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The moment before redirecting your thoughts
skullchin
Veteran
Has anyone heard about the importance of noticing the moment when you've notice you're off in the thought stream? When you're meditating and your mind goes off, you notice that your mind has gone off, and you redirect your attention to your breath. That moment, right before you redirect your attention, is important to notice. I think I might have heard Gil Fronsdal talking about this.
Is anyone familiar with this? The reason I ask is that I think I'd like a little more explanation.
Is anyone familiar with this? The reason I ask is that I think I'd like a little more explanation.
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Not sure about the significance of that "moment" that your talking about, but it is a good chance to try and make a firm decision at that moment to refocus awareness and to break some of our habitual patterns. Old habit's are hard to break sometimes...
If you can recognise a feeling, that's great. If you can recognise what causes it, even better. If you can recognise the moment just before it happens and know that it's coming up, you can avoid it altogether.
You might find this helpful.
http://www.amaravati.org/abm/english/documents/nowisknow/03ana.html
Kind wishes,
D.
Libet's work offers an interesting take on decision making. Roughly put, it seems that our 'conscious' decisions occur some half a second after the decision has been made. Perhaps this is something like "that moment, right before you redirect your attention."
Goes like this:
- First u are paying attention to something wholesome (metta,breath,etc).
- Then,always, from any of the six sense gates, something arise, and u make contact with it (any sound,mental object,smell,etc).
- With contact, comes feeling
- with feeling, comes craving, desire, tension,etc.
- with craving, the mind clings, and holds to that topic, gets distracted,etc.
----- until here its dependent origination (teachings of the buddha)(part of it).
----- from here on, what u do to fix that process, depends on what teaching are u following,this is just an example:
-u notice your mind its distracted (away from the wholesome)
-u release the distraction (stop feeding it with attention, u stop thinking about it)
-u relax: let go of the residual desire to change what arise..i repeat, u let go of the desire to change what u didnt like from that arising, and u let go of tension caused by that "wanting to change things"
-u comeback to the wholesome object, the feeling of calmness, the smiling, whatever u are doing and its wholesome.
. I dont know what Gil Fronsdal said about that moment, but to me thats the moment you recognice your mind its mad and angry trying to change a feeling, and you choose to let go of the craving and comeback to the wholesome.
That's a very interesting moment, since so many things can happen there. You can judge or react to the thought, or you can even choose to ignore the fact that you're wandering.
If you find the lecture number, please post it here.
But I guess the best thing to do is to be mindful of that moment and find out for yourself what's going on there.
In "Mindfulness in Plain English" there are two paragraphs: and a bit later: I see this moment is very important when meditating, but exactly this moment is what I am not sure of how to handle. In the first paragraph it says "bring your mind back mindfully" and in the second it says "forget about the feeling of breath and immediately focus our attention on these states". How do I know when to go back to focusing on the breathing and how long I can pay attention to these states? The point is to see the impermanence of these feelings, so obviously I can't keep focusing on them. But I need to experience these feelings long enough to be able to comprehend them completely I guess?
If I'm better off making a new thread about this please let me know.
Calling an old friend back to the cushion....
As to moments....the moment referred to in the OP seems to be the moment we are granted of awareness - the recognition of monkey chatter by pure consciousness. It is fleeting - maybe miliseconds - before egoic mind kicks in with instructions to; banish thought or identify thought and return to breath awareness or counting breath. However, there is another moment of no-mind in breath awareness - ,if, as instructed in mindfulness meditation, we focus concentration on the outbreath then that moment of the inbreath is void of thought - it is no mind - as fleeting as it is - as unobserved as it is - it is emptiness. Now, if we string all those moments on a mala of emptiness - that is quite a bit of experiential anatta - right under our noses!
The two paragraphs relate to two different stages of meditation.
The first one, p.33, describes the beginning stage of meditation, where you are simply trying to get concentrated.
The second paragraph, relates to switching over from pure concentration meditation to "insight" meditation. Specifically, p.36, relates to what you should do once you have achieved "momentary concentration" (a better translation might be "moment-by-moment concentration", aka "access concentration").
He discusses the "sign"(s) of such a high level of concentration. These are markers that let you know you have reached the subsequent stage of concentration. In particular, 1. your breath will become very subtle, 2. A feeling/image will naturally co-exist with the breath as the object of meditation (this sign will feel/look different to every meditator).
Gunaratana is advocating a relatively high level of concentration before engaging in pure insight meditation.
This is not a requirement to practice basic mindfulness meditation, however it is certainly beneficial. Also keep in mind that "concentration" meditation requires mindfulness.
This is a somewhat sophisticated topic, and there has been some debate over the importance/interpretation of "sign."
My recommendations are:
1. Designate a 40-45 minute meditation session
2. Begin by emphasizing concentration. During this phase:
a) I recommend beginning with the counting method (see p. 34) if you are a beginner, or have trouble getting concentrated. Drop the counting once you feel that you can complete several cycles.
b) During the concentration phase, if you identify distractions, come gently back to the breath without trying to "stay with the distraction."
3. Continue with the concentration practice until your mind is such that:
a) You can complete the counting cycles
b) Staying with the breath feels easy
c) Your breath becomes very subtle, i.e., slow and gentle.
d) Optional (in my recommendation): You will gain some feeling of ease/joy and/or detect some other "sign"
4. Once you achieved #3, then switch to insight meditation. i.e., when a distraction arises, stay with it to watch its life cycle: Arising, peaking, fading away. Then go back to the breath (or the "sign" if such as arisen).
The upshot is that concentration is important, and the more concentration you can cultivate at the beginning of your session, the more fruitful your insight phase will be.
When I first began meditating, I did 20 minute sessions, with very shallow concentration. Yet, I still attempted "insight" meditation the second half of every session. It was beneficial.
However, about a month later, I expanded my routine to great effect (motivated by the excellent book, "Swallowing the River Ganges" by Matthew Flickstein) as follows:
1. Wake up in the morning, stretch, wash up briefly if necessary, then get ready for meditation (don't drink coffee or do other aspects of your morning ritual... stay away from the computer!)
2. Briefly do a loving-kindness routine. Feel it. Then, set your intention and cultivate faith/confidence, as something like:
"I will now do nothing but meditate, as the Buddha did, and as his followers did for 2500 years, which is the certain path to peace. If I think of something important during meditation, I have confidence that I will remember it if it is truly important. There is plenty of time to take care of things later." (etc.)
You are basically psyching yourself up for meditation, and this is very important.
3. Meditation session: I used a computer timer that sounded a gentle bell at different parts of my 40-minute session. The phases were something like:
a) Finding the breath and fixing my attention on some location (3 mins),
b) Counting (7 mins),
c) Noting the length of inbreath and outbreath (5 mins)
d) Noting the entire breath as one thing (5 mins)
(by this time my breath would be very subtle and I would feel very concentrated)
e) Insight phase (20 minutes)
4. Afterwards: Keep the feeling of calm and minfulness with you.
Using this routine daily, and avoiding excessive unskillfulness during the rest of my day, I was able to reach moment-by-moment concentration regularly. I benefited greatly from this and learned a lot from my experiences.
More recently, my meditation schedule (and lifestyle) is erratic, and consequently I infrequently reach this level of concentration or sustain it for long. However, I make sure to not be attached to it.
I find meditation quite helpful regardless of its depth. So don't worry about needed to get too "hard core." Any amount of meditation will have positive effects! Start off with whatever you feel comfortable with.
I say most of it because I'm always almost late for my work because I'm too tired in the morning. So getting up early to meditate will be very hard to do. Perhaps in a few months.
I understand. The most important thing is to start meditating and to practice the path, even under less-than-ideal conditions.
That's an excellent exposition of calm-insight meditation. Well done!