Week 3

This week your homework suggestion is to alternate practicing the Metta Bhavana (Cultivation of Loving Kindness) and the Mindfulness of Breathing.
A good thing to remember is that you can always bring Mindfulness of the breathing into your Metta Bhavana Practice, and you can always bring Metta into your Mindfulness of breathing practice. Perhaps even more important to remember is that you can bring both into your daily life at any time, so do try to practice pausing during the day, bringing awareness to your breathing, and bringing an kind awareness to your experience.

Here is a summary of the "hindrances" and how to work with them, and you'll find more in chapter 7 and chapter 8 of the book. Next week we'll talk more about being with whatever arises and encouraging a spacious receptivity.

Every meditator has encountered one or all of the these distractions at some time in the course of their practice, and working with them is a beneficial way of getting to know our own mental processes and learning to manage our mind, our energy, and our emotions. But we shouldn't get the impression that meditation is just about working with  hindrances. If we approach meditation by setting up the right conditions we can often leave our old mental habits far behind for a while, opening the gateway to expansive, clear, and concentrated mental states.  That is the fuel we need to continue on our path.

When we encounter a distraction:
1.)  Name it
2.)  Acknowledge it with kindness and non judgement
3.)  Come back to general awareness, checking in with the body, feelings, emotions.
4.)  Apply an antidote


Keep a look out for these 5 common distractions
Desire for sense experience
This is the most basic kind of distraction.  We are not interested in meditation to some degree and our mind keeps getting drawn into the sense world.  This can be daydreaming or fantasizing, getting lost in planning for the future, or dwelling in something that has happened in the past.  Ideas come into the mind and we are interested in following those instead of staying with the object of our present goal.

Ill will
Similar to sense pleasure we flip the emotion into irritation.  Getting lost in unpleasant thoughts and taking up interest in them. Allowing ourselves to get more irritated and caught up in a story is feeding the negative feelings that have arisen.

Restlessness and anxiety
The body is restless and fidgety, the mind is anxious.

Sloth and torpor
 The mind is dull and the body is tired.  It all feels heavy, we start to nod off.  This can be simply that we are tired and need some rest which isn't a hindrance.  The real issue to look for is a resistance we have to our experience.

Doubt and Indecision
Not having confidence that I can work with my mind.  A feeling that what you are doing is not going to "work".  It may also be that you are not sure that what you are doing is of any use.  There are some things that can only be learned through experience and that is good to take any claims made with a grain of uncertainty until we have discovered for ourselves their efficacy.  Doubt here is self doubt in our ability to develop.  The degree to which you have self doubt is the degree to which these other four hindrances may find a foothold in your ability to concentrate. We can hardly expect to concentrate without some confidence that we will be able to do it. Doubt is more of an underlying condition for the other four.



Ways of working when the mind wanders off

The most important thing is to recognize the hindrance as a hindrance. The way to gain confidence is to recognize what is happening.  Then as we see it clearly it can begin to change on it's own.  Often the act of awareness of the hindrance will itself weaken it.  We must be vigilant to notice that there are other lines of defense we may throw up and the hindrance can be much more stubborn than simple awareness can resolve.  We find good reasons for why we are indulging in these mental states.  So we name it and acknowledge that the hindrance is actually there.  Ignoring it, and wishing it would go away will probably not get us very far.  There is no use in hiding from the truth of our experience.  If we don't face what is happening, then how can we work with it.  What if we left the hindrances unchecked. Would it not increase our tendencies leading to a domination of distraction, hatred, and doubt. Reflecting on this we can see why it is important to not let the hindrances develop unchecked.

We can cultivate the opposite quality. If there is doubt, cultivate confidence. If there is sloth, cultivate energy. If there is restlessness, cultivate contentment and peace. If the mind is too tight, relax it; if it is too loose, sharpen it. In other words, whenever a negative mental state gets in the way of our concentration, we try to cultivate some positive quality that overcomes or neutralizes it.

Give it space.  A great image is one where we compare the mind to that of the clear vast blue sky.  When a hindrance appears we can imagine it as a cloud in the sky and just watch it pass.  Observing it but not getting involved.  Eventually it will lose it's power and disperse.

Push it aside.  As a last resort, we just suppress the distraction by ignoring it.  This only works when the distraction is weak.  When it is strong with an element of emotional conflict, this can lead to more problems.  Only when the hindrance is weak and we are in a positive, clear state of mind, can it be easy to turn it aside.

Turn towards it.  If it is a very stubborn hindrance you can focus on it and turn it into the object of meditation. Important to not get caught up in the story of it, but stay with sensations in the body, the energetic quality of the experience, watching it change in subtle and not so subtle ways.

Bring in kindness and patience. Most importantly is the attitude we have when we encounter these hindrances to practice.  Having an unkind attitude will only undermine our abilities to learn and grow, in any part of our life.  If we get annoyed with ourselves, this is just another hindrance, another distraction.  If we get anxious or frustrated or tired, or if we doubt we can cope, these are just further hindrances.  If we are patient with ourselves and find creative ways to deal with them, we are sowing the seeds of awareness each time.  Often concentrating on the positive feelings when they arise can be an indirect approach, one that encourages a sense of self confidence and trust in our practice, for when those difficult times arise.