Meditation Skill 10

Preliminary Meditation:

• Length: 20 min.
• Summary: This is preliminary training to develop your skill in transitioning in a foreground /background shift, between the focus of your attention on one point of breath sensation and background peripheral awareness of your body. To train this, it is helpful to use the touch of our thumbs to replace the focus of attention on the breath.

Simple Instructions:

Clarify the difference between attention & peripheral awareness.

1. Sit in meditation, thumbs lightly touching.
2. Rest your attention on the touch of your thumbs.
3. Acknowledge the awareness of your body resting in the background.
4. Bring the awareness of your body to the foreground and allow the touch of your thumbs to rest in the background.
5. Learn to cycle these two experiences between background and foreground awareness.

Guided Meditation: Transitioning from Doing to Knowing

Your meditation is the same as Meditation Skill 09, except you now bring the peripheral awareness of your whole body as it breathes to the foreground and allow awareness of breath sensation to rest in the background. Your next step is to develop intimacy with the experience of your whole body 'as breath' by increasing your sensitivity to breath experience throughout your body. As intimacy increases, awareness of your five senses will fade and the pleasurable experience of body breath sensation will fill your awareness.

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• Length: 60 min.
• Developing Insight: Notice the separation between the focus of attention and the background peripheral awareness.

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Summary:

1. Sit in meditation > 
2. Establish a joyful presence as in Meditation Skill 04.
3. Establish one point of breath sensation as in Meditation Skill 08 >
4. Develop sustained attention as in Meditation Skill 09 >
5. Open awareness of breathing throughout your body >
6. Apply the GOSS Formula when attention wanders. 

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Detailed Instructions:

Step 1: Sit down for meditation on a chair or the floor and gently close your eyes. Develop sustained attention on one point of breath sensation as in Meditation Skill 09.

Meditation Skill 10 Additions:

Step 2: Once attention has been sustained, slowly open your peripheral awareness to the subtle experience of your whole body as it naturally breathes and bring this to the foreground of your awareness, allowing attention resting on breath sensation to rest in the background.

Step 3: The key here is to increase your awareness of all parts of your body as it breathes until you experience your whole body as breath. In the Satipatthana Sutta the Buddha said: I will breathe in sensitive to the entire body, I will breathe out sensitive to the entire body". It can be helpful to direct your mind with these simple phrases.

Step 4: As this matures, your awareness of other sensory experiences will fade, and sounds will become distant, and your mind will no longer wander. Actually, at this stage of samadhi your mind will become so intimate with the body-breathing experience that there will be no room for anything else.  As this intimacy grows, gently smile into and enjoy the pleasantness of this experience while gradually calming any remaining effort 'to do' in your body and mind.

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Optional Support Exercise.

If you are not able to experience breathing throughout your body at this stage, a simple exercise can increase your mind's sensitivity to your body as it breathes. 

Summary

Experiencing breathing:

1. Shoulders.
2. Shoulders + chest.
3. Shoulders + chest + upper back.
4. Shoulders + chest + upper back + side of ribs.
5. Shoulders + chest + upper back + side of ribs + belly.
6. Shoulders + chest + upper back + side of ribs + belly + arms.
7. Shoulders + chest + upper back + side of ribs + belly + arms + legs.
8. Shoulders + chest + upper back + side of ribs + belly + arms + legs + head.
9. All as one intimate body breath.

Explanation:

1. After your attention is sustained on one point of breath sensation, increase your sensitivity to the background peripheral awareness of your body and bring it to the foreground.

2. To increase your sensitivity to your whole body as it breathes, begin to be aware of any 'breathing movement' in your shoulders—the gentle lift and the gentle drop. Stay with this until it becomes clear to you.

3. The next step is to include the experience of the 'breathing movement' of your upper chest and upper back with your shoulders. This feeling is an opening of your upper chest as it gently stretches and relaxes with each breath. Noticing how your chest, upper back, and shoulders expand and deflate in opposite directions is helpful. 

4. Once step 3 is clear, add the experience of your ribs 'breathing movement' as they open sideways. This feeling is your whole rib cage opening and closing with each breath. I find it helpful to experience this from inside your chest. Everything expands outwards, and everything relaxes inwards. 

5. Gradually, include your belly and lower back so that this becomes one big inflation and deflation.

6. As samadhi develops on your body breathing, you will become sensitive to the pressure of the expansion and deflation of each breath within your arms and hands, legs and feet, and even inside your head.

7. Intentionally increase your sensitivity to this until your whole body becomes one continuous breath. This will mature as the perception of the borders of your body fades away, as will physical sensations as your body as a sense organ shuts down. What is left is a large, body-less ball of fine, pleasant feeling (piti) as your mind moves to the more refined mind-created, experience and joyful happiness from the growing seclusion of your mind.

Progression Map for Mindfulness of Breathing.

Progression in mindfulness of breathing can be accurately tracked by observing your ability to access the 12 Meditation Markers. This can be done by developing insight into and calming the conditions supporting the associated Meditative Hindrance.

Meditative Hindrances.                      Meditation Markers.

                                                              01: Body Relaxation.

                                                              02: Mind Relaxation.

                                                              03: Mindful Presence.

                                                              04: Joyful Presence.

                                                              05: Natural Breathing.

                                                              06: Breathing Presence.

                                                              07: Breath Sensations.

                                                              08: One Point of Sensation.

                                                              09: Sustained Attention.

10: Sensory Distraction.        →      10: Whole-Body Breathing.

11: Anticipation of Pleasure.            11: Sustained Awareness.

12: Fear of Letting Go.                       12: Access Concentration.

Your tenth step in meditation is to develop Marker 10: Whole-Body Breathing (right column) to calm Hindrance 10: Sensory Distraction (left column). As your attention is sustained on one point of breath sensation, you access your first experience of true seclusion from sensory experience. This occurs because once attention is sustained, it no longer habitually leaves your meditation object to absorb into distraction. 

While attention is sustained in the foreground, your background peripheral awareness still contains experiences created by the physical world and those created by your mind. Your next step is to bring the background peripheral awareness to the foreground, allowing your attention to rest in the background, and to develop intimacy with your body breath experience to completely withdraw awareness from the six sense fields to develop complete seclusion for the mind in preparation for jhana.

Once you understand how to withdraw awareness from the sense fields and the pleasure of your body-breath moves to the foreground, you are ready to develop Marker 11: Sustained Awareness.

Meditative Hindrances are signs of an imbalance in either your effort or the structure of your attention and are seen as an opportunity for insight into your mind.

 Meditative Hindrances

01: Physical Restlessness.

02: Mental Restlessness.

03: Sleepiness & Dullness.

04: Habitual Forgetting.

05: Habitual Control.

06: Distracted Mind.

07: Gross Dullness.

08: Subtle Dullness.

09: Subtle Wandering.

10: Sensory Distraction.

11: Anticipation of Pleasure.

12: Fear of Letting Go.

Meditative Hindrance: 

Sensory Distraction (10): 

Background distraction within peripheral awareness. 

Sensory distraction refers to the final shaking experienced in the stability of peripheral awareness due to the continued action of vitakka (applied attention), which takes background sensory experiences within peripheral awareness. 

Antidote:

You may experience shaking in your attention as you transfer from sustained attention to peripheral awareness of your whole body as it breathes. This may occur due to a weakness in your ability to open your awareness while taking many experiences as one within one field of that awareness. This is like looking over a valley and taking in the whole view rather than focusing on one thing within that view.

The antidote to sensory distraction is to become aware of breathing within your body part by part, as described in the above meditation instructions. Once you are aware of breathing throughout your body, you create a strong intention to be intimately aware of this experience. With this intimacy, you will begin to experience a fading of your sensory fields, including the body sense, with bodily pleasure replacing sensations within your body. When your mind develops intimacy with this bodily pleasure, this instability will come to an end.

You are ready to progress to Meditation Skill 11: Sustained Awareness when:

• You become aware of your whole body as pleasurable breath experience in the foreground of your awareness while your attention is sustained on one point of sensation in the background. 

• SoundCloud: Guided Meditation.
• Insight Timer: Guided Meditation.

Question: Since English is not my native language, I think I may be missing some subtleties of 'peripheral awareness' in translation. 

Stephen: Think of peripheral awareness as the background awareness of all experiences that are occurring outside of the range of the focus of your attention.

• Example 1: you are having a conversation with a friend at a party. Your attention is focused on your friend and the conversation, while all the activity at the parts falls into the background peripheral awareness. You are aware of other people, sounds etc, but you do not focus your attention on them.

• Example 2: your attention rests on the screen in front of you, yet in your sight you have peripheral awareness of the room around this screen, yet the focus of your attention does not move to it.

Question: How do you know you have peripheral awareness of the body when the attention is on something other than the body? 

Stephen: Because you will be aware of different experiences within your body such as warmth, coolness, touch etc. even though the focal point of your awareness, attention, rests on something else. 

Question: Is it simply about 'know' that the body is present without forgetting it while you focus on X or Y? 

Stephen: It can be but more than that. It is knowing the experience of the body rather than the idea body. The remembering and forgetting part relate to mindfulness and is not a definition of peripheral awareness.

Question: Is it something akin to proprioception? 

Stephen: The position and posture of my body is known in my background (peripheral) awareness regardless of the task that I am performing...............

• Perception, as in what something is, may or may not be present when we are peripherally aware of a background experience. We can be aware of an experience in the background but not necessarily have any idea of how it is placed in space or time.

• Peripheral awareness occurs before perception, it is simply occurring autonomously in the background all the time.

We become so absorbed in attention that we do not notice it unless there is a distraction, and our attention is drawn towards one of the objects occurring in this background awareness.

Question: Could you provide an example from your daily life or explain it differently so I can ensure I've grasped your meaning?

Stephen: You know that the music is playing in the background while you're cleaning the house, but your attention is focused on the cleaning not the music.