[177] Exploring the Subtleties of Mindfulness Meditation - with Joe Parent
3:58PM Oct 17, 2024
Speakers:
Joe Parent
Myra
Keywords:
meditation practice
awareness meditation
mindfulness practice
centering practice
compassion practice
breathing mindfulness
grounding practice
awareness quality
ephemeral quality
sense of humor
depth of awareness
breadth of awareness
posture instructions
body relaxation
environmental awareness
Okay. Thank you, Alyssa, nice to see familiar and new faces. I haven't been I think this is my first teaching in a few weeks, so it's nice to be back. I was actually in Paris, which was an amazing experience. The history is and beauty is unbelievable, and it's good thing there was a lot of walking, because I think I ate about 5000 calories a day, just in cheese and butter, let alone all the rest. But I gained one pound in two weeks, so not too bad. Lot of walking, lot of walking. So nice to be back. The jet lag gave me a bit of a cold. So apologies for my voice, and I'll do the best. I can, but I haven't seen people in a while, and there have been different meditations happening. So I thought we'd start today with reflect back on the last month of your practice and the sessions that you've done. It's nice to see Myra, she's been teaching. So if think about your practice and anything that has come up that you might have a question about, and please don't feel like, well, it's silly. It's just something I'm working on, because you never know when your question is going to be just what someone else needs. So we'll take a minute think about it. If you, if you don't have a microphone, you can put it in the chat. I'm looking at the chat as well, but I think Alyssa, you can let people unmute themselves. Okay, no problem. One question came in, how long is the meditation meeting? Well, time is relative. So it might seem really, really long, or it might go by in a in a flesh. But as far as relative time, we try to end at the top of the hour, whatever we're, whatever time zone you're in. And the meditation part, I try to get done in 45 to 50 minutes, and then leave 15 or 10 or 15 minutes for some questions and answers and discussion. But you know, when I teach, I'm doing it in in segments of mindfulness, and then awareness, and then compassion practice. And in fact, before we even do the breathing mindfulness practice. We do some centering and grounding practice. So one person has written, I'm struggling with awareness meditation.
One of the things about awareness meditation is it's helpful to not try to get it right, and then and then you won't struggle. And the interesting thing about awareness meditation, I was just reading some things book called vivid awareness by trunggu Rinpoche on the teachings of Kempo Gong char, who was one of Trungpa Rinpoche. Rinpoche's main teachers and awareness meditation is about not altering whatever comes up, but just being with it as it comes up, and noticing it. Oh, there's emotion. Oh, there's a feeling of dislike to that person. Oh, oh, there's now I'm thinking of something that I liked. Okay, now I'm but, but you're not commenting on it. Particularly, I was, I was voicing, but you don't comment on it. You just are aware of that's what's going on. And the deeper part of awareness meditation is that simultaneous to aware of what's going on is awareness that of its ephemeral quality, sometimes it's talked about as emptiness. That can be a little confusing, but the lack of solidity of the moment to moment experience and so awareness of what's appearing, and the fact that it's an appearance rather than a solid thing, is the. Ideal of awareness practice. And then the most important thing about awareness practice is sense of humor. Because just when we feel like, Oh, I've got it, wait a minute, where is this i and then you go, Oh, I can't do this right? Oh, who can't do it right? Hmm? And having that sense of humor about not getting it, and and it's important to not get it, because the if it's if you get it, then you've separated it from the rest of your experience. Might sound a little bit like Word, you know, tricky words, but the whole point is that it's words and it can't and it just points to towards experience. The idea is that we have glimpses of that kind of natural awareness without the overlay of conceptions about it.
Thank you. I get the I enjoyed the fact that I don't get it. Who's the I appreciate that too. It's always problem.
And then what's that? It that you don't get? So you get both directions. Sometimes it's you have more awareness of the that the it is not so solid. Sometimes you have a more awareness that the eye is not so solid, and there are those lovely moments when neither are so solid, and you're just hanging out.
And I think that an interesting thing is that sometimes we're afraid of that nothing's happening. Oh, I need a reference point, because we're used to swinging through the jungle one and by the vines, and we we make sure we have the next one before we let go of the last one. So when you find that you've let go of the last one before you get the next one, you're kind of hanging out there in space. The idea is to start to not be afraid of that. I hope that's helpful, so that's something we can work with as we do the awareness practice. I'll I'll try to remember to include some of that as we do the awareness practice. Thank you so much for that question. That's really helpful to a lot. I'm sure to many people. I saw expressions on some faces, like, oh,
any other questions or thoughts about your meditation experience that you'd like maybe, maybe you don't have a question with something you'd like to say. How can I go deeper with it? I
How can I go deeper with awareness, meditation? Okay, so i The idea is to appreciate and myra's sessions were so calming. That's good. That's great. I found, I have found that I haven't been able to attend too many, but I have attended her sessions, and yes, they're very common to go deeper with awareness meditation, there are two dimensions to our practice, and that is depth and breath so the the depth part is letting insights come to you and. And not being afraid of them, as we were just talking about the not being able to find this, I not being able to find the it that's so solid, and resting in that space and letting letting it be, and starting to the depth is the shift in identification,
the shift in identification from Trying to find the awareness to noticing, to being the awareness and noticing when it's gone. Trungpa, Rinpoche. Rinpoche, if you know the Buddhist term samsara and nirvana. Nirvana is peace and clarity, and samsara is the whirlpool of confusion. And someone asked him when he knew the moment when he got enlightened, and he said, it wasn't exactly a moment, but I noticed that I used to have flashes of Nirvana, and then I was starting to have flashes of samsara. So it's what we do we identify with the awareness, or do we identify with the person trying to grasp that awareness? And so the depth is a depth of seeing the insubstantiality and the transitoriness and the and the fact that our nature is that awareness, and what we're usually experiencing is a cover covering up of that we usually identify with. What's covering it up, and then look for those flashes of awareness, so deeper is starting to identify more with the experiences of awareness. The breadth part is that those those glimpses start to get longer and longer and longer. Instead of a 100th of a second, then there are 50th of a second, then, oh, 10th of a second, and, oh, my God, it lasted a whole second. And like that starts to extend. That's the breadth part Beth said, You're, you're new to this. And it's the practice is relaxing. I'm glad that you said that, because really that's the ultimate fruition, is relaxation, relaxing the grasping and relaxing the fixation. And all we're doing is noticing and saying, Okay, I'm going to have allegiance to the openness, and I'm going to notice the moments when I shut it down and and then, as we just talked about being able to relax into that open space. So good. Let's get going on. Thank you so much. That is so helpful to have those questions to start us off now to to be able to have that, those glimpses of awareness and and moments of insight, there has to be a little bit of calming to start with. The idea is, if you, if you have, you know, if you have a very, very slowly flowing stream of clear water. You can see to the bottom, but when there's the rapids, it's white and you can't see, can't see clearly. So we're we start by getting a little more grounded and centered. I was just talking with a student and asking, have you ever heard the term down tight, they said no, and I said, that's because it doesn't exist. There's no such thing as down tight. We get uptight, so we're going to breathe it down. So let's start the framework for this is a sitting posture. The reason for that is there are practices where you lie down, but there's a tendency to fall asleep, to doing this, this kind of mindfulness practice. And when you're standing up, there is walking mindfulness, but there is a tendency to move. And we're going to try to start in neutral. Position, which is sitting. Now, if you can do it, if you if you can take your seat in a way that you don't have to lean back against something, if you physically need to go ahead and do that, but sit as upright as you can. And start by really feeling your seat. Let yourself sink into whatever cushion you're on, and feel your sit bones pressing into that cushion. And shift your weight back and forth a little bit to each side, until you feel like they're evenly balanced. Your weights not pressing more on one side or the other, so that's centered, and you can feel if you're leaning forward or leaning back, and find a place where you're not leaning forward or back. So now you're upright and centered. As far as your legs go. If you're sitting in if you're sitting on a cushion on the floor, you can cross them in front of you naturally, and it's good if you're sitting on a cushion, that it's high enough so that your knees are lower than your hips, even if it's just a little bit now if you're in a chair, you can have your feet flat on the floor, so that your lower legs are perpendicular to the ground, so your feet are directly below your knees, and they're about hip width apart. Now if your legs are long, where your seat is low, and you find that your knees are higher than your hips, then just slide your feet towards each other and cross at the ankles, let your knees open up so that they're lower than your hips. That'll take the pressure off your lower back and your upper legs. Okay? So there's our lower body and our sit bones as far as your torso goes. We talked about not leaning to side to side or forward and back you want. You want to be upright, but not rigid. Feel like your spine is straight up and down and and it extends from the top of your back up your neck to the back of the top of your head. I'm going to turn my device a little bit so you can see that angle a little better. And you're going to want to move your device in a way. This first part of the practice, once we get settled in, we're going to close our eyes, but the rest of the practice will be with our eyes open. So you're not going to want to looking directly into your screen. Okay, so move it however you need to. And if the back of your head is a straight extension up, you'll find that your chin tucks in naturally. If our head is tilted back, our chin goes up and we get spaced out. If our head is tilted forward, our chin goes down, we get sleepy, and if our chin sticks out forward, it's like we're in a hurry to get someplace else. So just have the back of the head and extension of the spine the chin tucks in. Naturally. Your arms are hanging the upper arms hanging straight down from your shoulders, leave the elbows where they are, and swivel your hands up so that their palm down on each thigh, so your forearms kind of extend along your thighs. One thing that's helpful, that's a little bit artificial, but I find it helpful, is this point of your breastbone, the center of your breastbone, feel like push it slightly up and forward, just just a half an inch, maybe even a quarter of an inch, just just a slight movement up and forward, what you'll find is that it opens up your chest, your shoulders come back a little bit naturally and become much more in line with your torso not curled forward, you may even feel a tiny pinch of your shoulder blades coming towards each other, and it's all from this tiny movement slightly forward, slightly up so a diagonal of your breast, the center of your breast bone, you
now let your eyes gently close, just scan for any residual tension that you might be holding that you don't need for your posture. You need some tension for your posture, but. Check your forehead and your scalp, your eyes, your jaw, especially, oh, I didn't mention the mouth. We're breathing in through our nose. If some air comes out through your mouth, it's okay, but you don't want your mouth hanging slack open, or your jaw is clenched so your lips are just very lightly touching or slightly parted. As for your tongue, it can just rest naturally in your mouth, or if you're comfortable, a suggestion that's made by some teachers is to let the tip of your tongue rest against your upper palate, just behind your front teeth, supposedly that that lessens the flow of saliva. Now, if you do have some saliva, don't worry. Go ahead and swallow. We're not rigid about this. It's not punishment. If you feel a pain, definitely move. If you feel an itch, think about it for a second. Just say, oh, do I need to relate to this? Let it be for a little bit. But if it's occupying your attention, just set the intention to move. Gent, move slowly, scratch and put your hand back, okay, back to scanning for tension so the jaw, the neck and shoulders, you may not realize you may be holding your shoulders up and not even realizing it. Let let your shoulders just drop naturally. Don't push them down. Just let any tension flow down and out of you, down your arms, down your torso, out of you into the earth. Any tension in your arms your hands is a little tension in your chest to hold it up a tiny bit, but anything in your rib cage, lower back, deep belly and pelvic region, sometimes we clench those and don't realize it, without losing your posture, just let them go, let the Tension melt and float down and out of hips, thighs, calves and feet.
Bring your awareness deep into your core and
as you breathe in and out, there's a subtle sense of expanding and contracting deep in your core. It's the it's the diet, it's the feeling that comes from the diaphragm, moving down to pull air in, moving up to push air out, but it feels like an expanding and contracting in your deep core of your torso. Just rest with that gentle movement. Let it soothe you. A gentle swaying back and forth and
you can think of it as the movement on the beach or the lake, as the water comes up a little bit, goes back down, comes up a little bit goes back down into the into the water, into the Lake.
Let yourself be calmed by that gentle rhythm and of your torso expanding and contracting as the breath comes in and let your body breathe however it will. Don't try to regulate it. Just notice, deeper, shallower, longer, shorter,
just the way sometimes the surf comes up a little farther, sometimes shorter and it
relax into allowing your body to breathe itself. For once you don't have to. Do anything, I promise your body will keep breathing. Be an observer rather than a director or controller. You
If your mind wanders into thoughts, just again, have a sense of humor and just go, ah, because the mind does get caught up in thoughts. Just get back into your deep core of your torso and feel the rhythm as your body breathes you
Isn't it Nice to relax and not have to run things I
Now we're going to include a little of the environment. Just let your eyes gently open about halfway. Without losing your posture, you're looking downward, but rather than looking at anything particular, soften your gaze so that you're just looking at the immediate space that your body is sitting in.
You can see part of your body, your lap, your forearms and hands,
soften your gaze and just kind of feel the space around Your body without losing connection with the feeling of the rhythm of expanding and contracting of your deep core.
We're just going to get used to letting our body be as it is in the space that we're experiencing
again. If your mind wanders into thoughts when you realize that you're already back, just redirect your attention to that feeling in your deep core, that rhythm of expanding and contract. Let relax and let your body breathe itself in the space in which it's sitting. We'll do that for A couple of minutes you
If you've gotten stiff and you need to move A little bit, that's okay.
Just find a way to refresh your posture, reconnect with all the elements in your body, and now for awareness practice, let your eyes be open. Naturally, your gaze will be straight ahead, but it won't necessarily be all the way up to the horizon, probably on an angle slightly below that and again, soften your gaze, open up your peripheral vision to the bigger space, everything out in front of you, all the way as much around you as you can,
and in your field of vision, there are all sorts of colors, shapes and Shades of light and dark. Open up your hearing, listen for sounds high and low pitch, loud and soft, near and far. Open up your hearing to listen for sounds. Be open to sounds from as far away as you can hear and
notice bodily sensations. You don't have to stay focused, just on your core. You
whatever appears in your experience, how your feet are on the ground, the cloth or skin under your hands, the hair on your face, hands and cool, dry air coming in your nostrils, warm, moist air going out.
Again, let your body do the breathing by itself. When we open up to our perceptions, we might start with a separation me over here and everything else out there, or even feel that way about our body. Me in here, in my head, experiencing my body down there
to let go of
this.
Inner centeredness as your breath goes out, it mixes with the environment. As the breath goes out and mixes with the atmosphere in the room, let your mind open up
and mix with the atmosphere that your awareness. Mix with the atmosphere that. Environment out there, so that out there and in here aren't so separate.
Breathe out, open further. The body breathes in by itself. You're aware of that, but your attention is more outward. Breathe out. Let your awareness open up.
Thoughts appear in your mind. Notice how they come and go like sounds in the environment.
Now the practice of awareness is to just let your mind move to whatever perception appears.
If you're seeing be with your perception,
let your mind join With the colors shapes, shades of light and dark.
If labels or concepts about what you're seeing come up, just let them be like ripples on the surface of the lake of your mind and
if you're hearing, let your mind mix With those sounds, not inside or outside, just sound and
thoughts about The sounds are just ripples,
same with bodily sensations. I
if thoughts occupy your mind, make them the object of your awareness, let look at the thoughts, notice how they come and go.
We'll rest in that awareness For a Few Minutes and
And when we conclude Our practice, it's very helpful to have the intention that it's not just for ourselves, but that we're doing this so that we can be of more benefit to others and and so we traditionally, there's Something called dedicating the merit or benefit of the practice. And when we when we do awareness practice, what arises from that is a sense of connection with others that we're not so contracted, but more open. And when we're more open, we can actually tune into what others are going through when they're contracting and sense of empathy and compassion arises. So we say of sayings like May, all beings, including ourselves, enjoy happiness and the causes of happiness. May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering, and you can put in your own words or repeat after me, may the practice I have just done, you have even more benefit to others than to myself, and that's real generosity.
So I hope that we addressed in the practice, some of the things that we discussed earlier. If you have any questions or comments, I'm sure I and everyone else here would appreciate them.
I think you can unmute yourself, if not. Alyssa, please allow them to.
Yeah, they should be able to. Okay, good. I
I appreciate that. What you talked about right there. I have to get in the chair because I can't sit this. This my off my desk chair is too rocky and crazy. I have an actual chair. Have to move every time I want to meditate. Right there. It works, though,
that's good.
Thank you. I got to be aware. Oh, good. I kept trying to close but I would open them back up and just notice, notice that I kept closing my eyes for one
that's that's great, yes, yeah, we have this, this habit of wanting to go to sleep. And sometimes it's the contrast we're so busy doing that, to say you don't have to do anything, and you tell your body you can just relax and be the way you are. There's only one time when we can do that, and that's when we go to bed. So we our body gets confused and say, You mean it's bad? It must be nap time. And now we go, so yes, that happens. One thing I noticed was if I got caught up in thoughts, it was very much in here. It was very contracted, and when I realized it, and then let go and opened up again, it was much more expensive. There's a real texture, different texture to that, which I hadn't noticed as much before, contracting, expanding. Beth Oh, you're reading a walk in the wood. That's great. Yeah, I was just talking to my sister about that. We were so happy with that little book that we wrote. I'm glad you're enjoying it. I
rob,
you're muted, the two most often used words in the English language, I think
people like me better muted. Thank you. I want to say thank you. That was the time kind of shot by and I just I appreciate. I mean, everybody's a little different in your description of posture the spine, like extending to the back of the head, so practical makes it so easy, you know, just falls into place and just that little I had never heard that that way before, and your voice was just very wonderful.
My voice, yeah, it's, I've been told it's very soothing. In fact, I have friends who, when their baby couldn't fall asleep, they asked me to come over and talk to talk to their baby, said I grew up, and I started telling my life story, and it was About 30 seconds and the kid was out.
I can't take credit for it. It's what, it's what showed up. Maybe, maybe somebody, maybe somebody did something nice in a past life that turned into this. I don't, I don't remember. I Myra,
do you have anything to share? You knew I was going. Call on you, right?
No, yes, no, just a comment, something that I was going to do tomorrow in my class. But I think this is, this is a time now I heard with the eyes open, in that open awareness that we get, that that without focus. I hated ALAN WALLACE say it in a beautiful way. I had heard it before, but it clicked in a different way. And it's also that way we open the eyes and we don't focus, we get out of that sensation that we think that our mind starts in our heads, and the mind becomes so much bigger, and that opening is a very subtle energy. But if you hear that again, imagine that when you open, then you don't feel like you're so concentrated. Your concentration is in your head and your thoughts. And I found that to be beautiful. But I do agree with the comment before, I think you are one of the best teacher explained in the post in this somatic sensation of each one of your instructions, thank you. Well,
that's high praise coming from you. Yeah, that's, that's what I was the the where your mind is, is what I was talking about, about the contracted part. And if we think about how much we go through our day and and conversations with someone else, and they're talking, but we're contracted in here thinking about what we're going to say next. Where's the connection we've missed? We miss so much of what they're saying. And and we may think that because we're looking at them and and look like we're paying attention, that they feel like we're paying attention. But other people can feel it when, when they can feel it when you're getting ready to answer before they've even finished, you know, and sometimes you're getting ready to answer like after their first word. And so instead of what I'm going to think about, what I'm going to say next, going out, opening out that way, and hearing what's coming, and then pausing and giving yourself a moment to gather, then you can gather your thoughts to share. But if you're gathering your thoughts while they're talking, you're missing it and you're contracted and in here and not really connecting with out there.
Yep, it's easier for that mind, heart connection, I think.
Thank you. Applause.
I thank you for your comments in the in the chats, and I'm not sure when I'm going to be teaching again. I'm going to go and do my own practice retreat, starting this coming weekend, going till near the end of October. I think October 30 is my next one. Is that a Monday, 28th 28th maybe the 28 something like that. Anyway, we'll find out. If not, I'll see you in November. But thank you all so much for your practice. It inspires me so and I'm glad it's a benefit to you till next time. Oh, and please come tomorrow morning. Come tomorrow morning. Did Alyssa, did you put that in the in the chat? Would you put that in the chat the
Yeah, of course. I'll put it in there again. Real quick.
Yeah, put it again. The link is on my website, on a page on my website. So it's nine o'clock Pacific time tomorrow, and it'll be pretty similar. I think we'll also try to have time to do some compassion meditation at the end. Today, the questions were about awareness, and we talked a little bit, so I thought we'd delve a little deeper into that. Okay, let's see, is it on there? Yes, that's it. So either copy it, click on it, we'll stay on for give people a chance to do that. It. And if you don't know about it, the book that Beth was talking about, my sister was asked to write a book on mindfulness and nature using Winnie the Pooh. She was asked to invite me to co author it with her. So we had a great time working together. And we made up stories and poems, and then in between the stories is adult style, meditation structure. So it's really a book for all ages and for families to read together. So I'm plugging it a little bit. A Walk in the wood, the 100 Acre Wood is the what's referred to. Okay, everybody, have the info, great. Hopefully I'll see you tomorrow, and if not, I'll see you next time I'm on the nightclub meditation. Thanks Myra,