Meditation

Waking Up Notes

As every meditator soon discovers, distraction is the normal condition of our minds. The goal is to come out of the trance of discursive thinking and to stop reflexively grasping at the pleasant and recoiling from the unpleasant, so that we can enjoy a mind undisturbed by worry, merely open like the sky, and effortlessly aware of the flow of experience in the present.

How to Meditate

1. Sit comfortably, with your spine erect, either in a chair or cross-legged on a cushion.
2. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and feel the points of contact between your body and the chair or the floor. Notice the sensations associated with sitting—feelings of pressure, warmth, tingling, vibration, etc.
3. Gradually become aware of the process of breathing. Pay attention to wherever you feel the breath most distinctly—either at your nostrils or in the rising and falling of your abdomen.
4. Allow your attention to rest in the mere sensation of breathing. (You don’t have to control your breath. Just let it come and go naturally.)
5. Every time your mind wanders in thought, gently return it to the breath.
6. As you focus on the process of breathing, you will also perceive sounds, bodily sensations, or emotions. Simply observe these phenomena as they appear in consciousness and then return to the breath.
7. The moment you notice that you have been lost in thought, observe the present thought itself as an object of consciousness. Then return your attention to the breath—or to any sounds or sensations arising in the next moment.
8. Continue in this way until you can merely witness all objects of consciousness—sights, sounds, sensations, emotions, even thoughts themselves—as they arise, change, and pass away.

The traditional goal of meditation is to arrive at a state of wellbeing that is imperturbable—or if perturbed, easily regained.

The near goal is to have an increasingly healthy mind—that is, to be moving one’s mind in the right direction.

Beginning meditators often think that they are able to concentrate on a single object, such as the breath, for minutes at a time, only to report after days or weeks of intensive practice that their attention is now carried away by thought every few seconds. This is actually progress. It takes a certain degree of concentration to even notice how distracted you are. Even if your life depended on it, you could not spend a full minute free of thought.

The eighth-century Buddhist adept Vimalamitra described three stages of mastery in meditation and how thinking appears in each.

• The first is like meeting a person you already know; you simply recognize each thought as it arises in consciousness, without confusion.
• The second is like a snake tied in a knot; each thought, whatever its content, simply unravels on its own.
• In the third, thoughts become like thieves entering an empty house; even the possibility of being distracted has disappeared.

One must be able to pay attention closely enough to glimpse what consciousness is like between thoughts—that is, prior to the arising of the next one. Consciousness does not feel like a self. Once one realizes this, the status of thoughts themselves, as transient expressions of consciousness, can be understood.

Meditators tend to have larger corpora collosa and hippocampi (in both hemispheres). The practice is also linked to increased gray matter thickness and cortical folding. Some of these differences are especially prominent in older practitioners, which suggests that meditation could protect against age-related thinning of the cortex.

One study found that an eight-week program of mindfulness meditation reduced the volume of the right basolateral amygdala, and these changes were correlated with a subjective decrease in stress. Another found that a full day of mindfulness practice (among trained meditators) reduced the expression of several genes that produce inflammation throughout the body, and this correlated with an improved response to social stress.

Five minutes of practice a day (for five weeks) increased left-sided baseline activity in the frontal cortex—a pattern that, as we saw in the discussion of the split brain, has been associated with positive emotions.

The goal of meditation is to uncover a form of well-being that is inherent to the nature of our minds. It must, therefore, be available in the context of ordinary sights, sounds, sensations, and even thoughts. Peak experiences are fine, but real freedom must be coincident with normal waking life.

Eye Contact Meditation:

1. Sit across from your partner and simply stare into each other’s eyes. (Depending on how far apart you sit, you might have to pick one eye to focus on.)
2. Continue to hold each other’s gaze, without speaking.
3. Ignore laughter and other signs of discomfort.