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Different Aspects of Experience

Good evening, and a really warm welcome to everybody. This is the first Monday in the year 2021, so happy New Year. As I was thinking about that—about "happy New Year"—I was reminded that earlier this week, I was planning something for just a few days later. I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday, and I was planning something that was going to be done on Sunday. I had this recognition like, "Oh, it'll be a different year. It'll be 2021 on Sunday, but it's really just four days later."

So, of course, this points to the idea that a new year is a concept. On one particular day is the ending of one year, and the beginning of the next. But maybe in some ways we feel like, shouldn't new years always start on a Monday? It seems like new things should start on Mondays, or maybe they should start with a full moon. Instead, it just happened to be on a Thursday night. This highlights that a calendar, for example, is just a system that got created to organize days, and we do this by giving names to particular periods of time: days, weeks, months, or years.

In the same way, we might understand that a concept, in the simplest terms, is a name that we give to abstractions. We work with it or consider it as if it had a concrete or material existence, as if it were actually an object that we could touch, taste, or hear. We all know this; I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. But this recognition of concepts, working with concepts, and understanding how they're related to and different from actual felt experiences is an integral part of meditation practice.

Concepts vs. Felt Experience

Of course, we need concepts, and we use them all day long. We need them to support categorization, learning, memory, understanding, decision-making, and problem-solving. So we need concepts, but there's more than one way to have an understanding of our experience. Becoming sensitive to concepts—knowing when it's useful to really stay with the idea of a concept, or to stay with the felt experience of something—is an important part of meditation practice.

For example, in the guided meditation that I did earlier, we talked about the experience of stretching or the idea of movement—stretching the chest or the abdomen with the breath. This is in contrast to just using the word "breath" or "mindfulness of breathing." Because really, breathing is in some ways a concept. It's this incredible, amazing collection of the way the body exchanges carbon dioxide and oxygen, and the way the diaphragm moves, which causes the chest and the abdomen to move.

As a little aside, I'll just say that when I first learned about the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in hemoglobin in our red blood cells, for me that was one of the most beautiful, elegant, amazing things that I had learned. It was just that nature could come up with this fantastic, really amazing way to exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen. Learning that ended up changing my life. I became so touched and amazed—in awe, maybe, is the right word—that I chose to eventually get a PhD in biochemistry. I didn't study hemoglobin, but just to get a glimpse of what's actually happening, to get a glimpse of the mechanics down into the nitty-gritty, as opposed to just the idea of breathing, or "we have blood pumping through the lungs," or "air going in and out of the lungs."

For me, there's been this real appreciation for when we land with a greater intimacy on what the actual experience is. In some ways, meditation is the same way, or at least mindfulness meditation is. Getting back to when we think about breathing: sometimes we just say "mindfulness of breathing," but what is breathing, really? As I was saying, it's this collection of movements, biochemical processes, and even chemical processes. We can choose which layers or which elements to pay attention to, and that's part of meditation practice as well—becoming aware that there are different layers and different aspects of our experience. We can stay at one level where we just say the word "breathing," or we could tune into the bodily sensations, like the stretching that happens with an inhale, the subsequent contraction, and the transition between the two.

Working with Uncomfortable Experiences

In the same way, we might experience something uncomfortable, such as pain in the knee or in the back, as sometimes happens with meditation. When we use this word "pain" as the name, the label, the concept for these uncomfortable sensations, the word brings with it a whole host of additional baggage. When there's pain, we might have this idea that it absolutely has to stop right now. Or that having any degree of pain is a failing of some sort—either a failing of ourselves because we didn't take care of ourselves well enough, or a failing of somebody else, so we have to blame them. Or maybe pain sets off a whole host of stories: "Oh no, now I won't be able to do X, Y, Z, and then if I can't do X, Y, Z, then I will have to do something else that's extreme." And off we go with a lot of story-making.

Sometimes in our meditation practice, we might be experiencing uncomfortable sensations, and then we say, "Oh, there's that pain," and down we go with this cascade of story-making, often accompanied by some contraction and fear. As opposed to, what if we just bring in the idea: "There is an uncomfortable stabbing sensation in the lower part of my left knee. It's very uncomfortable. There's some aversion to this uncomfortableness. The stabbing doesn't seem like the strength is the same all the time; it feels like it's moving." Tuning into the felt experience and not using the concept or label of "pain," but instead using words like throbbing, stabbing, diffuse, sharp, stable, moving, intermittent, steady, getting stronger, or getting less, allows us to just be with the felt experience. We're less likely to then go down that cascade of stories.

The Three Aspects of Experience

We might consider that there are a number of different aspects to each experience, something we can use as a tool to help us be with them in a more complete way. One aspect is concepts—ideas, names, and labels, like the example I gave with the word "pain." Another aspect is the felt sense, like the stabbing or throbbing. And there might also be a third element: an image. The image might be of the concept we're using, and it may not be clear or at the forefront of our minds. It might be just below consciousness, an image of the concept like a big black box or a big red danger sign. Or maybe when we said the word "stabbing," we had a flickering image of a sharp implement, like a knife stabbing.

For all experiences that we're having, these different aspects are happening all at once, and we can tune into different ones: concept, felt sense, and image. We can use this notion of having these three different aspects as a way to support our practice. Here's a quote from the suttas^[1], from the Theragāthā^[2] 104 with Khitaka^[3]. Khitaka is the name of the monk. Some of you may know that the Theragāthā is a collection of verses of awakened persons. The Theragāthā is for men, and the Therīgāthā^[4] is for women.

In the Theragāthā, it says: "My body is light, having been touched with vast joy and happiness. My body feels like it's floating like cotton blowing in the wind." It is something kind of lyrical, and I found myself smiling when I was saying that. He's tuning into what the felt experience is, talking about being light in the sense of buoyant or not heavy. He even brings a little bit of image: the cotton blowing in the wind. And when he says, "my body is light," maybe that's a concept, or maybe that's his felt experience. I would say it's the concept. So in this little stanza, we can see these three different elements of concept, felt sense, and image.

Investigating Our Patterns

These are different ways that we might consider our experience. It's not neat and tidy, and I don't want to make any claims about the reality of existence, but I want to offer this as a way to support our practice. Noticing when it's helpful to pay attention to the different elements, and when it's helpful to really distinguish them, is a big part of mindfulness practice, concentration practice, and loving-kindness practice. Meditation practice is part of teasing apart these different elements.

Part of the reason why we do this—to zoom back out into the big picture—is so that meditation practice can help bring some freedom, ease, and peace into our life. And part of the way we can do that is to understand what's really happening. Often, without realizing it, we move through life with a whole bag of ideas, notions, conceptions, projections, and beliefs about ourselves, life, and others. We have these ideas about how things should be, how they are, or how they were. We are moving through life with our ideas, not so much really connected to or feeling our experiences. We're staying in the head, so to speak.

Mindfulness is a way in which we can bring a quality of attention to this experience and notice these three different aspects. We can notice what the felt experience of our life is actually like, having a certain intimacy with the moment, the texture, and the feeling. This helps us uncover what is actually happening rather than our ideas about what's happening. We might discover that we have certain patterns of behavior, speech, or thought processes that are story-making, triggered by particular events. We might be so accustomed to having these patterns that we don't notice them anymore, but tuning into the sensations in the body might be a way we can get underneath some of these thought patterns and help cue us that they are happening.

Investigating these three aspects allows us to include concepts, felt sense, and image. If we find ourselves stuck or not fully understanding, then we can look at an aspect of experience that we often don't look at, which is usually our direct experience or maybe our imagery. Most often we are with the concepts and ideas. This way we can understand ourselves, our patterns, and how things work, as opposed to our ideas about what's happening.

For example, if we have an idea that our neighbor is an inconsiderate and terrible person because they let their dog bark, and the barking is annoying us, this big idea might prevent us from noticing when they do something kind. Maybe they don't park their car where we usually park, or maybe they are taking care of their house in such a way that they're not encouraging pests. I'm not very good at coming up with examples extemporaneously—this is not my strength! [Laughter] But maybe that's a good example; it was just a concept there, an idea I have about myself. It's a little bit funny, right, when I'm trying to talk about concepts and then I slip right into it.

Mindfulness and Bare Attention

We can think about how bare attention is a part of mindfulness. Instead of layering this moment with a thick covering of ideas, we are actually drawing close in an intimate and direct way to the bare actuality of our experience. What does it really feel like? What does the breath really feel like? What is the sound? Instead of having a sound arise and the mind automatically wanting to figure it out—"What is it? Where is it going?"—can we just be with the experience of having a sound arise without getting lost in stories?

When I mention this idea of bare attention, I don't want to give the impression that mindfulness means we have to get rid of all our thoughts or thinking. It's very common to have this idea that meditation is about getting rid of thoughts, and that if thinking has arisen, then somehow it must be squashed, destroyed, or excised. But the objective of mindfulness is something different. One way is to just tune in and be really aware of the different aspects of our experience, paying particular attention to the felt sense. One reason for that is because the felt sense is happening here and now, whereas with mental experiences, it's easier to get lost in stories. But if there are these types of mental experiences, mindfulness is just the practice of being aware: "Oh, there's thinking," or "The thinking has quieted," or "There's a lot of thinking."

So mindfulness doesn't mean we have to get rid of concepts—we can't get rid of concepts, it's the way we navigate the world. But it's about noticing the thinking and noticing the different aspects of our experience. Even when the mind starts to settle down, we might notice that the thinking is settling down. I like to use the expression that whereas before we were writing whole stories, maybe book chapters, the thinking then turns into paragraphs. Then, as the mind settles and gets a little more collected, thinking might just be a sentence or two. And maybe the sentence is, "Oh, there's not much thinking going on."

Concentration and Absorption

Even in the beginning of concentration practice—even absorption practices—when the mind is really settled and connected to its object, there's a way in which the instructions guide us. For the first absorption, the first jhāna^[5], the suttas say that the meditator fills, pervades, saturates, and permeates this body with the joy and happiness born of seclusion, so that no part of one's entire body is not touched with it. There's this idea to fill, pervade, saturate, and permeate. Maybe that's a little bit of both—a concept, but also a felt experience. What does it feel like to be filled up with joy and happiness? What is it like to pervade the body with joy and happiness?

We can see this movement of ideas and concepts as well as a felt experience, and maybe an image. There might be an image, very slight or very clear, of a body that is filled up like a cup gets filled up with water, or how the heart pumps blood out and fills up the capillaries. All of us have our own images that are unique to us that correspond to our experiences. But just recognizing that each experience has these different aspects, and tuning into them at different times, is part of our practice.

This allows us to be present and to understand ourselves. With this greater understanding, we might understand and appreciate others, and in this way, we can be part of bringing more joy and happiness to this world, and to ourselves. Thank you very much.