Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 42-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun pauses the Three Principal Aspects of the Path series to revisit the foundation all three rest on: genuine meditation practice. Using a vivid image — a traveler crossing a potholed road with a brimful bowl of water on their head and a sword at their back — he distinguishes mindfulness (memory that holds an object) from awareness (the knowing that checks whether you are still holding it). He covers Buddhism’s two wings of method and wisdom, explains why boredom in meditation is actually a good sign (ego is finally losing its entertainment), and traces how ego operates through habitual memory rather than present-moment openness. The session closes with two practical techniques — counting breaths and noting distractions — followed by a brief guided sitting.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 3 PA 1989 02 17.mp3
UUID: bed6da20-3584-4cd2-aa77-f67b61c6c6de
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1989-02-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 42.4 minutes
Words: ~6,148
So last year, followed a format of beginning with a short meditation usually on mindfulness of breathing and then the prayer of Reorienting ourselves, taking refuge. And we’re going to be continuing in discussion of the text by the fourteenth century Yogi scholar, Tsongkhapa, entitled the Three Principal Aspects of the Path. The determination to be free, opening our hearts to others, and seeing deeply into the nature of reality. So again, I think for the next maybe two weeks we’re going to be doing a little bit of review. Last year we covered the first two.
You know sometimes this teaching is given in a weekend just tells you an indication how slow I am. Last year, we covered the first two of the three principal aspects of the path. So we’re going to in the next few weeks maybe two weeks review them just to kind of go over some of the points just to refresh our memory and then we’ll get on to the third principal aspect of the path which is seeing deeply into nature of reality or ultimately into the nature of ourselves, selflessness, the nature of all phenomena, emptiness. Coming to an understanding that perhaps we’re under the influence of a few misconceptions as to the nature of who we in fact are, the way we exist and the way the things around us exist. And due to this, a few basic, extremely basic misconceptions that all the other various afflictive emotions are experienced such as attachment and hatred, desire, jealousy.
And that by, you know, we aren’t going to I don’t think perhaps a few there might be one or two of you that might have some kind of revolution in your mind. As in the case of the sixth patriarch of Zen who just upon hearing the Diamond Sūtra chanted, he was a woodcutter and he attained enlightenment through the force of his past predispositions and latencies. And he was on the verge of enlightenment simply hearing this sūtra, this discourse by the Buddha, the Diamond Sūtra. He was able to see deeply, have a great insight, realization into the way things in fact exist and this brought about what we call enlightenment. He went beyond these misconceptions and therefore the afflictive emotions which are induced by this misconception, ignorance We’re completely eliminated from his mind once and for all and that we call such a type of being enlightened being.
You know, the ability to develop wisdom so its complete fullest culmination. A happy, loving, healthy, sane human being. So, we’re going to, I hope, you know, be going looking into the nature of reality. I can only repeat, you know, a few things that my teachers have told me. I don’t have any understanding of the subject or I don’t have any new way of looking at it and I don’t want to make up my own ideas about the subject.
That would only mislead you. So I’m going to present it from the point of view of how my teachers have explained it to me. And hopefully I think it can be of some benefit. We’ll try to talk about it in such a way that it can be able to practically be applied to one’s life. It won’t be simply an abstract theory, some doctrine of Buddhism, but in fact a living possibility of transformation.
Whatever we do with it, it has to be based within a system of insight and it has to be coupled with method. Within Buddhism we talk about the two wings of enlightenment. Just like in the case of a bird, in order for a bird to fly it has to have two wings. And in Buddhism likewise in order to have a complete practice, which you might say a holistic practice, if you like, we need the two wings of method and wisdom. Wisdom ultimately is the wisdom understanding selflessness or emptiness.
Method varies according to the context. Generally, when we talk about method, we’re talking about love and compassion, awakening heart. It’s like the fuel of the rocket which transports us to enlightenment. You know, the actual ship perhaps is wisdom. But without this fuel, we can never make the journey.
It is what motivates us to carry on our spiritual journey, you know, our spiritual search. The altruistic intention to benefit others through one’s own development, through one’s own growth. Without these having a foundation of the intention to grow, then there’s going to be no change. There’s not going to be no transformation. We’re not going to create the space to develop initially more skillful patterns, ways of relating with ourselves and others, but ultimately to go beyond all types of patterned behavior because we have an investment in saṃsāra.
We have an investment in ego. You know, it’s like a mother who loves her child very much and obscured to the way the child actually is. Her attachment obscures her from seeing the child as it actually, in fact, is. And therefore, you know, in a way inhibits her from really benefiting the child, really helping her child in a realistic fashion. So we have to have determination to actually see into reality, actually begin to relate with others in a new, more skillful way, a more meaningful, purposeful way.
This all this edifice that we’re building, this transformation of the mind must be founded in the the atmosphere of openness within one’s own mind, the meditative state. I think it’s we have to not only learn the various doctrines, you might say, but somehow we have to, as I mentioned the other night, find the keys by which the doctrines become integrated within our own mind. We have to find a way to discover everything that the Buddha himself discovered or the Buddha’s or the past discovered. You know, the Buddha is revered, is worshipped as an exemplar, as a guide, as a shower of the way. But in the end, they cannot enlighten us.
We have to enlighten ourselves. And the foundation of our practice must be have as its bedrock. The simple practice of meditation as a way of initially cutting through the games of ego. The simple discipline of a humble, simple meditative practice. You know, very much our daily lives are continually drawing outside of ourselves.
Know, and meditation is, in a way, a revolt against this process. You know, beginning to look inside ourselves into our dimly lit inner world, which we know very little about. Most people can tell you more about the bus schedule or the stock market or what else? Their children’s schedule over the next few months about then about what’s actually happening within their own mind, how their mind actually operates. We aren’t we don’t operate our minds efficiently because we don’t know how it operates.
So meditation is simply a method of becoming getting to know ourselves. Essentially, when we talk about Buddhism, the study of Buddhism is the study of oneself. And the the practice of Buddhism, the practice of Dharma, if you like, is the skillful application about what you have learned about yourself in solving your everyday life problems. That’s all. And and then it becomes something very useful.
It becomes very practical or workable. It’s we inspire ourselves by actually beginning to see that we’re solving our problems, that we can change, that we can become happy, you know, loving, healthy, sane people. And this process begins very much with a simple humble practice of mindfulness of breathing practice. And that’s why, you know, I’ve been kind of pushing it over this past year. You know, just take taking five minutes to do it here as an actual experience.
But also I’ve been talking about it a little bit about meditation each week. Sort of to perhaps to reinspire, to give some information maybe if if if it’s of any use. And maybe a little bit more about what meditation actually may be. You know, we’re not trying to I think most of you are pretty sophisticated. Much of what I say is probably as is not applicable.
But I know for some people, it’s a matter of perhaps seeing color lights, mystical sounds, cosmic symbols appearing, whirling. If you roll your eyes to the left sixteen times and you get this little sensation up here and then, Wow! Flower, need to give you something like that. You know, this is all meaningless. It’s, you know, the it doesn’t solve our problems, does it?
And it doesn’t you know, is it making us happy? Is it our lives unnecessarily becoming another activity amongst our many activities? You know, we probably have enough activities. So somehow, you know, we have to make our meditation. If it’s going to be a real use to us as a real method to solve our problems, it has to be discontinuous with our everyday unskillful ambitions, expectations, preconceptions.
All of these states which simply are a support, a continuation, or a manifestation of ego which hopefully it’s going to perhaps over the last year, but maybe hopefully in the next few months when we talk about the nature of reality, begin to see that they get a feeling for what the ego is, how it’s operating, and how it actually is by its very nature dissatisfactory. That any state bounded by ego is by is inherently not one to be satisfied with. There’s no quality of peace within such a state. If we allow our meditation simply to be an extension of the domain of the territory of ego then we’re not actually making use of the Dharma to transcend our problems. We’re just allowing it to become embroidered in spiritual materialism, if you like.
So the idea about some way, having our meditation become something which no longer supports the continuity of ego. Some way it has to become a method to begin to cut through ego’s games, our unskillful patterns that we’re very much stuck in. So that means we have to become very skillful, that we cannot become mechanical about meditation. You know, we simply cannot become thoughtless in what we’re what we’re up to. Just to read you a quotation.
There was this there’s one teacher who came, a Tibetan teacher, who was in Sydney last, I think, This was an advertisement. And there a few quotations on this advertisement. I’d like to read you one. And we’re talking about meditation. And you’re giving to develop perhaps some feeling for it.
It’s very much the attitude that we bring to our meditation, we bring to our practice in general which is going to determine whether it’s a benefit or whether it’s going to be simply a matter of frustration, disappointment like most of the things that we experience in our life. In the stillness and presence of meditation, we discover a pure awareness beyond the ordinary thinking mind and catch a glimpse or view of our true nature, something we have long ago lost sight of amidst the business and turmoil of our lives. The core of the practice of meditation is releasing the heart and mind in deep ease and relaxation where tensions are dissolved and we find ourselves connecting with a tremendous source of healing which we all have within. For health is a state where all aspects of our body and mind are in balance. At the heart of all Buddhist teachings lies the ancient meditative practice.
Essentially essence of meditation is relaxation. Whenever there’s any expectations, preconceptions, compulsions, there’s always going to be some tension. There’s always going to be some conflict about the way the actual situation is and how it should be going, How you expect it to go. How you want it to go. So somehow we have to avoid making our meditation simply another battleground between me and my mind, between me and my ego.
You know, way we can begin to do this is simply not take a position. Not take a position. Ego is constantly manufacturing reference points. This is how we know who we are in our personality profile with all our various likes, dislikes, wants, needs, this continual judging, opinionatedness. This is how we maintain our identity.
I like this. I don’t like this. I want this. I don’t want this. This constant rejection, cultivation.
Atisha, who was one of the Indian masters who first introduced Buddhism in Tibet, He said that the highest meditation is a mind without pretense. A mind without pretense. So what does that mean, a mind without pretense? So he’s talking about a natural mind. A natural mind, which is, you know, for most of it, I think it’s pretty difficult to get a feeling for what that might be like.
You know, the idea of no fixed position, to have no expectations, no compulsions, to have no predetermined plan, for example, No interpretations. So he also said that Atisha also said that the essence of meditation is mindfulness. The the highest precept of Buddhism is continuous mindfulness and these are the two main factors we’re working with in meditation. The two main mental factors, the mental factor of mindfulness and the mental factor of awareness. Mindfulness and awareness.
Mindfulness and awareness. If anything, we can say that meditation is mindfulness and awareness. You know, mentioned this example last year but I’ll mention again very briefly, you know, to give us a feeling for what these factors in mind are mindfulness and awareness. For example, walking down a road, a dirt road where there’s many holes in the ground, many large boulders, stones on the road and you have to traverse from where you’re at now down to the end of the road. And, for various reasons there’s a pot of water on your head filled to the brim and there’s someone standing behind you with a sword and just ready to cut your head off if you spill one drop of water.
So we’re confronted with a problem, how to walk down to the end of the road without spilling a drop of water. In order to do this, we’re going to have to make use of these two factors of mindfulness and awareness. We’re going to see that if we simply use one without the other, we’re not going to accomplish our task. If we simply, for example, knew the situation, we knew where the hole was in the road, we knew where the stone was, we were walking, came to a hole, we jumped down in the hole, we jumped back out, or we jumped over the hole, we jumped over the rocks. You know, we’ve maneuvered down the road, but we’ve forgotten about this bowl of water.
We’ve more than likely spilled the water on top of our head. So, therefore, it’s awareness which knows the situation. It simply knows the lie of the land, the way the road is constructed. It knows where there’s a hole, where there’s a stone. But mindfulness brings some kind of information to the situation.
So, know the situation, but we also want to bring some type of information to the situation. We’re doing this every day of our life, In meeting with people in various work situations, we’re constantly having to be aware of these people, the way we relate with them, of these situations, but also how to deal with them more skillfully, bringing some mindfulness, some information. Mindfulness is simply mostly memory recollection. Awareness is simply mostly knowing. If we were to walk down the road mindfully, not forgetting the bowl of water, but not knowing the situation, then eventually we’re going fall down in a hole.
We’re going to trip over a rock. So in our meditation we’re going to be using these two factors of mindfulness and awareness. Developing in our meditation is developing in these factors of mindfulness and awareness. Being sensitive, another word for awareness introspection, sensitivity to the state of our mind, what’s happening within our mind, and also mindfulness which is, is like, in some ways, it’s like a holder, a container, you know, as if when I hold the book, there’s mindfulness which holds the book, you know, it’s like the hand holding the book. But it’s awareness which knows whether I’m holding the book or not or how tightly I’m holding the book, whether I’m holding it too loosely, whether I’m about to drop it or not.
So in our meditation, be cultivating these two factors of mindfulness awareness. When we do this in conjunction with the breathing meditation, it’s mindfulness which is you know, we’re going to take as an object of meditation the breath. By breath, I mean the various bodily sensations which are associated with the breathing process, the touch sensation, the tactile sensations. When you breathe, perhaps there’s the flow of air over your nostril, nostril, inside your nostril. There’s some sensation there.
There’s the expansion of your chest up and down. There might be the clothes rubbing against your chest. There’s the, might be the in and out of your abdomen, the muscles contracting, loosening, contracting, your diaphragm movement. So all these taken together are what we’re looking at, an object of mindfulness is what our mind is holding on to. So it’s all these sensations taken together are what we’re referring to as the breath and we’re being mindful of that breath, these sensations and this is what we’re going to hold our mind to.
Again and again, you know, bringing our mind back to the breath. You know, it’s, I use the analogous the analogy of training a puppy. In the sense, I think it’s a good analogy because I think most people are a little bit too hard on themselves. Strangely enough, even lazy people are quite hard on themselves when they’re being lazy even. That in our meditation this, you know, it simply would be another way of bringing our habitual egoistic patterns into our what is meant to be some way of transcending these.
That we’re simply going to try to be as gentle with ourselves as possible within the context of a wholesome discipline. And we can the analogy of training a puppy. You know, you put down you want to paper train a puppy, you put down some paper and you set the puppy down on the paper and you know it has to go to the toilet. It and you you begin with the assumption that the that the puppy is not stupid, that the puppy isn’t trying to isn’t trying to give you a hard time. But it would if it you know, if if you could talk with it, reason with it, it would say, oh, I’d like to get along with you.
Let’s let’s make a deal. Know, I’d like to have a build up a good relationship with you, that kind of idea. You know? So it’s not the puppy is not out to give you a hard time. It’s not stupid.
It simply doesn’t know what you wanted to do initially. Yeah? So and you and you’re being a little more intelligent. Perhaps you’d have a little more patience than and a little more talents might be called for in your part. So we set the pay the puppy down on the paper.
And of course, it has it doesn’t have the least idea of what you wanted to do. It’s not a mind reader. And it hasn’t it doesn’t have an hasn’t read the instruction book. So it just runs off the paper first. And you see, very gently, patiently, place it back on the paper.
Again, it runs off. Again, very gently, patiently, place it back on the paper. You know, we have to treat our minds very gently, reasonably. There’s an idea of reason reasonableness about whatever we do. We can, in some way, understand that this is probably at least less egoistic, at least less a product of our habitual negative self image that we usually carry with us, that we usually manifest toward ourselves, you know, giving ourselves a hard time berating ourselves, putting ourselves down, torturing ourselves to some extent.
And if there’s a reasonableness and a gentleness, then this we can understand that probably this is a at least ego isn’t manifesting itself too strongly situation. This is a skillful way to deal with yourself, to work with yourself. To get uptight with yourself just as in the case of the puppy is of no benefit whatsoever. Just as in the case of training the puppy, if you start getting uptight, you get upset with the puppy, maybe you hit it, you start yelling at it, it gets afraid, it gets upset, you get more upset, it doesn’t know what you want to do. You develop a bad relationship.
It doesn’t help the training process, it actually hinders the training Likewise, with our breath, and we’re watching the breath simply and we’re just like we we set our mind on the breath, just like setting the puppy on the paper. And initially, mind simply doesn’t know what we want of it. It’s not a bad mind. It’s not trying to give us a hard time. It just has some unskillful habits.
And one of these habits is it’s accustomed to not having to rest upon any particular object. It’s accustomed to being distracted like a butterfly, you know, moving from one beautiful flower to another, you know, constantly being attracted to any beautiful object that appears in its field. Likewise, you know, our mind is going to become again and again distracted. You know, it’s going to go off sinking. You know, the process of, meditation is very much concerned with the mental consciousness as opposed to sense consciousnesses, as opposed to eye, ear, nose, tongue, body consciousnesses.
You know, we’re very much turning off shutting these doors. You know, we’re not using our eyes. We’re not using our ears. And so, you know, generally, the ego in seeking entertainment is pretty much distracted. It’s pretty much fulfilled in his daily activities by listening to music, watching the newspaper, watching television, talking with people, eating food.
You know, has lots of entertainment. Now, all at once we’re saying, oh, we’re gonna shut off your entertainment. And, okay, he goes, okay, well, let’s watch this breath for a while and see what that’s like. Yeah. That’s sitting there watching the breath.
Oh, this is fantastic. Oh, I I think maybe I’ll go up to the Himalayan mountains and become a yogi. It lasts about two or three minutes. And it’s okay. Let’s let’s move on to something else.
I wonder what’s on television. Oh, maybe the baby is maybe his diaper’s wet. I better go some other entertainment is definitely you know, it breath isn’t all that interesting, is it? Actually, know Trungpa Rinpoche says that one of the first signs of a successful meditation is we get damn bored. It gets very boring.
That means the ego is no longer entertained. That’s the way we experience it. There’s nothing wrong with that boredom. I mean, it’s not it’s an it’s a little bit uncomfortable, is it? Why is it uncomfortable?
Isn’t it? It’s not ego is no longer being entertained. We’re actually beginning to to move in the other direction away from always you know, first we never even perhaps knew there was an ego or there was something that there was another possibility of acting outside of this of these habitual patterns which were always bound up in. But now we’re beginning to move the other way up the stream. It’s a little bit difficult.
There’s experience of uncomfortableness, and this uncomfortableness is initially experienced as boredom. So the ego says, okay. Let’s move on. Let’s try something new. Maybe I’ll try maybe I’ll take up tai chi.
Yeah. Tai chi is better. You know, you move around, you get to more people. You know? Anyway, it’s going to think about so you’ve cut off its entertainment, you know, more or less.
No no sights, no hearing, no food, taste. And it’s it’s going to begin to manufacture its own attain own entertainment as soon as it becomes bored with the breath. It’s going to dig up some old, good past memories. Yeah. Rummage through those and see what, see if I can get some more, juicy emotions out of those or maybe fantasize about possible future activities.
How can I take what I’ve learned in the past and reshuffle them around and create beautiful future possibility? So it’s quite entertaining, this past time of dwelling in memories and fantasies of the future. But again, this is the ego’s game. In this simple minded fashion, we can begin to cut through ego’s game of not being here now. If more than anything else, in the word meditation in Tibetan, the word meditation in English has many connotations.
It’s hard to even know what it means. Most of the meditation teachers if you ask them, what does the word meditation mean? I don’t know. And the word as in the Tibetan tradition as it came into Tibetan. The Tibetan word is gom.
Gong simply has the idea of getting used to. Getting used to being here now, if you like. Getting used to being in the present situation with what is actually happening in the moment. It’s like meditation. Not in past memories, not in future fantasies, but what isn’t actually happening at the very moment.
This is a has a transcendent quality because the the ego cannot operate in such a in such a domain. You know, it’s it’s always the very nature of ego is memory. Know, reacting to new situations not in a fluid and open manner to what is actually happening in the moment but in context of what it has and how it has reacted in the past. You know, going back to its files, oh, here’s the situation. It checks back up in its file.
Did I react to this situation in the past? Well, you know, I might not have reacted satisfactorily, but at least I know what to expect. There’s a sense of security in reenacting these old habit patterns, compulsive neurotic patterns again and again. They may not be satisfactory, but they’re home. They feel that they’re comfortable with them.
There’s no unexpected. There’s no vulnerability. There’s no chance taking. There’s no openness. No fluidity.
You know, this is the quality, very much the quality of ego. It can’t operate in the present moment. So if we can become accustomed to simply to this simple minded practice of mindfulness of breathing dwelling in the present moment, then it can begin to carry over into our daily life. And then we can become more and more concerned with what’s actually happening in our present situation. Talking with another person, what that person is really saying, what that person is about at that moment, and becoming sensitive, aware.
These kind of qualities. And it actually adds a very a lot of depth to one’s life, a lot of quality to one’s existence. Even through this simple minded practice of mindfulness of breathing, which I don’t think perhaps is all that simple minded. I think we can learn a lot from this meditation. We’re not going to judge our meditation whether it’s good or bad.
We’re not trying to become perfect meditators. We’re going to judge whether our meditation is good or bad. We can get off the roller coaster of ego. We don’t have to have what Namgyal Rinpoche used to call an obsessed mind. Obsessed mind.
By obsessed mind, it’s the necessity to always have to react. Always having to react, good or bad, like, dislike. In the sense that, you know, we can begin to to move away from this necessity, this this continual opinionatedness, judging. You know, It’s quite necessary to use our discrimination in everyday life, making plans, making decisions. But it becomes apparent to most people that they are not able to turn this process off, that it becomes pathological, that they cannot stop thinking, for example, that they cannot stop judging either others or themselves.
And it becomes a real source of suffering for oneself. So we can very skillfully begin simply to develop some equanimity in our meditation, begin to simply note the arising of feelings, of thoughts, of emotions, and without with neither repressing or indulging in them, note them. Just just to acknowledge that they exist. That’s all. And then we can let them go.
You know, we don’t have to identify with them. Generally, our thoughts, we don’t recognize them as thoughts. We identify with them. The I am these thoughts.
I am this emotion. I am this feeling. Rather than seeing that these are simply passing mental phenomena, which we don’t have to bite into. If we don’t choose to, we can simply acknowledge their existence and just as a wave rising out of the ocean, we’ll dissolve back into the ocean by itself. There’s nothing that needs to be done about it as long as we neither repress nor indulge, simply acknowledge.
So even, you know, I initially mentioned that meditation essentially is relaxation. So this, we can make this relaxation another job for ourselves, some tasks, some burden again. We cannot try to relax. You know, the very, you know, very act of trying will cause you to be restless, prevent you from actually relaxing. You’re going to have to be on guard against restlessness.
By its very nature, having to be on guard, paranoia, you’re going to agitate your mind. So we cannot try, you know, we can’t say to somebody, you know, you try to relax. Were you trying to relax? Something like, by the very trying, we defeat ourselves. What we can do is simply provide the conditions whereby relaxation is a natural response of the mind.
Know, as we simply create the conditions through mindfulness of breathing and the mind will respond by relaxing. Sort of trick ourselves. We indirectly simply creating the conditions necessary and the mind will respond by relaxing. Just to sum this up a little bit, meditation is a way we can begin to work with our speed, with our restlessness, our constant busyness, our ambitions, and our constant desire to do something, to find something, to become something else. Know, very much meditation is a way of rerouting our sense of identity and being rather than becoming.
We’re always having to become something, and we very much have lost the ability to just simply be in the present moment, to find that satisfying within itself as a self authenticating experience. It’s much of a mark of our society that if you sit quietly, people think you’re not doing anything. When people think you’re not being productive, you’re waste it there’s almost a guilty feeling about sitting quietly, maybe just looking at the trees in the backyard or whatever. You know, you aren’t you aren’t being productive. You aren’t there’s almost a sense of of guilt surrounding such a possibility.
There’s no our society doesn’t create any room just to be. So this is very much a revolt against that, as simply becoming finding the possibility of doing nothing as an authentic way of being. But most of us in this room can’t do nothing. That’s for sure. I think you have to work for years very hard to do nothing.
It’s culmination of a long process. Mindfulness of breathing we’re going to use two techniques just to help us. They’re simply techniques, there’s nothing holy about them. They can be used and not used at your discretion. Eventually you might want to drop them altogether, but for the meantime you might make use of them, you might make use of them one day and not another day as you see fit.
The first is to help us develop our mindfulness is the technique of counting. We’re going to count our breaths simply when you breathe in, breathing out, counting one, in out two, in out three, in out four, in out five. Come back down to one, in out one, in out two, in out three, in out four, in out five, in six. Come back down to one, one through seven, one through eight, one through nine, one through ten. And if you go past that, come back down through one through one through five.
Otherwise, you’ll you’ll probably work to try to, what, get yourself in the Guinness Book of Records and nine months of breathing number and counting or something like that. Anyway, you’ll make some kind of ambitious goal for yourself. So just come back down to one through five. So, that’s counting. That’s to help us give us a grosser object for our mindfulness to hold on to.
You know, in a way, our mindfulness initially is very clumsy. It’s like a baby’s the coordination of a baby’s hand. You know, it’s not it’s not able to pick up very subtle objects like a pen. It doesn’t have that coordination, that flexibility. And likewise, initially, our mindfulness is quite coarse, quite gross, and we have to have a very coarse object to hold on to.
We can’t hold on to very subtle objects. You know, we have very subtle thoughts, for example, very subtle feelings. So, we need visualizations. We need a very gross object and counting is a way of making the object grosser. We have to we have more to remember.
So, that’s the technique of counting. Then there’s the technique of noting. And here we’re going to help us develop our awareness. Awareness, that knowing quality, to help us know what our mind is involved in. You know, what is my mind involved in?
You know, like the crickets, what is, you know, the crickets singing? You know, stop for a moment and think, what is my mind involved in? So, we’re going to help us to get to know from moment to moment what our mind is involved in. We’re actually going to acknowledge through noting. You know, we’re going to think in a thought, not with I’m going to say it with words.
But this is not a verbal process. It’s mental. For example, you’re meditating and we’re going to know that we’re breathing in. Knowing that you’re breathing in to help us develop this understanding of what our mind is involved in, we’re going to note in. Knowing that you’re breathing in, noting in.
Knowing that you’re breathing out, noting out. So now we have in, out, one. In, out, two. In, out, three. Now, definitely your mind is going to be distracted.
Your mind’s going to wander either to external stimulus, you know, sounds, crickets, fans, people next to you coughing, or you’re going to pain in your knees. You’re going to see something out of the corner of your eye. Or it might be a mental object, for example, you know, thoughts will arise thinking, thinking. So we’re simply going to note whatever it is. No matter what it is, we’re not going to judge it, we’re not going to indulge in it or try to repress it.
We’re simply going to acknowledge it. So, simply noting, thinking, in the case of thoughts, thinking, and then go back to the breath. In the case of sound, hearing, hearing, go back to the breath. In the case of seeing, seeing, seeing, go back to the breath. So, we have to develop some determination in this process that we aren’t going to, for example, that the very first moment that we become aware that our mind has been distracted, we’re going to bring it back to the correct object of meditation, which is the breath, that we’re not going to wait till we finish our shopping list, till we finish the story to see how the fantasy works out.
That we’re that very moment, the very first moment that you become aware, I’m going to bring my mind back to the object of meditation and the breath. You know, it’s working with this kind of determination. I think maybe that’s quite a lot. Let’s try that. So if you take a we can talk about the posture in the future.
If you just take a comfortable posture for now, one in which you perhaps, have some purposefulness, some kind of, stability, maybe your back straight, and then we’ll do mindful breathing for five minutes.