you fail the purpose of meditation. You breathe in, you breathe out. Thought arises, you can tick it off mentally with a "Thought" comment and let it pass away. Next in-breath, next out-breath. And so on.
I have noticed from your comments that you have some work to do in the feelings department. Like you have always felt the need to control them or repress them.
Don't fight them. It won't work. But if something arises repeatedly during your meditation, make the mental note to deal with that later, as you rise from the cushion.
You have attained the elevated stage of beginner? Bravo. I am still working up to trying . . .
http://forums.ebid.net/showthread.php?155656-Need-some-We-Were-So-Poor-Jokes
We all are. It's always a work in progress.
Before going into a deep state of meditation, it is always good to unwind the engrossed mind by chanting: -
What is thought? ...is not be,
what is pain? ...is not be,
what is emotion? ...is not be,
what is upsetting? ...is not be,
what is pleasing? ...is not be,
what is rising? ...is not be,
what is falling? ...is not be,
what is feeling? ...is not be,
what is smelling? ...is not be,
what is hearing? ...is not be,
what is touching? ...is not be,
what is consciousness? ...is not be,
what is sensation? ...is not be, etc.
Over the next few moments, the mind would be framed to focus purely on the chant of letting go and nothing else. This is called the state of one-pointedness (full concentration). When the mind is set into a full mode of letting go, the state of mental liberation (mindfulness) would conquest. Thereafter, the ambience of serenity sets in and the mind is subsequently put at ease with equanimity and would be fully withdrawn from the external distractions. This is called the state of blissfulness that one could experience during meditation.
Yes, it's about allowing thoughts and feelings to pass by, not hanging on to them. I sometimes have an image of waves washing through, similar to clouds but more tactile.
If you are getting bored, It just means your attention has come off the breathing. But having your attention come off the breathing is not something that is "wrong" and it does not mean you are "doing something wrong". It's just something that happens. And when it happens, you just return your attention to the breathing. Over and over and over.
A lot of people ask "well, how do you just let thoughts and feelings pass by?" Well, when you return your attention to the breathing, that is precisely what you are doing. Returning to breathing = allowing thoughts to pass by.
:om:
How about whenever you think? Too much eh . . .
Not wrong. Undisciplined. Out of control. Gasping and grabbing for stimulation. You have stifled your emotions, how to stifle the mind . . . wait . . . neither is skilful . . .
How long can you sit with your exhausted, exhausting, run away, bored, what you call 'your mind'.
I would suggest it is not your mind. You are the minds human . . .
Welcome to the Real World
Morpheus
Boredom can be a gift. In today's world we are taught that boredom is undesirable. That we have to be doing...SOMEthing...all the time. It's not true. Boredom usually means you feel you should be doing other than what you are. Buddhism is largely about being able to just accept this moment for what it is, including "boredom."
To know how meditation best works for you, you will have to experiment some. There is no magic prescription. I had a very, very hard time to start with. I had to start with 5 minutes, and add time as I got comfortable. I now meditation 30-60 minutes a day, pretty much every day. And sometimes for a few minutes here or there during the day if I feel the need. When I miss meditation, especially if it more than a day or so, I notice it immediately. I no longer set a timer unless I need to make sure I get some where after my meditation. For me, not setting a timer is better, but when I started, the timer was essential.
Some people need to eat before meditation, some people find eating before distracting. Some people need to meditation as soon as they wake up, some do it at lunch time. Some sit on a cushion, some in a chair, some lay down. Some do walking meditation. Try them all and find what works for you, and if you find whatever time you set. And don't expect anything. Don't expect to come out of meditation feeling a certain way. And don't label it as good, bad, unproductive, or whatever. The only point, is to do it. If you put other points to it, you will inevitably be disappointed and it'll make it harder to go back the next day.
The priority of the average worldly mind has been the establishment and maintenance of a protective wall between the idea of a self and others. Meditation will allow you to observe how we habitually manipulate the incoming data to that end.
How long or how often one meditates simply speaks of how interested one is in shifting the 24/7 habituated data distortion, towards clarity. Usually when starting out on a meditative path it is useful to set up a specific schedule of formal meditation and stick to it so one doesn't only meditate when one feels like it.
Boredom is usually just not paying enough attention to what is going on. You are challenging established habit patterns that are older and more single minded than your memory is. In response to this challenge, what ever hindrances that have a chance at diverting you from meditation will probably arise. It really becomes an issue of whether you can refrain from reverting back into old habits of trying to effect their arising, living and passings away. It is usually 3 steps for forward, 2 steps back.
Bordom is just a stage called hot boredom. When you are antsy. It changes to cool boredom eventually. Cool boredom is like a stream winding its way that doesn't have to be anything it just is.
Boredom is a good thing...its just not valued by our culture.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said " Boredom is important because boredom is anti-credential "
He said that we like credentials, they are exciting, they give us access to new things..
But a meditator needs to learn to appreciate the benefits of boredom.
He goes on to point out that westerners find all sorts of aspects of Buddhist culture exciting, but actually they are supposed to be neutral..soothing...boring.
You can read all this and much more in his book " The Myth Of Freedom "..
nothing
I think one can just get interested in their boredom and watch it.
Or just strengthening concentrated absorption can help. A body scan or something where you are delighting in the natural feeling. If you can go outdoors in the season you could take a walk or sit.
Ajahn Brahm would say "try and be the most bored person in the world. See how bored you can possibly be."
I am so bored with meditation at the moment, to the extent it is becoming really exciting! And I am not joking.
Every chance I get to meditate I am taking it up; but always there is something vying for my attention; a bill to pay, the phone (an Indian microsoft 'specialist' telling me my computer has malware - they are the new Jehovah's Witnesses of the Cyber world - when I tell them after 5 minutes that I have a Mac and they are barking up the wrong tree, they realise they I am holding up a mirror which reveals themselves as frauds, and they put the phone down on me!), the doorbell, the children, the to do list...
Gosh middle age is the age of boredom, and I'm welcoming it!
Boredom is a marsh to waddle through, but the road does get better further ahead.