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Guided Meditation: Floating Awareness

Good morning, good day, everyone. One of the things that we are doing in Satipaṭṭhāna^[1] practice—the practice of establishing awareness—is learning to not only pay attention to the details of what's happening in the moment right now. We're paying attention to the body, breathing, and body activities, but we're also beginning to understand the other half of the equation: the awareness part, how we're aware.

In a sense, the activities we do can be a mirror to how we are and also to how we are aware. It's possible to be aware in a contracted way, in a tense way. It's possible to be aware in a complacent, hardly committed way. And it's possible to be aware with a very relaxed, open, but engaged awareness.

For this purpose, I want to do a small exercise with you. Open your eyes and find some spot, maybe a small object, and fix your look at it. Really stare at it. Fix your attention there in a one-pointed way and just look at the object without wavering. Lock onto it and just look at it. Don't let your eyes waver or shake. Just hold your attention there—so very focused, very intent. As you do so, notice what has happened to your breathing. Notice what has happened to your body. Notice the quality of your mind.

Now relax. Maybe take a moment to close your eyes, breathe deeply, and relax.

Then open your eyes again and look at this object. But rather than fixating your attention on it, let your eyes float in your eye sockets and just look at the different parts of it. Maybe trace its contours. Look at the bottom of it, the top, the sides. Just let yourself wander and aim your attention so you're still centered on the object, but your attention is floating, swimming around on the object or with the object there.

Now notice your breathing. Notice your body, how it feels. Notice your mind, your awareness. Is the awareness tight or contracted, or is it more spacious and loose?

I don't know if this exercise worked for everyone, but generally, when people fixate their eyes to focus on something, it tends to create tension. It's an unnatural thing to do to hold the attention fixated like that. It takes effort, work, and a certain kind of tension. What's more natural for the eyes is to constantly be on the move, gently, relaxedly. We don't necessarily realize that our eyes are dancing around slightly, but what's nice for the eyes is to have them move so they take in the object of attention from different perspectives, different angles, different parts of it. The eyes are not fixated; they are quite loose, soft, and flowing around the object.

As the mind gets tense, fixated, preoccupied, afraid, angry, or desirous, it tends to lock up or become tighter, more fixed, like the fixed eyes. With mindfulness awareness, that awareness gets loosened up. We allow awareness to focus on the breath or on different objects, but we are floating with it, taking it in from different angles and ways.

Just with the experience of breathing, for example, we don't hold the attention on the breath. Rather, we place the attention in the area where we experience breathing, and we allow the different sensations that come into play to do their dance, to appear. Awareness floats between them and moves around them. It's all with the breathing, but the awareness is loose and relaxed with the breathing. It's a little bit like if you were floating on a rubber mattress or a boat, just floating and relaxing, laying on top of the ocean with gentle waves coming up. You're right there with the waves, but the waves come and go. You're not fixating on the ocean; you're allowing the waves to lift you and drop you, and you're feeling all the different contours of the wave as it moves through your body.

This kind of attention allows for, hopefully, a deeper sensitivity to our experience. As we continue to do this practice, we are awakening a deeper sensitivity to our sense experience—the physical experience of what's happening. We begin to allow the awareness to rest on it or stay present, but in a way that's soft and relaxed. It floats on top of the different things that appear and disappear.

So, gently lower your gaze with your eyes still open. Have your eyes looking down at about 45 degrees, not looking at anything in particular, but just gently letting the eyes subtly move, roam, and be relaxed. You're not trying to see anything. Maybe things are even a little bit out of focus, and that's okay. You're not fixating on anything.

Now, if it's comfortable, gently close your eyes. Let your awareness float around your body in whatever way the body calls, whatever way awareness wants to travel. Just gently, slowly, relaxedly. The awareness is centered on the body but loose and relaxed, just floating between different sensations and experiences.

As the awareness floats around, if you notice any tension—if it's easy enough without fixating the mind, with a relaxed attention—maybe allow awareness to slide down with the relaxation, along the relaxation.

Then settle your awareness on your breathing, the sensations of the body that come into play as you breathe, whether it's the movements of the belly, the chest, sensations in the nostrils, or some broader global experience of the body breathing. Rest in those sensations, in that area. Let your awareness gently—almost not out of choice, it isn't like you're doing it, almost as if it's the natural tendency for awareness to float and move—let it float and move within the experience of breathing.

The mind is not fixating on the breathing, but orienting itself on the breathing. As the sensations of breathing change, awareness floats on the change. As awareness naturally loosely floats, it sometimes floats between sensations. Maybe there's no rhyme or reason of which sensations you pick up at any given time, but be oriented to the sensations of breathing in a relaxed, loose way. Perhaps allow for a growing sensitivity for how the body feels and experiences the details of breathing.

Floating on the sensations of breathing, as if you have all the time in the world. No hurry.

If the mind wanders off in thought, notice if the mind is fixated or tight. If it is, relax the mind. If you wander off in thought innocently, kind of floating off into some kind of thinking, then float the mind back to the breathing. Gently settle back in again. Awareness resting on the waves of sensations, developing a heightened sensitivity to the body's experience of breathing.

As part of this meditation, while you're still sitting quietly, I would like to read this section of the text that we're studying this week. The reason to read it while you're still meditating is that the primary way down through the centuries that people have encountered this text is not as something to read and study, but something to listen to as it was chanted, or something to participate with by chanting it. Chanting repeatedly the same passages over and over again has a very different effect on how we learn and how we're changed than studying. Because it's closer to this chanting way of taking in the text, I'd like to read it now at the end of the meditation:

A practitioner is one who acts in full awareness when going forward and returning; who acts in full awareness when looking ahead and looking away; who acts in full awareness when flexing and extending the limbs; who acts in full awareness when wearing clothes and carrying their plates and silverware; who acts in full awareness when eating, drinking, consuming foods, tasting; who acts in full awareness when defecating and urinating; who acts in full awareness when walking, standing, sitting, falling asleep, waking up, talking, and keeping silent.

In this way, one abides observing the body in regards to the body, internally, externally, and both internally and externally. One abides contemplating the body and its nature of arising, its nature of vanishing, and its nature of both arising and vanishing. Or else awareness is established, 'there is a body,' just to the extent necessary for bare knowledge and lucid awareness. And one abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. This is how a practitioner abides observing the body in regards to the body.

May it be that each of these activities we do is infused with an aspiration and orientation to do so for the benefit of the world. That somehow we're developing ourselves, cultivating ourselves to be caring people for this world. Somehow we are also orienting ourselves to a life of caring for self and others, making this a better world for all beings. May all beings be free and happy.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (24) Mindful Eating

The direction that this Satipaṭṭhāna practice goes toward is the ability to have a loose, open, clear awareness that is able to wisely float and be around all aspects of our human experience. Whether it's the body, feelings, mind states, mental processes, the experiences of the world, or our thoughts, ultimately it's not a matter of keeping it limited to some particular domain of our life. It's being able to take it all in because awareness is starting to become free, loose, relaxed, open, and receptive.

In different circumstances, the mind will sometimes be aware of thinking, sometimes the body, sometimes feeling, sometimes emotion, sometimes sounds or what's around us. To some degree, it goes along with the call of whatever is happening. To some degree, it also has some choice about where it's important to bring attention—an orientation or an aspiration based on compassion, healing, what's beneficial, or what's fun. There's a play between choice and non-choice with awareness. This is something we become wise with and something that we begin to enjoy doing.

In the beginning of Satipaṭṭhāna, there's often a strong emphasis on the body—breathing in the body—and limiting the orientation to that. If we go too quickly to the full range of all the different things we can pay attention to, floating through them, it is more likely the mind simply gets hijacked and held hostage by the thinking mind and thoughts. We are cultivating the ability of the mind to relax its thinking, the grip of thoughts, the grip of preoccupation, by coming back to the breathing.

It's very important to realize that's what we're doing. It isn't so much that we're developing the muscle of concentration—which to some degree we are, but if it gets overemphasized, people can get tense and tight. A big part of what we're doing is decreasing the impulse, the attachment, sometimes the addiction, the strong fixation on certain limited parts of our human experience. A lot of the time it's thoughts, ideas, memories, planning; it can be our emotions and feelings; sometimes it can even be the body we're stuck on. We're learning to relax that. As we relax it more and more, then it becomes a whole different game to be able to settle in and be with the breathing or the body.

This is part of the field in which we're practicing. Why I want to bring it up today is that I want to talk about a particular activity to bring full awareness to, which is mentioned in the text: mindful eating. Mealtime is meditation time; mealtime is mindfulness time. It's one of the really wonderful places to cultivate mindfulness and use it as a kind of case study for bringing mindfulness into daily life.

Not a few people eat on automatic pilot. They eat with not a lot of careful attention. Maybe if you're eating alone, you are listening to a podcast, watching the news, watching something on a screen, or listening to the radio. In the old days, we would read the newspaper. Maybe when eating with other people, we are absorbed in the conversation and hardly notice that we're eating or what we're eating.

Sometimes the eating is done quickly. I'm a fast eater, so I know that well. It's so quick that we are not really taking in the experience of eating. When eating is automatic in this way, it often gives free rein to the mind to do whatever it wants to do. The mind has a strong tendency to be fixated or preoccupied. If it's given too much freedom to travel down its highways and byways, we actually live a truncated life, a limited life. Even though it might seem unlimited because we can think about an unlimited number of things, it's really a small domain of our life. From time to time, it's really wonderful to have a chance to sit down and eat alone or quietly without speaking, so that you can just be. You can just be eating and nothing else.

If you're just with the eating, you're floating your attention with the experience, which means you're not in a hurry. You're there just to be with the experience, all the different pieces of the experience, with full awareness of the body. It's all the physical things that come into play as you're eating.

One of the things that I've found really nice to do around eating, especially when I'm eating alone or quietly in a meditative way, is to notice the first moment where I feel the hunger is no longer there and I feel the simplest form of satiation. I'm not full; there might still be a desire in the mouth, in the tongue, for more. Maybe it's a pull for pleasure, or maybe the mouth and the tongue get the news that I'm full last, and so there's still this drive to want to eat. But I try to pay attention to the first time when I'm basically no longer hungry and feel the simplest satiation, and then stop eating. Then notice what happens. Notice that there might still be desires for pleasure, or that pull, or the impulse. Sit and watch it—it's fascinating. See how it morphs and changes when we don't give in to it, don't reinforce it, but make room to feel it. It's not exactly the same as denying ourselves. It's actually something more like allowing an impulse or a desire to be there in its pristine glory without giving in to it. Allowing ourselves to just feel, "Oh, there it is." Practicing mindfulness with that desire.

One of the things to learn from mindful eating is how mindlessly we eat. That's fascinating to notice. Are we eating in a hurry? Are we eating too much? Are we afraid? Is there anxiety around food as we eat? Is there greed as we eat? Is there a lot of confusion around food when we're eating it? Take time to feel and be with that. Give a second, third, and fourth look at those feelings that are connected to eating. Some of those feelings do not inherently have to be present as we eat. Some of those feelings limit our natural capacity to be attuned to the body's own intuition about what to eat, how to eat, and how much to eat. I've really appreciated, as I became more sensitive, feeling that the body had an intuition on its own about how to eat, when to eat, and what to pick up at different times from the plate. There's a deeper knowing the body has that we can tune into if we develop this deeper sensitivity of mindfulness.

It's also a great pleasure to eat mindfully, to eat in silence, and be absorbed in the pleasure of eating. Taking it all in and enjoying it so fully that the thinking mind gets quieter because it's not such a big part of the experience. It's possible to eat a meal—especially if you eat in silence—and feel clearer, more relaxed, and more open by the time it finishes. I've known some people who really enjoy eating mindfully and will spend quite a long period of time just taking their time to eat. Generally, it's best to do that alone. If you're eating socially, other people are long finished before you're done. But take your time to eat. I've done that in a lot of different ways, taking my time to eat, and sometimes the sense of meditative absorption and pleasure around it has been quite strong.

Because I am sometimes a fast eater—as I've been since I was a child—sometimes in order to cultivate this greater mindfulness, I have eaten with my non-dominant hand. That brought an interesting kind of attention to what I was doing. When I've really gotten into it and felt like I was doing it slowly, I would actually put my utensil down between bites. I would put a forkful of food in my mouth, put the fork down, and then just be with the chewing. After I swallowed, then I'd pick up the fork again. That would certainly be a little antidote to the habit of putting food in my mouth and then, while I'm chewing, digging in for the next bite. It's innocent enough, but to really be present for the experience, put the fork down. As we do this, the activity of eating is a mirror for our attitudes, our approaches, and what's going on for us.

That's part of mindfulness practice, to really see that. If some of those attitudes are not so helpful for you, an important part of mindfulness practice is—to the degree you're able to shift that and let go of it in a relaxed way—doing so. To the degree you can begin to have some choice about the attitudes of the mind, you want to exercise that choice. But don't be worried if you can't, and don't force it.

As you're doing this, you're also becoming aware of how you're aware. Is there a fixation in the mind and awareness? Can the awareness be soft and loose? If this metaphor works for you, can it be floating around the whole experience of sitting there, eating, and being with the experience of the food, the arm lifting up to put the bite in your mouth, the experience of the food being taken into the mouth, the movements of the tongue, the taste, and the chewing? Just really be there for it. Over time, as mindfulness gets stronger, the attention can float between all these different areas. It's not necessarily centered only on the physical experience of eating, but it's centered on the wholeness of who we are as we eat, which includes the eating.

So I offer you this. This will be the last talk on mindfulness of activities. I offer it to you as a case study to explore over this weekend. Maybe you can take a couple of meals where you sit quietly by yourself, or maybe if you're with someone who's a meditator, you can ask to eat the meal in silence together. Explore what the benefits are, what the richness is, and what the challenges are in eating mindfully, without a hurry, just eating. Thank you.

Announcements

I want to make a couple of announcements that might interest some of you. One is that periodically IMC has a mindfulness circle for Black-identified practitioners. If you are or know some Black mindfulness practitioners who would like to join the circle, it includes a little bit of meditation, a little bit of teaching instructions, and a chance to be in a Zoom circle to discuss mindfulness. The next one is starting a week from Saturday, I believe it's the 12th of February. There's information about that on IMC's website on the homepage under "What's New."

The other thing is if some of you would like to come and sit a retreat that I teach. I teach a number of them at IRC (Insight Retreat Center), but they're sometimes difficult to get into. I'm also teaching one in April at Spirit Rock, and it is probably easier to get into the retreat there. I am teaching it with three wonderful co-teachers. I think it's April 16th, and you can look there for the schedule.

Thank you, and I hope you enjoy your mindfulness and enjoy mindful eating.