We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday. We’ve been working with the four foundations of mindfulness: awareness of the body, feeling tone, thoughts, emotions and then all phenomena. We drew our practice inspiration from B. Alan Wallace’s Minding Closely: The Four Applications of Mindfulness. We included two practice periods and a walking meditation.
Yesterday we continued to practice with the second application: mindfulness of feelings. We established a foundation of bare attention while settling our bodies, minds and speech. Then we focused on sensation perceived through the five sense fields: the visual – what you can see, the auditory – what you can hear, olfactory – what you can smell, gustatory – what you can taste and the tactile sensation – what you can feel throughout your body. We explored the feelings arising in response to these perceptions: pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Alan encourages students to follow the links between sensation, feeling and the impulse to respond by avoiding what’s unpleasant or holding on to what is pleasurable. He also suggests noticing whether it is possible to find a direct experience of “I, me or mine” in these direct experiences.
We discussed how meditation is concerned with noticing direct experience through sense perception, feeling and thought. The practice is not concerned with investigating the content of thought but noticing the dynamic process of being and its impermanence. There is definitely value in investigating our experience and the content and nature of our thoughts in the post meditation period. I believe this type of reflection is a valuable aid in coming to know ourselves. The experiences that register can often be symptoms of deeper grooves of conditioning. The way we experience the world is always biased because of this conditioning.
In “yoga-speak” these are called Samskaras. Meditation, yoga instructor and author, Michael Stone, explains: “The technical definition of samskara is the psychological, physiological and cultural grooves in the mind, the body and the culture. Whenever you experience something, it gets filtered through the samskaras, and so the heart of yoga is the dropping of these deep patterns.”
Why is this the heart of yoga or meditation? We discussed the notion that one can meditate or practice mindfulness purely for the beneficial affects on our own body/minds. It can be ethically indeterminate or neutral. In his teaching, Michael observes that many people mistake the purpose of spiritual practice in meditation and yoga as enlightenment. The purpose is freedom. Can one be free if another is enslaved? What does enlightenment or true freedom mean to you?
The ancient texts that give us a road map to meditation and yoga begin with the practice of ethics. We create a foundation in stillness so that we can experience ourselves and the world with clarity and honesty. By slowing things down we begin to realize ourselves in relation to the world: all living and nonliving beings: people, other creatures, the environment even the sky. What does it mean to be in relationship? What do we bring to ourselves and each other if not our whole selves? The cornerstone of most ethical guidelines is nonviolence. Michael interprets nonviolence as the recognition that we are not separate from all. We have a moral obligation to live and practice in a way that helps everything flourish.
One student talked about creating an “open, unplanned day” to slow things down. She shared her concern over not taking action. I think the practice of mindfulness in meditation and/or yoga is meant to inform our action so that we can avoid the pitfalls of reactivity and attachment. In Zen meditation, teachings are often given in the form of a question known as a Koan. Koans aren’t necessarily logical; they often seem like a puzzle or riddle. You take them into your heart and live with them and while doing so they kind of work on you – and maybe help you to go beyond your Self. Here’s the one (also posed by Michael) I’ve been working with this week:
What’s stopping you?
Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class 38 Homework