https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=9c736DThL_M
Okay, now we’re going to move to our first joint practice. I’m going to teach you basics Getting into a mindfulness meditation So the first practice I want to walk you through is a core practice for beginning Mindfulness meditation. We’ll do a few more along the mindfulness meditation and contemplation pathway But let’s this is a really good place to start Meditation is about finding your center This is how it’s so crucial to the Socratic project of knowing yourself Knowing how you function How you form Now this three center has this center has three dimensions to it One is I’m going to teach you first how to Find your center in a way that improves the communication between mind and body Improves the communication between mind and body Socrates was a soldier Plato was a wrestler. In fact Plato was his nickname. It means broad shoulders because he was a wrestler We want to improve The relationship between mind and body so it is it has that kind of finesse It has that kind of fluency and fluidity of the soldier or the wrestler the martial artist We know that a lot of the time mind and body are undermining each other or antagonistic I’m all spun out and I’m stressing my body and filling it with cortisol Or it can be really hungry or really tired and that slows down my attempt to think to understand We’ve also had times when they’re in sync When they’re offending each other And we know that those are the times when we are most likely to learn most likely to make progress Then I’ll teach you how to center your attention You probably think well, I know how to do that. Give me a chance And then I’m going to teach you how to center your attitude Let’s begin first by Centering our posture now what you might do is you might stiffen yourself and do sort of this. Oh, I know what that is stiff Let that go. I’m trying to calculate your center What I want you to do is feel find Because learning to feel and find I wish we had a word that sort of was the two of them together Maybe that’s what the tracking is Track your center So don’t start doing it yet You know explain it to you and then I will talk you through it I’m gonna ask you to close your eyes Then I’m gonna you’re gonna move off center and you’re gonna feel off-center You have in your middle ear a mechanism It’s been put through 400 million years of evolution that really makes this apparent to you and then you move off-center backwards You’re going to feel it And then each time I’ll move a little less back and forth until I get centered Then side to side same thing off-center off-center back and forth Until I feel centered and then once my body feels centered I’ll do the same thing with my body. I’ll move my body I’ll move my body back and forth until I feel centered and then once my body feels centered I’ll do the same thing with my head Front to back side to side why headed separately John? When people first begin meditation they very very frequently let their head roll forward like this First of all that really cuts off Your air supply you see you start doing really shallow chest breathing which is conducive to anxiety and rumination You don’t want that Secondly you’re starving yourself of oxygen You’re putting a strain on these muscles That can lead to headaches which will make you stop doing the practice Also and perhaps most importantly this is a signal that you’re falling asleep This is a signal to your brain I’m going to sleep now Part of finding your center is to find a place between two places that your brain is very familiar with Oh John’s closing his eyes Ah daydreaming mind wandering yay yay hoo hoo Nope Oh John’s closing his eyes we’re going to sleep No You’re trying to find what at first is a very narrow place between them centered between them and grow it and expand it and grow into it Once you are centered torso and head I’ll ask you to relax your chest That means let it open see what my shoulders are doing this is anxiety stress tension anger This is I’m open to learn and my shoulders are down not up open and down And I’m going to place my hands and you can experiment you can place your hands and legs You can do a classic you know Vedanta kind of practice or mudra You can do something more often found in Zen The point here is to place your hands such that it helps you to keep your chest open your shoulders down and add to your sense of stability Then relax your abdomen Not so complimentary I know Look at John’s stomach oh ha ha ha So what? Let it go This is conducive to baby breathing the way babies naturally breathe They don’t do shallow breathing in their chest they do deep abdominal breathing They expand their abdomen when they’re inhaling and contracting but they’re not forcing it They’re not forcing it they’re following their breath This simultaneously relaxes you and gets a lot of oxygen in your blood which is important for practice Then relax your legs You’re probably putting all kinds of effort into them Make sure that your feet aren’t crossed your feet are touching the floor Relax your legs Then relax your face Try to sink in really sink in in two senses of the word sink Sinking S-I-N-K and sinking in S-Y-N-Z like this Getting synchronized and dropping into it again like a martial artist about right to fight Now I’ll ask you try to notice what it tastes like I’m using this metaphorically What does it feel like in your mind and body to be sinking? What does it feel like in your mind and body to be centered like this? What effects does it have on your mind and body? What effects does it have on how you’re oriented towards yourself? Oriented towards the world? Why am I doing this? Because you need to create a felt memory of what this is like What it is like to be you in a centered state so that you can find your way back to this again and again and again Okay so let’s do that practice together You can close your eyes completely some of you might want to open your eyes slightly Unfortunately I have manures in my left ear which is it actually messes up that middle ear So I probably have to keep my eyes open just a little bit you don’t have to do that Do what works for you getting more into this practice I was able to do it for decades before I contracted manures But now I’ve got to keep my eyes slightly open You don’t have to do that That’s peculiar to me You probably and most novices want to keep your eyes completely closed Okay so let’s do it Let’s close your eyes Let’s take a nice deep cleansing breath Just like you’re sort of washing the insides of your mind and body And slowly move forward off center front Feel that You know you’re off center you don’t have to calculate it Move backwards Oh I’m off center yeah there it is there it is Now a little less forward A little less back Back and forth Slowly zeroing in on where you feel See how you’re tracking Where you feel centered front to back Now side to side same thing Oh I’m off center yeah Oh I’m off center Oh yeah okay back Back and forth a little less each time Off to right Until I slowly find my way Oh there we are Now let’s do my head front words off Oh yeah that’s off center Oh yeah right right right there Little less forward Oh yeah right right right there Little less each time Then side to side Now you’re centered in head and torso Relax your chest Open your chest shoulders down Place your hands that adds to that Stabilizes it Then relax your abdomen No forcing your breath following your breath Doing baby breathing As naturally as you can Now relax your legs Now relax your face What does it feel like to be centered this way How does it taste in your mind and body Immerse yourself into it create a felt memory So you can find your way back again Relax your chest shoulders down Place your hands that adds to that As naturally as you can Relax your chest shoulders down Place your hands that adds to that Relax your face Relax your face Relax your body Relax your body Relax your body Now we want to center our attention For most people that means just sort of focusing It’s much more than that I’m gonna use an analogy some of you have seen this But it’s still helpful. Your mind is always framing reality. It’s always paying attention to this, foregrounding it, backgrounding this, and ignoring all of that. You’re always framing. And that’s always sizing up the world, creating a particular salience landscape, a flowing landscape of how things are standing out to you, grabbing your attention, arousing you metabolically, generating particular affective states in you. Time-mental framing is like your glasses. Maybe you wear them. I do. Now notice my glasses enable me to see, but they also limit. I’m looking through them in two senses. I’m looking beyond them by means of them, beyond them and by means of them. They’re both enabling me and limiting me. That’s how they function. That’s how your attention, your arousal, and your affect function all the time, moment by moment. There’s a problem with framing. Supporting a lensing. What’s that problem? Well, these lenses could actually be rose-colored, as we say. Rose-colored glasses. He or she is not seeing the world as it is because the glasses are tinted, or maybe there’s dirt on them or they’re distorting. What do I need to do? What do I need to do? How do I self-correct? I need to step back and look at my glasses. They’re no longer transparent to me. They’re opaque. I’m looking at them. I’m looking and seeing, are they rose-colored? Are they tinted? Is there gunk on them? Are they distorting? That’s what you’re doing when you’re finding your attentional center. You’re stepping back and looking at the normally transparent way you have been looking through to the world. Okay, nice analogy, perhaps, but abstract. What does that mean concretely, John? What that means is, what are you normally looking through in order to make sense? There’s a clue in that phrase of the world. You’re looking through your sensations. You don’t look at them. You look through them. You’re always looking through at the world. What you want to do in this practice is you want to step back and look at them. Well, which sensations? Good question. We’re going to pick sensations for a practical purpose, sensations that line up with that baby breathing that we got in centering our posture. As we’ll see, have deep spiritual significance. This is the breath following the sensations in the abdomen being generated by the breath. As I inhale, my abdomen expands and I can feel that. I’m going to gently say to myself, in. I’m not paying attention to the in. I’m using the in to track and trace, to follow those sensations as they unfold as I’m inhaling. Then as I exhale, out, and I follow the sensations, looking at the sensations, tracking them in and out, in and out. What will happen pretty fast is your mind will leap away and you’ll start looking at the world again. I’m listening to something. I’m planning on doing my laundry. I’m wondering if Roger still loves me. What do we do then? We step back and label the distracting process. We don’t get involved with the content because we’re stepping back and looking at. We label the process with an ing word. Imagining, complaining, planning, listening. Then, we return our attention to following the sensations of our breath. Hmm. Now, it’s very important to frame this the right way. There’s that framing again. If you think, it’s going to be so noisy in there. I won’t be able to follow one or two. My mind’s going to wander all over the place. You’re right. Oh, well, that means that I won’t ever meditate because unless my mind goes calm and still and wide open like a Canadian tundra, then I’m not meditating. I’ve failed. You’re exactly wrong. There’s a Buddhist metaphor for this. You’ve got a glass of dirty water. What you’re doing is you’re using your spoon and you’re trying to push the dirt down. You’re only making it worse. Instead of thinking of that, when you go off and you catch yourself, I want you to take this to heart. Catching yourself in distraction and coming back is the core of the practice. That’s what will transfer to your life. Think of that going out and coming back as like doing reps, building the muscle of mindfulness. That is meditation. That is meditation. You’ll have to do so many reps. Well, if you wanted to build actual physiological muscle, one, two, three reps, I’m done. No. You have to do thousands in a lifelong practice. You’ve spent all of this time building up habits of mind and body and you’re trying to enter into capacity to transform them, Socratic self-knowledge and aspiration. You’re putting this much time of meditation against it. You have to be tremendously patient and frame this the right way. Now that helps me move to the third thing. Centering your attitude. Being oriented in the right way. So that part of your mind that jumps around, in the Buddhist tradition it’s called monkey mind. It’s like a monkey jumping from branch to branch. Your mind jumps and chatters as it goes from thought to thought. Suppose you’re trying to get that monkey to stay still. Jack Cornfield has a great analogy for this. He doesn’t use a monkey, he uses a puppy because people are more familiar with dogs. Let’s just use his analogy as is. You’re trying to train a puppy dog to stay. Okay, so you put the puppy dog down, stay. Puppy dog wanders away. Your mind wanders away. If you, stay, stay, stay. If you’re fighting the puppy, you’re training it to fear you and fight you. Let that rumble around a bit in your mind. If you fight it, if you’re frustrated with it, you will train it to fight and fear you and things will get worse. Oh, so I know, meditation is about just letting things be, letting go, letting it flow. Stay puppy dog, oh it went over there, oh well. Oh now it’s over there. Oh now it’s over there. Did you train the puppy dog? No. You’re just feeding its misbehavior. You’re just indulging it. You want to be centered in your attitude between fighting your monkey mind and feeding it. You’re trying to befriend yourself and that is so, so resonant with the Socratic Project. So, oh, okay stay, stay, stay, stay. Again and again and again, befriending yourself. Okay, so let’s review. When you start this practice on your own, you’re going to center your posture the way I guided you through it. You’re going to center your attention tracking the sensations of your breath in, out. When your mind wanders, you label the distracting process. You don’t get involved with its content. You label it with an ing word and then you return your attention to the breath. And you frame it the right way. That is meditation. That’s building the muscle of mindfulness. And as you return to your breath, you center your attitude. I’m learning to neither fight nor feed my monkey mind. Which is like learning to find the place between ruminating and mind wandering and falling asleep. You’re finding all these centers. That’s why Buddhism called it the middle path. You’re going to see that Socrates is doing something very deeply analogous to this. There’s a couple things to help you when you start to practice this on your own. How do you know? You might be saying, John, how do I know when I’m distracted or not? Good question. Think of your mind as a stage. This is actually part of a current important theory of consciousness called the global workspace. Think of your mind as a stage. There’s a mic on it, a spotlight. If the majority of your mind, the spotlight is on your breath and it’s got the mic of your mind, there’s stuff going off on the periphery, merbling, you’re still following your breath. Don’t turn your attention to distractions. It’s only when they have turned you and the majority of the spotlight and the mic are no longer on your breath. They’re on something else you want, you’re planning on doing or remembering or regretting or whatever. That’s when you step back and label the distracting process with an ing word. How precise do I need to be with that? Don’t worry about getting it absolutely right or wrong. Well, should I have said regretting or maybe I was just remembering? What first comes to mind? Try to use different labels, of course. That’s important. It helps you to start to differentiate all of this in-cohate happening, but don’t pretend a kind of precision that you can’t actually have. Remembering, imagining, that’s good enough. When you’re doing this practice, initially, this will be another demand on you. This will be hard. You have to plan for it. I recommend doing 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes at night, not right before you’re going to sleep. In between dinner and sleep, midway. Plan for it. If you say, I’ll fit it in in my day, no, you won’t. I’ve been doing this for three decades and been teaching it for two decades. You won’t. Your head will be hitting the pillow and you won’t have meditated. You have to schedule it in. You’re meeting a friend. You’re befriending yourself. Socrates, and we’ll see this, he would say to people, why do you spend so much time on your hair and your clothing and so little time on your soul? Schedule it in. Schedule this. Try and do it at the same time, the same place, at least for the first five or six weeks. It’s really important, that regularity. It helps to build a deep habit. At the core of virtue, and we’ll talk about virtue, is habit. But don’t, oh, habits, no, no, no. Inhabit. Inhabit. Monks wore habits. We inhabit a place. Think about it that way. Think about habit that way. It’s a good idea to ring a bell, perhaps light some incense. This helps the conditioning of the habit that you’re trying to acquire. Don’t try to meditate right after having a forceful conversation with somebody. You’ll just play the tapes in your head. You won’t be able to do that. Don’t practice right after having a conversation with somebody. You’ll just play the tapes in your head. You won’t be able to get any sort of significant centering going. Don’t practice right after listening to music or watching a movie. You’ll just play the tapes in your head. Don’t practice right after eating. You’ll just listen to your stomach. Why can’t I practice right before going to sleep? Because one of two things will happen. You’ll fall asleep. And then you’re teaching your brain that the point of meditation is to fall asleep. And that is not the point of meditation. Meditation is not a vacation. It is an education. You are trying to build habits, skills, virtues, states of mind that transfer to your life. Percolate through your psyche. Permeate the domains in which you are engaging in your most important endeavors. Or you’ll do the practice correctly and you’ll wake up. And then you won’t be able to fall asleep. Don’t practice right before going to sleep. When you’re practicing, weird stuff can happen. You can be sitting there and you can feel like an electric shock just went through your body. You can know that you’re sitting, but you feel like you’re floating towards the ceiling. Or that you’re sinking into the floor. Or you’re twisted, even though you’re not twisted. You may, this has happened to me, it’s happened to many people who meditate. You’re alone and you hear, as clear as a bell, your name called out, John! And there’s nobody around. None of these things mean you’re going insane. None of these things mean you’re a Buddha or on the cusp of enlightenment. Let both of those go. Treat any of these like another distraction. Label it with an ing word. Return to following your breath. One important thing, one important caveat. If, there’s two important things. If something comes up that is clearly indicative of trauma that you’ve experienced. Psychological, sexual, violence, etc. Stop this practice. This practice has shown you that you need professional, therapeutic help. Under those conditions, stop this practice. If you’re already in therapy, for whatever reasons, tell your therapist you are undertaking this practice. In fact, tell them all the practices you’re undertaking. Finally, get, well two things that are related. Get a timer. You have a phone. These are very easy nowadays. Don’t sit with like a watch or, I’ll sit for 10 minutes and I know when 10 minutes will all pass. Or I know when 15 minutes will all pass. No you won’t. You’ll sit and you’ll be like dead sure. Yeah, that’s been 15 minutes and you’ll open your eyes and 7 minutes will have gone by. Your sense of the flow of time while you’re in meditation is distorted for a very long time. I can do it now, but I’ve been meditating since 1991. Now listen very, very carefully. How you come out of your sitting is part of your practice. When the timer goes off, don’t just, okay I’m done. Slowly open your eyes. Try to notice how it is. What’s it feel like to come into yourself and come into the world? What does it feel like to come into yourself and into the world? And try as best as you can to integrate what you cultivated in your practice with your everyday consciousness and cognition. Meditation is not a vacation. It is an education. You’re building a bridge between your practice and your life. You want what you’re doing in your practice to go in your life and you want what’s happening in your life to come into your practice. It’s not the content, but the processes, the habits that are triggered, etc. Slowly come out of the practice, tasting what it’s like to come into yourself and into the world again, your everyday self in the everyday world. Try as best you can to integrate what you cultivated in your practice with that everyday consciousness, cognition, and sense of self. Okay, that is the first practice that we have learned together. I recommend, if you really want to start on the path of Socratic self-knowledge, that you start doing this practice and the other practices that I explained to you. And as always, thank you so very much for your time and attention.