Meditation Skill 02

Your meditation remains the same as Meditation Skill 01, except you now include a slow out-breath through your nose while relaxing your eyelids to soften your mind's interest in the past and future. As your mind's interest in the past and future relaxes, you will access a deeper sense of ease within your mind, along with an increased awareness of your body relaxation.

YouTube: Video Instructions.

SoundCloud: Guided Meditation.

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• Set a countdown timer on your phone, set it to do not disturb, and place it behind you.
• Meditation Length: Meditate for 30 minutes to develop further relaxation & insight.
• Benefits: This skill will teach you how to relax your minds interest in thoughts focused on the past and future and help you to fall asleep at night.
• Purpose: Create space around thoughts and mind narratives by learning to relax your mind's interest in the past and future, thereby increasing awareness of your body.

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Summary:

1. Enjoy relaxing your body as you did in Skill 01.
2. Relax your mind with slow out-breaths through your nose.
3. Increase the relaxation by allowing your eyelids to relax.
4. Enjoy the increased relaxation and presence of your body.

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Instructions:

Step 1: Sit for meditation and develop relaxation of your body as you did Skill 01 to settle any physical restlessness that may be present. Once physically relaxed, add the steps below (Steps 2-3) as new additions to help you relax your mind. 

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Additions for Skill 02:  

Your aim for Skill 02 is to gently soften your mind's interest in the past and future to relax your mind. As you do, the awareness of your body will increase and become more present.

Step 2: Relax your mind with slow out-breaths through your nose.

• After relaxing your body in Skill 01, take five more breaths, but this time allow a slow breath out through your nose with each out-breath. Slowing the out-breath through the nose has a calming effect on the mind. 
• Try this: Allow a few slow breaths out through your nose now and notice any feelings of relaxation such as a release of effort within your mind. Play with this to get a feel for it at first. 

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Step 3: Increase the relaxation by allowing your eyelids to relax.

• Once you understand Step 2, repeat it with five more breaths, and increase the relaxation of your mind by allowing your eyelids to droop with each out-breath.
• Try this: Slowly relax your eyelids a few times now and notice any feeling of mental relaxation such as the release of mental effort. Join it with the slow breath out through your nose and see how the relaxation effect on your mind increases.

Tip: Relaxing your eyelids slowly and deliberately with clear comprehension of how it feels will signal your mind to relax.

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Step 4: Enjoy the increased relaxation and presence of your body.

• Once you feel physically and mentally relaxed, allow your breathing to happen naturally for the rest of your meditation. Enjoy the pleasantness of that relaxation, its feeling of comfort in your body and ease of mind.

Tip: At this stage of meditation, random thoughts and mind wandering are not a problem; your main aim is to settle the mental restlessness of your mind by relaxing your interest in thinking about the past and future.

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As you practice for Skill 02, you may experience the hindrance of Mental Restlessness. Insight is developed in this stage of mindfulness of breathing by being curious about creating the conditions that support relaxation of your mind thereby weakening the conditions that support the hindrance to relaxation which is the mental restlessness that comes from thinking about past and future.

Meditative Hindrance. 

Mental Restlessness (02).

Unable to experience mental comfort, leading to thinking about the past and the future. 

Mental Restlessness refers to when you feel mentally unsettled due to high energy levels from excess effort, stress/anxiety, or overstimulation. This may be experienced during meditation as a sense of mental unease, accompanied by scattered attention, sleepiness, and constant mind wandering. By withdrawing energy from your mind through softening your mental engagement and simplifying your life, you can lower your experience of stress and weaken your desire to distract yourself with sensory stimulation.

Antidote.

To settle mental restlessness, be curious about what it means to relax effort in your mind. 

• To help relax your mind allow slow and gentle in and out-breaths through your nose while focusing on the area of your frontal lobe. 
• As you let a breath out, tune into the feeling of the frontal lobes as they relax. It is like a relaxed, sinking feeling as your mind mentally release. 
• As you become comfortable with this, you can enhance the relaxation effect by allowing your eyelids to relax in line with each out-breath. With each softening out-breath, observe the effect it has on your mind and also how much it thinks.

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Other Hindrances that may be present.

When developing relaxation in your mind in Skill 02, it is normal to experience other hindrances.

• Sleepiness & Dullness: Becoming dull and falling asleep.
• Habitual Forgetting: Forgetting you are meditating.
• Habitual Control: Desire to micro-manage your meditation
• Mind Wandering: Become lost in thoughts and memories.

If any of these hindrances are present, there is nothing you need to do with them at this time as they will be addressed as your relaxation deepens. It is ok for your mind to wander; to think or to fall asleep, this is a natural part of the development of relaxation in meditation and nothing to concern yourself about. The important part is that you do not get in a struggle with your mind, instead learning to accept whatever experiences are present to you.

Anatta (It happened by itself!). 

Take an interest whenever your mind wanders toward sounds, thoughts, memories, etc. The key to insight is to notice how these wanderings of your attention toward distractions are habits within your mind that happen by themselves (anatta). When you notice that your attention has wandered, smile and take a few slow belly breaths to soften your awareness back into your body. Observing distractions in this way will teach your mind not to cling to things and to let them go, both during meditation and in your daily life.

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Once you are familiar with Skill 02, you can integrate it into your daily life. The key is to check in on how you feel throughout the day, starting with when you wake up in the morning.

• How am I feeling now? 
• Is my mind restless and inclining toward negativity?

If so, take a few deep, relaxing breaths to calm your body, and notice how nice it feels to be at ease. Once you feel more aware of your body, allow a few softening breaths through your nose while relaxing your eyelids to relax your frontal lobes. As you have been doing during your daily seated meditation, develop a clear comprehension of what it feels like to relax your frontal lobes and notice the effect it has on the number of thoughts in your mind. This simple act of taking a few softening breaths will withdraw your awareness from your intellectual mind and bring awareness more deeply into your body, therefore grounding of awareness.

How to do it.

As in Skill 01, the key to being mindful of your body in daily life is not to try to be mindful of your body in daily life. 'Trying' will take you in the opposite direction, as your mind will see mindfulness as something else it has to do with another problem to solve. It is important to make being mindful during the day something enjoyable for your mind to do rather, than another job to complete. 

This is done by:

1. Enjoying noticing when you have forgotten to be mindful.
2. Take a few breaths to relax your body and mind when you notice.
3. Finding enjoyment in the relaxing, softening breaths.
4. Clearly comprehending awareness returning to your body as you do.
5. Being satisfied with creating small gaps in mind wandering and negativity.

With repetition, these gaps in 'mindlessness' will gradually increase, as will the appreciation and enjoyment of mindfulness, and mindfulness of your body will begin to become a natural resting place, a place of safety from the stresses of daily life.

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You are ready to progress to Meditation Skill 03: Mindful Presence when:

• You are able to soften and relax your interest in thoughts about the past and future and find enjoyment in the increased relaxed awareness of your body.

 Sati Sampajañña: mindfulness with clear comprehension.

• Sati: Mindfulness = Keep in mind and remember the present experience.
• Sampajañña: Clear Comprehension = tracking the conditional changes within present experience over time.

While it is the function of mindfulness to remember the present experience, it is the function of clear comprehension to track the process of conditioned change within the present experience over time. This tracking of change allows the conditioned relationships within the process to be recalled with clarity. While mindfulness without clear comprehension will help us remember the present experience because it does not track experience over time in terms of conditioned relationships, no real insight into idappaccayatā: specific conditionality will be developed without clear comprehension of changes over time being present.

Observing conditioned relationships within experience (idappaccayatā: specific conditionality) develops insight into the specific conditions that support the presence and absence of different experiences. For example, the hindrance of dullness occurs because conditions outside of itself are right for dullness to arise. If we understand these specific conditions and change them, dullness will cease. Also, the awakening factor of tranquillity occurs because the conditions, outside of itself, are right for tranquillity to arise. If the conditions are not right, tranquillity can not arise, no matter what we do.

If we understand these specific conditions and create them, then tranquillity will arise; if the conditions change, it will cease. In the same way that a farmer will create the conditions for their crop to grow and the conditions for weeds, insects, and disease to cease, an insight meditator develops insight into the conditions that support the akusala unwholesome/unskilful) and the kusala (wholesome/skilful) then applies the conditions for the akusala to cease and the conditions for the kusala to arise.

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Metaphor for Sati Sampajañña

Imagine that I told you about a meditation group in an area you weren't familiar with, and you asked to come along. I agreed and came to pick you up in my car the following night. I drove to the group, and we discussed various things along the way; you enjoyed the scenery. You enjoyed yourself, and I picked you up every Wednesday for the next eight weeks. The next time I picked you up to drive in, I told you I would be away for the following two weeks, and you would have to drive yourself, and you had no map or GPS.

Imagine the quality of awareness you would apply to this drive compared to the others. When I was driving, you saw the scenery but ignored the details of the order of things as they happened. But now that you know you will be driving the following week, imagine the attention to detail you would put into remembering. That tree, that left turn, that gas station, that crossing, that blue-roofed house. You would be very interested in remembering not only what you saw but also the order in which you saw things, how one happens after the other, like a path, so that when you drove to the meditation group the following week, you could find your way, without my help. This is the quality of clear comprehension.

An example of this that can be used is a meditator practising Skill 01: Body Relaxation. When you relax your body with softening breaths, can you notice what is happening in your experience when you relax and let go?

1. What is the elemental experience in your body as you relax?
2. What is the vedana feeling? Is it pleasant or unpleasant?
3. What is the mind experience? Does your mind also calm down? Can you notice awareness increasing in your body as you relax?
4. What is the relationship between these three? Is the experience that comes with relaxing and letting go repeatable? If it is repeatable, can you see the path of repeatable experience it creates? Can you then add the experience of Skill 02: Mind Relaxation to that path to increase the length of repeatable experience that happens when you relax your body and mind?

We can divide the Noble Eightfold Path into three parts:

1. Panna (via anatta): insight that leads to wisdom.
2. Sila (via softening): morality that leads to harmony.
3. Samadhi (via samatha-calm): unification that leads to clarity.

By clearly separating peripheral (background) awareness from the focal point of attention, we can develop a clear comprehension of these three aspects in this model as a circle of conditioning.

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In MIDL, we always start by cultivating samatha (relaxation, calm) to develop initial samadhi (collectedness of mind) and as a reference point for insight into the hindrances to samatha. When a MIDL meditator sits for meditation, they begin by clearly defining two areas: they become aware of the touch of their thumbs. Then, they relax back into their body to define the peripheral awareness of their body as separate from the point of touch. This creates a grounding (reference point) for both attention and peripheral awareness from which we can develop insight.

Samatha: calm that leads to clarity: Clear comprehension increases during meditation and daily life by being playfully curious about what it means to develop the conditions that support relaxation & calm. It also increases by tuning into and tracking the experience of relaxation and calm in three areas:

1. Kaya: The physical, elemental experience of our body and mind as they relax and calm.
2. Vedana: The vedana pleasant feeling of our body and mind as they relax and calm.
3. Citta: The relaxing and calming of our mind and the withdrawal of our awareness from our attention to our body that occurs each time we relax and let go.

Panna: Insight that leads to wisdom: Clear comprehension increases during meditation and daily life by being curious about the conditions that support samatha, the hindrances to samatha, and habitual patterns that lead to disharmony or harmony in sila.

Sila: Morality that leads to harmony Clear comprehension increases during meditation and in daily life by creating morality lines in terms of the five precepts from which to observe when we cross them and what happens within our experience them in our kaya: body, vedana: feeling, and citta heart & mind.

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How does this work?

There is a clear interaction between our body's peripheral awareness and the focus of attention. Firstly, all akusala (unwholesome or unskilful) qualities require the focusing of attention. This is how the mind feeds the hindrances with energy, practising them. On the other hand, all kusala (wholesome/skilful) qualities require an open peripheral awareness of the body to withdraw energy from the intellectual mind and to allow the heart to open with heartfelt qualities.

This can be observed in the model used in MIDL, which incorporates foreground attention and peripheral awareness of the body. From the foundation of peripheral awareness of our body, we can see that as samatha (relaxation, calm) increases, awareness of our body also improves. As samatha (relaxation, calm) weakens due to hindrances or immorality, awareness of our body and the pleasant spiritual vedana within it also weakens.

I intuitively understand that awareness has different "layers"; it can be defined through the "types of objects" to which we apply awareness (Kaya, Vedana, Citta) or through the qualities of awareness itself (if this is the correct way of speaking). I experience awareness as being the light that illuminates the presence of experience. The experience does not define the light; light illuminates without judgment or bias. Awareness has qualities that affect the way experiences are illuminated, such as clarity and focus. 

Awareness can be coloured by both akusala (unwholesome) and kusala (wholesome) qualities, which affects the clarity of awareness through which the mind observes experiences, in the same way that different coloured tints change the light on a window and what it illuminates.

Another example is if we take Sila, where does it "sit"?  It is a combination of memory, 

awareness, knowing, and observing. This "knowing"(understanding) of something, is this part of awareness, or is it something else? Maybe you can point me to some "awareness" model for this within the MIDL framework or within another framework that you are familiar with.

This is making it too complicated. As insight meditators, we direct awareness towards what something does rather than toward what it is. In the case of sila, it combines and unifies. The way to observe sila is in terms of kusala (wholesomeness/skilfulness) and akusala (unwholesomeness/unskilfulness).

1. Kusala: Anything that is kusala has the characteristic of combining, unifying, and bringing together, and leading to harmony. The kusala develops samatha (calmness), is always based on letting go, and increases spiritual pleasant vedana.
2. Akusala: Anything that is akusala has the characteristic of separating, dispersing, and pushing away, which leads to disharmony. The akusala collapses samatha (calmness), is always based on clinging, and decreases spiritual pleasant vedana.

These characteristics of kusala and akusla make observing sila easy: Does this thought, speech, or action combine or separate? Does it make me feel closer to myself, my family, friends, society, and the world? Or does it make me feel further away from myself, my family, friends, society, and the world?

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