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Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation with and : Class 5 Integrating into Daily Life - Tanya Wiser, Kodo Conlin

Review of Previous Classes

Tanya Wiser: I'll do a very brief review of where we've been, just to help remind the mind what we've been practicing. What we've done with this series is we've taken how we normally perceive experience, and we've invited ourselves to focus in on different parts of it, instead of having it all be clumped in together. It's not that everything isn't still happening—we don't ever stop breathing when we pay attention to mindfulness of the body—but rather, we're working on choosing what we're focusing on and giving more of our awareness to that thing one at a time to help us become more familiar with that part of our experience.

We started with mindfulness of breathing, and we talked about establishing an anchor. Usually, we talk about the breath as an anchor, but it doesn't have to be. An anchor can be anything that helps you stay present and aware, so sound can be a really great anchor, as can bodily sensations like the feeling of sitting—the weight, the support, and the lift of the spine. We spent the first week getting intimate with breathing and establishing an anchor.

In the second week, we talked about mindfulness of the body. I like this idea that the body is a gateway to the present moment. When we're caught up in thinking and we're having a hard time bringing ourselves into the moment, we can tune into the experience of the body. Sensations are only happening in the present moment; touch only happens here. The body is such a great doorway out of the mind and into life.

The third week we talked about emotions and practiced with them. We talked about being the riverbed and allowing emotions to move through us like water moves through a river. Sometimes we are a small riverbed, and sometimes we can be wide and broad and allow pretty much anything to flow through us. We discussed the idea that an individual emotion only lasts for 60 to 120 seconds. It's different than a mood state, which is more prolonged. Individual emotions have a short lifespan unless we feed them, refuel them, and re-trigger them. We practiced tolerating different experiences moving through us like that riverbed.

Last week we brought up mindfulness of thinking. We discussed that there are different ways of thinking: narrative thinking where we talk to ourselves, seeing words, thinking in images, or having mini-movies playing in our imagination. Sometimes our thinking is more subtle, like a background hum. There can also be a way of thinking that involves holding a view or a belief, such as "I should be doing something right now," which generates a lot of activity and proliferates into other thoughts.

Another thing we talked about is that I am not my thoughts. Thoughts are a part of our experience, just like sensations, sounds, and emotions. They come into our experience, and it's possible to know these experiences—to be the knower instead of the thought or the thinker. We also discussed using a light noting practice, simply naming "in," "out," or "planning." We don't want to get elaborate in our noting; we want it simple. Kodo talked about the ships—the warship, the dance ship, these big thoughts that come through—and just naming the theme of them and seeing them. Kodo, is there anything you would want to add to our summary?

Kodo Conlin: That covered a lot of ground. I think one thing we've emphasized a lot that bears repeating is that all aspects of experience can be included in mindfulness practice. At its best, nothing needs to be left out. Nothing that has arisen has gone wrong. A corollary of that is that mindfulness practice is impossible to fail at. We just keep practicing over and over in this simple capacity of attention, but everything gets to be included.

Tanya Wiser: That's a great segue to tonight. We've been breaking up what we're attending to, trying to get more intimately connected to certain kinds of experiences, seeing that they're distinct before they get tangled up together. Tonight we'll do an open awareness practice. It invites you to step back once you get settled with your anchor, to let different things come up, and to be mindful of them without working to track just thinking, emotions, the body, or breathing alone.

Reflections on Practice

Tanya Wiser: Before we do that, we want to give some time for reflection on your practice this last week. What did you notice? Was there anything that came up as you were working with thinking?

Student 1: I wanted to share that I feel grateful. Another tool that I've been conscious of using is being mindful of my thoughts. Noticing if I'm thinking is helping me to feel more free. When I notice that I'm thinking, I can go back to a space of just feeling the feelings in my chest, my heart, or my torso. I feel like it's peaceful, and I can be free from thinking at least for some time.

Tanya Wiser: Great! I always say, "Happiness is here." That's great. Anyone else? It doesn't have to be great news; you can also share what's not working.

Student 2 (Tracy): I notice that it's a different experience with focusing on the breath while wearing a mask. It feels warm against your face. I am appreciating the opportunity to learn other things to focus on, other than just the breath. Focusing on the breath can make me feel hot and uncomfortable. What I did last week when I was feeling that way is I opened my eyes and focused on the sky, trees, and window, which helped me feel less warm.

Open Awareness

Tanya Wiser: I'm going to talk about a couple of things leading into how to work with open awareness practice. When we talked about mindfulness of the body, we discussed the idea of watching a football game without the narrator—turning the sound off. This is the idea of how to be with our direct experience without adding perceptions and narration, keeping everything simpler. But our minds construct things.

I brought a flower to share with you tonight. It's a pretty enough flower. Just take it in for a minute and see what you notice about it—how much you like it.

Now, I also have this flower. When I bring this flower up, how does it affect how you see the first flower? Does the first flower become more beautiful? Less beautiful? Does this second flower become a big flower, and the first one becomes a small flower? You might think, "Oh, that's a vibrant pink, and that's kind of a dull pink." But the first one was just pink before!

And then, I also have this [third] flower. Does the second flower still seem big when I have this flower? Maybe the second flower now seems like it's just a lot of little flowers, but it was big before. This happens automatically, all the time. If I just brought the first flower up and shared it with you and talked about how beautiful it was, you probably would have just been right along with me for the ride. But seeing these others, the mind automatically creates little hierarchies, valuing one more than another, comparing them.

This is an example of the narration that happens in the mind and how much it can really change our experience of the same thing. One minute something can be remarkable, and the next it's not worthy of any attention at all, just because of a subtle shift, a comparison, or a way we describe it in our minds. The opposite is trying to be with direct experience in a really simple way. That's why it's so good to do simple noting: "coolness," "warmth," "sound," instead of, "Annoying car alarm going off out there, how dare they do that, what's this sound pollution going on?" If it can just be sound, there is probably a lot less suffering.

Do you feel more mindful than you did when you started this class? Sometimes we feel less mindful, and do you know why that might be? We're actually more aware of all the extra stuff that's happening. We're more aware of the added chatter, we get to see the gymnastics the mind does when it's comparing and wanting this instead of that. But trust me, you are growing your strength. This capacity is innate; we just need to grow it, strengthen it, and create more room for it.

Here is a great image for open awareness practice: imagine a small, one-room cottage. It has a door, some windows, and no fancy anything—just a nice, solid, cozy chair in the middle. The practice of open awareness is like sitting down in that chair and letting things come up to the window. You see a bird flying by, but you stay in the chair. You don't get up every time you see a bird out the window. A thought or emotion might come to the door, come in, and leave. The idea is letting things pop up, visit, come and go, while you stay in the chair.

When we're doing this practice, it might feel like there's just one thing after another, after another—every window and door is being popped into. It also can feel like there's just this huge, vast, open space where not much is happening. Both experiences are completely fine. There's no right way to be aware with this practice.

Guided Meditation

Tanya Wiser: We'll start by finding an anchor. Getting grounded in our bodies will give ourselves time to just settle and let the mind quiet and slow down a little bit. Take your time getting comfortable. We're going to sit for about 15 minutes, so find a posture that you feel comfortable sustaining, one that feels awake but settled. Let experience start to become more clear.

Whatever your anchor is—if it's the breath, if it's sound, if it's gazing—just get connected to your anchor. Notice if there's tension or any stress in the body, maybe even a holding. You might need to lift your shoulders up and roll them back, or take a few conscious deep breaths. We're going to support ourselves in settling; that's part of the work of mindfulness. It's a gift we're giving ourselves to take the time.

Feel your feet, your bottom, and tune in to what it's like to be here right now, in this body. Is there ease or dis-ease? If there's dis-ease, it's okay. Give it permission to be here. If there's ease, can you rest into it a little bit? You might do a brief body scan, feeling into places where you might be holding, and invitationally inviting a softening or relaxing if that part feels so inclined. It can be helpful to notice the forehead and jaw, areas where we hold a lot of tension. Sometimes we just need a little bit of awareness and an invitation to relax.

When you feel settled enough, tune in to the experience of hearing sounds. You might hear the air conditioning, a fan, a car driving by, the sound of someone else breathing, or even your own breath or heartbeat. Just receive whatever sounds arrive in your ears, sitting back and allowing them to come to you.

If the timing feels right and you feel settled, you can let go of the deliberate energy of attending to your anchor. If the breathing is still prominent, that's fine, but it's the letting go of the deliberate focus. It's sitting back into the chair, broadening the awareness a little bit to allow the mind to witness things as they arise and pass away.

Whatever is most clear, just allow that to become the primary focus. It might be a sensation, a sound, or an attitude. There's no one kind of experience that's right or wrong. Awareness can meet each experience as it arises, directly knowing it simply. Then, as whatever primary experience is happening fades away, something else may become more prominent, and you can allow your awareness to receive that. Everything can be included.

If you find yourself getting lost in thought, fantasy, or planning, or if the mind becomes vague and sleepy, it can be helpful to return your attention in a slightly more effortful way to your anchor, establishing a little more clarity and connection.

Just as the night sky is spacious and the moon and stars can appear, awareness can be like that too—a vast field holding it all.

Post-Meditation Q&A

Tanya Wiser: I'd love to hear what happened inside your mind.

Student 3: I just felt like my brain and my thoughts were like scattered marbles. Everything was everywhere. I was trying to go back to the breath to anchor everything, but there were just so many things going on. I was feeling kind of defeated—like, "Oh, I let this get to me again."

Tanya Wiser: Thank you for sharing. Who of us can't say we've been discouraged? There are two paths of inquiry here. One is that it could just be a really full day. The other is: what is our relationship to the mind being like a bubble machine? As we start to practice, it's like polishing a floor. If you never mop the floor, you don't even notice when you drop something on it. But if you are frequently polishing the floor, you'll see the tiniest thing. We as a group have decided we're going to sit down and be attentive to what's coming up. It's like we're polishing the floor, and then we see so much more.

Student 4: There's always this part of me thinking, "I'm not doing it wrong, but I'm not getting as much fruitfulness out of it. I could be doing this more fruitfully." I see that judgment coming up a lot.

Kodo Conlin: My first impulse is to normalize that. Doubting if the practice is working, asking, "Am I doing it right?" or "What am I getting out of it?" is so normal to the meditative experience that the specific name of "doubt"^[1] has been given to this whole collection of the "B-side track" going on next door to our attention. You are already so attentive to it; you see that it's happening clearly. I know it seems counterintuitive, but that's a moment of clear recognition. It could be interesting to follow the path back and see if there's a physical sensation or emotion underneath it. The B-side track may still continue to be there, but you'll also gain other information about how things are developing and changing.

Tanya Wiser: I'll just add the flower story to that. Can you just be with the experience of the flower without comparing it to the other flowers—without the thought of, "It's not good enough"? Can it just be the flower that it is, without all the added layers?

Student 5: What I noticed was that my body needed attention once I was quiet enough to listen. I felt like I had a headache in my face. I realized that I feel like I was scrunching up my forehead all day, and my neck was also a little tense. Being quiet helped me to focus enough to hear that my body needed some attention.

Kodo Conlin: Thank you so much. Some really clear attentiveness there, and in addition to clear attendance, the instinct of care. That is such a thing to appreciate—instinctive care for yourself.

Student 6: The closer I got to what I assume is open awareness, the more I felt a rising level of fear. I just stuck with it and tried to look at the contours of it.

Tanya Wiser: Fear is so powerful, and we are almost afraid of fear itself, so it can grow quickly in our minds. I really like the idea of Doc Martens—remembering that awareness is like having big, thick-soled Doc Marten boots. If we stay grounded, the electricity of fear doesn't have to keep pulsing through us. It sounds very skillful to direct your awareness toward the sensations, because what feeds fear is the story we're imagining. It is very common for fear to come up as a good thing to start practicing with.

Integrating Practice into Daily Life

Kodo Conlin: When we're practicing open awareness, sometimes it feels like we get a little scattered, and as Tanya was saying, we come back to the anchor to center and calm ourselves. When we think about extending the practice further, the same motion applies. The meditation seat can be our anchor—the place we come back to to settle ourselves.

The line between the edge of your meditation mat and the rest of your life is pretty arbitrary. The line between meditation and applying clear attention in the rest of our lives is pretty fuzzy. What this opens up is that we can extend our practice into the rest of our lives.

Your mind and body go with you wherever you go. When you're seated, you're practicing cultivating attention and clear, wholesome qualities. Those same qualities don't disappear when you stand up. Very commonly, meditation is associated with sitting. There are good reasons for that, as stillness cultivates our attention strongly. But the practice extends to all four noble postures: sitting, standing, walking, and lying down.

To give you a flavor of how old this notion is, in the foundational texts for insight practices, there is a section on full awareness^[2]. It says a practitioner acts in full awareness when going forward and returning; acts in full awareness when looking ahead and looking away; acts in full awareness when flexing and extending the limbs; when wearing robes or eating, drinking, consuming food and tasting; when walking, standing, sitting, falling asleep, waking up, talking, and keeping silent.

If we have the idea, "Today I'm going to be completely mindful from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep," we're probably going to get frustrated or disappointed. Start small. When I was living in monasteries, right after meditation there was often a short period of silent cleaning. Doing something silent with your body helps bridge stillness and activity.

Another way to extend mindfulness into daily life is to have particular activities throughout your day that remind you to be mindful. Before I cross a threshold in a door, oftentimes I will pause just for a second and feel how I am in the room, and then I step through and feel myself again. You might have other cues, like setting a timer to go off at random times to take a brief pause. Thich Nhat Hanh^[3] is well known for talking about the practice of mindfulness while washing dishes. Instead of taking that time to plan or think about something else, just be there with the warmth and the suds. In a nutshell, we want to find tiny moments to be here now in your day.

Walking Meditation

Kodo Conlin: The reason why we want to introduce walking meditation is that it helps balance our energy. You might notice during a sitting how the momentum of tension can build. If you want to establish your practice further, you can set aside time to do a period of sitting, followed by a period of walking, followed by a period of sitting.

Bringing full attention to the moving body can sometimes cultivate even more concentration than seated meditation. Something about the rhythm of the movement keeps us present. Walking meditation can also be useful if you're really sleepy, to bring up the energy, or as a transition practice to coast into sitting practice.

Here is how we do it in this tradition: Choose a walking path of about 10 to 30 steps. Start at one end, pause, and set up your posture. See if you're aligned and steady. Take a few deep breaths and let yourself know, "Here I am, standing." Once attention is established in the body, begin to walk. We're not going anywhere. Take steps at a pace that encourages a feeling of ease for you.

Let the sensations of the feet and legs be the anchor. Then we meditate in just the same way that we have been. If something more compelling comes up and draws the attention away, you can pause, attend to that feeling, emotion, or thought, and when that's finished, come back to your anchor of the walking body. When you come to the end of your path, just pause and stop. Turn around, pause again to bring yourself right back, and then walk back at a pace of ease. You can place your hands in your pockets, cross your arms, or fold them behind your back—anything works.

Where to Go From Here

Kodo Conlin: I appreciate that we have come to this point in the course together. It feels really good. My hope is that something useful has come into your life as a result. What do we want to grow with it? Where do we go from here?

We have many opportunities for practice at IMC. There is the Sunday morning sitting and dharma talk, which is great for community. There are Monday night longer silent sittings. Gil Fronsdal^[4] also leads morning sittings and teachings on YouTube at 7:00 AM, which are a great way to start the day. There are afternoon loving-kindness (Brahma-Vihara) practices, and any number of affinity groups—Buddhism and the 12 Steps, an LGBTQIA group, groups for those practicing with chronic illness, and a 20s and 30s group.

In addition to community events, we've emphasized the wholesome power of daily practice. Even if you only have three, five, or ten minutes, it is a wholesome thing to do. Having a consistent schedule for yourself helps generate mindfulness and develop powers of concentration. As concentration and mindfulness grow together, beautiful openings of the heart and wholesome letting go can happen. Concentration acts as the tripod that allows the telescope of mindfulness to clearly see the night sky.

Along with daily practice, you can look toward retreats. We have half-day and day-long retreats here. There is also a whole retreat center associated with IMC called the Insight Retreat Center (IRC)^[5], where retreats range from four days to three weeks. Setting aside normal concerns for a week is deeply nourishing to the system.

Finally, there is literature available. One of my go-tos that I return to again and again is Gil's collection of essays, The Issue at Hand.

Final Q&A

Student 7: I procrastinate like a lot of people do. I took the day off work today to focus on a job transition, and I was so unproductive all day until the last hour, when I got it done in a panic. I just couldn't wait to come here and "do nothing." I can see myself using this practice as an excuse to avoid things.

Tanya Wiser: One thought is that you could alternate sitting and doing. You could make a bargain with yourself: if you work for half an hour, you can sit for a bit. The other thing is that you really can practice while you're doing. There are lots of things we can do in our life with care—polishing the floor with care, sorting papers with care, noticing how it feels. We often disconnect with our to-dos because we just want them to be done. What are we disconnecting from that we could stay close to?

Another thing you can do is look at your relationship to the resistance. Say, "Okay, I don't want to do this. I'm having a lot of resistance." You can start to be mindful of that resistance and get curious about it. Watch the mind wanting to escape. For example, if I'm on YouTube for an hour and a half avoiding my tasks, and I start to feel a sick pit in my stomach, I can pause and note: "I feel uncomfortable. I'm trying to avoid this, but it's actually not very pleasant."

In Buddhism, we talk about the Five Hindrances^[6]: Doubt, Aversion (not liking/wanting), Greed (desiring pleasure), Restlessness and Worry (when the mind is spinning), and Sloth and Torpor (sleepy, diffused energy). It is helpful to notice which of these hindrances is present. If you see it's a lot of aversion, ask yourself, "How can I shift this? What's the antidote?"

Student 8: How do you calm yourself in the midst of things feeling chaotic? I notice I'm frustrated, but then I feel like I'm suppressing my emotions by trying to pretend to be mindful of them. I tell myself not to be frustrated, and then something happens and I double over.

Kodo Conlin: Something to keep in mind as we go along with the practice is that expecting a specific effect can easily flip over into a demand. I've had this happen where I think, "I'm frustrated. I'm going to watch my breath for two minutes, and that's going to calm me down." That's the deal I made with myself. But then my frustration doesn't cooperate, and I feel the same. I might conclude something went wrong and I failed.

It's simply the fact that the web of conditions making up your current state is so dynamic that we can't flip it off with a switch. We can feed something wholesome into the system that is nourishing over time, but we are not 100% in control. If an experience is unpleasant, it doesn't mean that anything has gone wrong with your practice.

Closing and Dedication of Merit

Kodo Conlin: It's a wonder that we do these things together, and it's a wonder that everything at IMC is offered completely freely. I'm really happy to close with a dedication of merit^[7]. This is the practice of wishing that whatever benefit we gained from coming here out of a spirit of generosity be shared with others.

As each of you leaves here tonight and encounters others in your life, maybe you're leaving a little bit calmer, a little bit more present, and you can share that with somebody. Then it's a gift given from you to them, and hopefully, they can give it to somebody else, until it is spread to all beings everywhere. Thank you for your time, kindness, and willingness to share.

[Bell rings]