Meditation
Meditation techinques
– “Watering flowers”
Using watering as a metaphor to illustrate mind paths that don’t serve us well, we discover that we spend a lot of time doing things like watering weeds, which is literally a silly thing toi do as weeds will grow no matter what. Why instead don’t we water flower? But the path to the weed patch is well worn as we’ve been walking there for ages so far. It’s easy to find it, we don’t need to think about it, our thoughts go naturally there and we keep on watering weeds. What are the weeds in our mind “garden”? They are the common paths we use to behave and react in life. The well known patterns that we act. Is all the times we allow thoughts of regret, fear, anxiety, anger, frustration, envy, jelousy, sadness or guilt to linger that is when we keep on watering weeds. Every time we allow thoughts to remain on things long past that we wished it had turned out differently, or fantasize about a future that we know cannot be, we are watering weeds. And the more we water weeds the bigger, taller, thicker, stronger they become. The more we walk in that path the easier is to go there.
So what we should learn to do is to reverse course everytime we find ourselves walking on the path to the weeds patch. Everytime we’re going there we should just take our watering can and go back to our flower garden and start watering flowers instead. It’s not easy, it will take time, but if we are more and more aware of our mind patterns, of our thoughts and we set intention and attention than we can start reversing course. It’s a new habit we start building and it requires time. When we leave the weeds patch path we can direct our mind to linger on thoughts of joy, compassion, kindness, equanimity and love. Each one of us has flowers to water. If we don’t find any, we can start with the flower of gratitude. Bring to your mind all the things in your life you are so grateful for and you will discover so many flowers: your parents, your kids, your friends, your health. And more, we might be grateful for the country we live in, our city, for our job or our hobby, for the books we read or the music we listen to, for sports…
If we cannot think of any flower to water right now, we can just be grateful for the breath, a flower which is always there. Be grateful for this breath, enjoy it, watch it. And simply returning to the flower of breath we do a little step back from the path to the weeds patch. When we stop watering our weeds they dry up and wither. If we keep on going back and back weeds will no longer grow and watering flowers will be easier and enjoyable.
– Thoughts as object of meditation
If we think of meditation as the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind (yoga chitta vritti nirodha – Patanjali 1:2) it seems quite strange to use thoughts as object of our meditation practice.
Tsonkny Rinpoche used the metaphore of the doorman in a luxury hotel: he opens the door to the hotel guests, they enter and go in all the direction, but the doorman doesn’t follow them to the bathroom. So we can do the same with our thoughts! Thinking is the natural activity of the mind, we cannot stop thinking, what we can learn is to be aware of our thoughts. We can welcome them, look at them, listen to them, and then we can gently let them go. In this way we become aware that everything changes, it’s impermanent and we learn to enjoy fully the present moment.
For a good meditation practice
- Take a moment to get ready for your meditation, set your intention to be open to the coming experience
- Find a comfortable position
- Connect to your breath, follow the flow of the breath coming in and going out
- Realax your body, relax your mind and come back to your breath
Let’s start observing our thoughts: are they few, many? Do they come in a constant flow or do they arrive in small groups leaving a space in between the groups? Do they look like few lines?
Or instead a full paragraph?Is there any white space in the page? Do tehy come as single words here and there in the white page?
How do you feel? Are you tired, experiencing a lot of thinking? Whatever your thoughts look like just observe them. They are your thoughts as they are in these precise moment. The intention is to get the mind involved in observing the thoughts, the «method» is OBSERVING. After 10 minutes, lay down and relax.
Then sit up again and start observing again for 10 more minutes. Watch if there are moments in which we feel totally gone, we experience absence and then we come back to the room. What are the feelings? Do we feel angry, bored, relaxed, whatever it is just stay with the present moment. Whenever thoughts come, just label them as «thought» and go back to observing the flow.
– Mindfulness exercise: «The present moment» tasting the grape (watch, explore, consider the thoughts, taste – different steps –, swallow. Consider the experience, no judgment.
– Befriend your breath to befriend your mind (the qualities of the mind)
find a comfortable position, use a support to sit comfortably if you need one and make sure that your spine is straight. Relax your face, jaw, neck and shoulders. If you want close your eyes or place the gaze at 30/60 cm in front of you. Don’t strain your eyes. All we will do in this time is trying to feel the present moment and observe the breath. We can start by simply observing the room we’re in, feel the people around you, pay attention to the noises and listen to them as you were listening to your favorite song. Let one noise come, welcome it and then let it go to make space for the next one. For some of you all this might seem useless, boring, nonsense. Again, come back to observe, notice all these aspects of your mind, how they could be magnetic and get all your attention, almost like a whirl. Just be there and watch. Now, and for the next 3 to 4 minutes in the same way we were observing some aspects of our mind let’s try to bring our attention to the exhale, counting 4 for each exhale. So, we inhale and then counting for we let the breath go out slowly. Every time we get lost in thoughts or snatched by the eagerness of our mind and we’ve lost the counting, just take an extra breath and start again. Observe if it is easy, difficult, natural, if you want to stop, to move, to leave. Now stop counting at the exhale and leave your mind free to do whatever it needs. You might have noticed how thoughts can be massive, but you might also have noticed some quiet moments. These are two qualities of human mind: the thoughtful one, always planning, remembering, procrastinating etc; and the second one is what we can call the buddha’s nature of the human mind. There’s not one better of the other. We simply accept that there are these two qualities, two sides of the same medal. Most of the times we think (or we’re used to think) that the thoughtful mind is the most important one, but it is actually just one of the aspects.
For the next 4 minutes go back again to observing the breath and the mind by counting the exhalation for a count of 4. Observe how many times you lose the counting because the thinking mind takes over. Then again let go the counting and leave your mind free without any effort of experimenting the thinking mind or the quiet one, just notice where it goes. Rest
– Short meditation exercise: standing in a circle, place the hands around the mouth with the thumbs tucked under the chin. Your hands should resemble a little megaphone. Start singing the sound uhhhhhhhhh. Repeat continuously for a number of times, then gradually slow down until the sound is just about a whisper. When the sound faded completely, lay down for shavasana and feel the effects of this exercise in the body and the mind.
– Letting go
Start bringing attention to your breath, let it flow naturally and just follow the path in your body. Try to not change it, nor force it. Just let it go as it is and observe. Like we let the breath flow out of our body, we can consider to take off some emotional and psychologic habits. We can start with something simple, something which we identify ourselves with (like our name, our social role, our working position, family role). And like we take off a jacket and we leave it on a chair, we imagine to get rid of our job, titles, qualifications… Simply let go and feel how it is like
Then we can imagine to let go of some other goods, maybe our house, holidays, some precious objects, things that we feel attached to and we think we can’t do without.
Let go of your computer, your phone, your Netflix subscription, your social media. How would it be? How do you feel? What kind of feelings, emotions, sensation do arise?
With how many things do we identify ourselves with? With our role, our job, cars, clothes, social media. How much do these things define us?
Let go of our believes, political ideologies, all the rights and wrongs, all the dogmas we hold in our mind. Just let them go and experience lightness
– The eye of the hurricane
Choose a playlist with music (it shoudn’t be soft or relaxing music, instead choose any rock, electronic, punk -anything you might like- music) which can last 20 to 30 minutes. Sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes. First contact your breath, and try to relax. Start the music and try for all the time to keep your mind focus on your breath, feel like your sitting in the eye of the hurricane, experiencing calm and stillness while all around is noise and chaos. When the music finish, lay down and notice what kind of emotions the experience arouse: did you follow the music enjoying it? Could you keep your mind focus? Did the music annoy you?…
– Flow with emotions
Play Ezio Bosso «Tears in your black eyes» (11 min): just flow with emotions and thoughts wherever they’ll take you. Just let go and feel all the sensations arising. Do not label the thoughts or emotions, watch them like clouds flowing in the sky and let them go. There’s no good or bad, no right or wrong. Just listen to the music.
After the music is finished, stay still some more 10 min observing the breath, calm down, observe the thoughts. If the mind wants to wonder again, just bring it back to the breath patiently and gently. Lay down and rest in silence (5 min)