Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 87-minute session, Ven Kaye Miner explores mindfulness as a mental factor that anchors awareness in the present moment while gently loosening the mind’s grip on distractions, regret, and fantasy. She opens with the practical problem of boredom in breath meditation—defined as a mental factor that prevents distraction—then walks through how mindfulness develops through four foundational stages toward calm abiding, a stable, single-pointed concentration. The talk emphasizes the Buddhist understanding that mindfulness is not merely about feeling good but about cultivating the mental stability needed to gain wisdom into the nature of self and phenomena. She then guides a 20-minute breath meditation, stressing a light touch: observing the breath as it is without controlling it, gently returning the mind each time it wanders, and meeting frustration with kindness rather than force. The session closes with discussion of how mindfulness trained on the breath becomes a portable skill—a stable ground from which to resist emotional hijacking and habitual reactivity in daily life. Pitched at newcomers and committed practitioners alike.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 2011 01 08 day1 session2.mp3
UUID: ce007d79-1c90-4f3f-9777-b457f394c16e
Teacher: Ven Kaye Miner
Collection: Mindfulness with a Heart (Ven Kaye Miner)
Date: 2011-01-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 87.5 minutes
Words: ~7,744
So, Catherine, is she coming? Okay. So just before the break, Raj asked a question about how do you stop yourself being bored. Is that right? While you’re doing breath When when whilst doing breathing meditation.
I think that has something to do with our expectations. And learning just to accept and not wanting anything and just being content with the breath is a way of not not not being bored. I’m going to talk personally here. When I first started meditating, I also found I found meditating on the breath extremely difficult. Extremely difficult.
Trying to concentrate on the breath, my mind was all over the place. And I also thought, is this a good use of my time meditating on the breath? And personally I found analytical meditation right up my alley because my background had been in computing and a lot of systems analysis and design. And so I was used to thinking very analytically and to meditate on the breath it was like, yeah gosh, it’s a bit boring. So analytical meditation was really something that I could concentrate on.
I felt that my understanding would develop and as a result of that, yes, I would also become calmer. And my concentration also became sharper. It was not until some years later that I went back to meditating on the breath without any expectation and I would find that meditating on the breath would help at a certain point you don’t become aware or noticing the breath so much anymore you actually start to meditate on the mind itself and so that was also much more profound. You get to the point that you’re meditating on the clear nature, knowing nature of the mind. Like meditating and concentrating on the breath is a beginning, you know, it is really a beginning before you go on further.
And if you only just stay with meditation on the breath and you never progress then yeah I think it becomes a bit boring. But it is a matter of acceptance as well. Anyway, hopefully we’ll start to see some of this as we go through the weekend. Are there any other questions that people would like to ask before we move on? The basic definition of mindfulness.
That’s what I’m going to move on to. That’s good. Good, Raj. You’re following my line of thought. He’s already got some level of clairvoyance.
Okay, so what actually is mindfulness? Mindfulness is a remembrance, a remembrance of something that is already known or already been known, something that’s already familiar. How can you actually be mindful of something if it’s not already familiar to you, something that you already know. So when we try to be mindful of something then we’ve got to recognise that something first. We’ve got to be able to recognise it.
We’ve to be able to kind of know it first. That’s why when we do meditation, when we try to focus our mind on something, the first stage is trying to identify the object and then you can be mindful of it. Once you’ve been mindful of it, then you can develop your concentration on it. So first, you need to be able to find the object, and that’s why breathing meditation is considered to be so easy because we all can find our breathing pretty easy, can’t we? We don’t have to look very hard for it.
And of course, you know, there might be people who you know when they’re instructed to focus on the breathing they don’t know where to focus. But normally all you need to be is just a little bit aware of your breathing and being able to pay attention to that. I started off this morning and I said, you know, we were paying attention to the way we’re sitting and then I said, you will notice even though you’re sitting still there’s some movement. There’s movement with the breath and that could be the rising and falling of the chest or the abdomen as you breathe or if you’re very, very sensitive noticing the little hairs inside the nose moving when you’re breathing. Can you notice that?
I start to think of that and I end up sneezing. You’ve got to be careful, you know. But you just have to be a little bit aware, a little bit aware and you can sort of focus on the breathing. So that’s pretty easy actually but when the idea is to focus on something else and within our tradition we often are encouraged to concentrate on a visualized image, an image of the Buddha for example. That’s a little bit harder.
When I say focus on an image of the Buddha. Now when you don’t know what a Buddha looks like then at first it’s like what? How? When you’re not used to visualizing it’s like, it’s really too hard isn’t it? Because the image of a Buddha and the qualities, I mean because it’s not just about some static shape but also the qualities of Buddha, when you don’t know what all of those things are, you’re not familiar with it, you can’t be mindful of it, you can’t concentrate on it.
So that’s much harder. So you need some kind of knowledge or awareness of the object. You need to be able to identify it very clearly to be able to be mindful of it. So mindfulness is a mental factor. Within our minds, you know the mind is usually described as being something that is non physical.
The mind is not the brain for example. The mind has no form, it has no shape, it has no color, it has no smell. It’s like you can’t cut open the body and go heart, liver, kidneys, mind. You can’t pull it out like that. It doesn’t exist like that.
It doesn’t exist as a physical physical entity. But the mind is very closely connected with the body and the way we try to explain this is that there are different, if you say, aspects of the mind. There’s a grosser aspect of the mind that is very much dependent upon this relationship with the body, the relationship with the brain for example. And this more obvious or grosser level of the mind has to do with our sense awarenesses, our sense consciousnesses. So like our ear sense consciousness, our eye sense consciousness, our nose, etc.
And our mental consciousness, our ability to like think and to remember and stuff like that. But there are other aspects of the mind which are more subtle and most of us are never aware of these more subtle aspects of the mind but in meditation you can start to have access to them and these more subtle aspects of the mind are really only kind of experienced if you like during the death process, during our dying. So mostly we operate at this gross level of consciousness or mind which is very much dependent upon the relationship of the brain and the nervous system and like that. And so this gross level of mind, I don’t want to get too technical with all of this, but the way we can describe this gross level of mind, it has what we call primary minds and mental factors. This is one thing about Tibetan Buddhism that these things are so clearly articulated and defined.
And so, you know, it’s just not like mind is some kind of something you can’t grab onto, but you start to look at how mind functions. So that helps us to get an idea of mind rather than it just being something out there because it’s not just something out there. Okay? So this gross level of mind is talked about in terms of primary minds and mental factors. And our primary minds are these things like the sense consciousnesses.
So you’ve got your five sense consciousnesses and your mental consciousness. So your mental consciousness is that thinking and that feeling and stuff like that, you know. So then you’ve got these mental factors. So you’ve got six primary minds and then fifty one mental factors. Okay, oh my goodness me, how could I ever remember these fifty one mental factors factors and does that really make a difference to me?
But the way it works is that through our primary mind, say through our eye sense consciousness, there is an object, there is our eye organ that perceives the object and there is like a reflection if you like in the mind, in the eye sense mental consciousness. So there’s just a bare perception that occurs with the primary mind. But then the mental factors come in and the mental factors fill in all of the details and so there are mental factors that are always going to be there. You know, a factor of feeling in regards to the object, factor of contacting, the factor of being able to discriminate that this object is different to that object. Are kind of some bare mental factors of awareness that go on without perception.
But there are also positive mental factors and, well, we might call them virtuous mental factors and non virtuous mental factors neutral. So what happens is that there can be a mental factor arising that interprets or affects the way we perceive something. So a non virtuous or a negative mental factor would be anger for example. And so two people can look at the same thing. I think the bombing of the planes flying into the Twin Towers in New York.
Some people perceive that event as horrific but there were others that thought it was fantastic. So the perception or you know there’s the bare sight of that occurrence but the mental factors in the mind determined how it was perceived. So some people perceived it as being good. Some people perceived it as being bad. Okay?
So that had to do with the mental factors. So also mindfulness is a mental factor. So it’s not just positive and negative mental factors. There’s these what we call, I love it in Dutch, ‘Auteid und Wesich’ which is omnipresent mental factors. So there are some mental factors that are always going to be there with everything that we perceive.
Then there are mental factors that kind of fill in other details that cause us to maybe think something’s positive or think something’s negative. And that depends on what I was talking about earlier on our generalizations, on our assumptions, on how strong these mental factors are within our minds. So mindfulness is, you know, a mental factor and it has the function of what we call non distraction. So it’s like that part of the mind that helps you to stay focused on an object without being distracted. It keeps your mind on the object.
So mindfulness is actually a cause of concentration. So mindfulness you know it helps you to be aware and within the practice of mindfulness, you know, the mindfulness practice, you know it’s always about being aware of what is but the methods that are used to cultivate mindfulness, to develop mindfulness, to keep the mindfulness of an object, the methods used can change and become increasingly more subtle. So that’s why there are these four foundations of mindfulness. Each time they help you to develop your mindfulness, to make it even more deep and even more subtle, that leads to this concentration so that one develops the calm abiding where one single pointedly is focused on an object without the mind getting bored, without the mind being distracted, without the mind being excited and without the mind becoming sleepy or lethargic or dull. So these methods as we cultivate mindfulness, they become more subtle, they become more profound if you like, so that one develops this very calm level of abiding and with full calm abiding there is single pointed concentration and with full calm abiding I love this.
I really would like this. Really would like this calm abiding. Don’t need to go pee pee. That is such a distraction when you have to go pee pee. You know what pee pee is, don’t you?
Yes. It’s such a hassle. I find it at night. It’s a real distraction with my sleep, you know, when you have to go pee pee. So you don’t with calm abiding, you don’t have to do this.
With calm abiding, you don’t have to eat. And with this real calm abiding you’re able to remain concentrated on your object that you’re focusing on for huge amounts of time for however long you want. Did you hear this story about this boy in Nepal that they were saying was the new Buddha or something like that? He was sitting under a tree and meditating for so long and not getting up to eat or go to the toilet. They said that he had this I don’t know about this story.
I really don’t know. But anyway, but that’s the idea. And so mindfulness is a mental factor that leads to concentration that can lead to this sense of calm abiding. Now calm abiding, great. If I don’t have to go pee pee anymore and I don’t have to worry about, you know, cooking and shopping, cooking and eating.
I tell you, eating. The whole food thing, god, takes so much time, doesn’t it? Mind you, I do like eating. But, you know, all of these things take a lot of time, they take a lot of energy. But just having this calm abiding, it’s a huge achievement.
And actually within the Hindu tradition, then it’s very much about developing these higher levels of concentration. Fantastic, know? It’s good. It is good but from the Buddhist perspective you need this very stable, ultimate stable level concentration in order to develop your special insight which is your wisdom into the way things correctly exist, into the nature of self and phenomena. The calm abiding is like the foundation for that, for the development of this special insight.
So mindfulness being mental factor, one of the fifty one, okay, is a way to help develop our concentration which in turn gives us the very good foundation to be able to develop our special insight. So mindfulness practice from the Buddhist perspective, as I said earlier, is not just about feeling good. Mindfulness practice is the practice of those who are happy, who want to become free from this uncontrollable, cycle of unsatisfactoriness. So basically to develop the mindfulness from the Buddhist perspective at these deep more profound levels is one needs to have an attitude of letting go to clinging onto this world clinging onto having things the way you want you know grasping clinging onto these things so one needs to be able to let go of these you know, and then also to practice with a certain level of diligence which, you know, like diligence What does diligence mean again? Not necessary.
I don’t want to talk about joyful effort at this point. Mean diligence in terms of Perseverance? Yeah, perseverance in terms of, you know, keep on going. Okay? Joyful effort I would describe a little bit differently.
So it’s the kind of, you know, just keep on going. Keep on trying, right? So one needs to practice it with that diligence but also with a very clear and precise knowing of what you’re doing, what you’re doing. Clearly understanding the instructions so that you don’t waste your time or that you don’t go off into la la land. I mean sometimes people think wow that was such a good meditation I was so concentrated and actually they were almost asleep but they didn’t realize it.
You know it’s like my mind wasn’t distracted in that meditation at all. That’s because it was just about asleep. I remember that one. Mindfulness means not to be forgetful, not forgetting the object of your attention. And mindfulness also needs to be accompanied by what we call equanimity which means a stable mind, a mind that’s not impressed by whatever might appear in the mind.
See at the moment we try to meditate on the breath and you remember a movie you saw last night and the mind is kind of impressed to think about that movie again and it forgets that it’s meditating on the breath. Or you remember some argument you had with someone. Oh, I tell you, you can have very good mindfulness of arguments and problems. You can remember all the details and you can go over them so precisely, slow, clearly in the mind. But when your object of meditation is your breath, then that is just a distraction.
So the idea is not to be forgetful and to have this equanimity, this stable mind that’s not impressed whatever appears by whatever appears in the mind and it should be continuous not mindful for a minute of the breath and then off somewhere else. Idea is to cultivate this continuous mindfulness and this continuous mindfulness is really based upon a letting go. A letting go, a real deep letting go. Where you actually are not interested by the distractions that come into the mind. Okay, you just let them go.
It’s like they’ll come up so you’re meditating on the breath and you remember the movie from last night but you just let that go. That’s come up let it go. You don’t get involved with it. What happens with us we find that that’s much more interesting than meditating on the breath. Correct Raj?
So then we go through oh yes the name of the character was this and they did that and oh this is how I felt. You know there’s this whole mental conversation that goes on and all these feelings come up and remembering the breath you’ve completely forgotten it. So you’ve got to be able to say I’m not interested in that at the moment. You let it go. The same with you meditating on the breath and you hear the phone ringing.
Normally if we hear the phone ringing it’s just kind of immediately that we go off to answer the phone don’t we? So again if you’re trying to cultivate your mindfulness in order to develop your concentration then the idea is phone ringing, let it go. And to be honest for us to really spiritually develop and to transform like I’ve talked about before overcoming the delusions, the disturbing attitudes in the mind and developing the positive qualities and transforming to the extent that we’re able to be a benefit for others then there is a hell of a lot that we’ve got to learn to let go of. We’ve got to let go of our ego. We’ve got to let go of having everything the way we want.
We’ve got to let go of our anger. There’s a lot of things that we have to let go of and if you can’t even let go of the ringing of the telephone while you’re meditating on your breath, do you reckon it’s possible to let go of the ego and let go of the attachment and all that? I think it’s pretty difficult. Letting go is very, very important and you can’t underestimate actually the training of beginning to meditate on the breath and letting go of all of the other distractions and just being content with meditating on the breath. But meditating on the breath is only a beginning.
It’s only a beginning. So mindfulness practice is really helping us to be more aware of the present moment of an object and to let go of this preoccupation with longing after things from the past or thinking about things from the past or fantasizing about the future. I mean those things, thinking about the past, fantasizing about the future, they’re quite harmless a way, those kind of things, but they can contribute to stress, they can contribute to fear, they can contribute to our unsatisfactoriness. Mindfulness practice is learning how to overcome our preoccupation so that we can see much more clearly what is happening in our lived experience rather than always being in the past or in the future, you know, bringing us into the present. And by doing that we develop greater clarity, we develop greater trust and also sort of an integrity.
Becomes more real if you like. It doesn’t become made up. It becomes more real. And so mindfulness is awareness. It’s a characteristic of awareness and it’s an awareness that doesn’t judge, that doesn’t have aversion, that doesn’t cling, you know.
And so when we develop that quality of not judging and not grasping or clinging and not having aversion then we begin to untangle is that the word? Untangle? Ourselves from the habits we have, the habitual reactions we have, you know. Because as I said before, if there’s something that we don’t like we react. We react with anger.
So when we’re mindful, when we’ve got a much more, you know, this kind of quality of mindfulness within our mind we’re not judging and we’re not reacting. So it’s already starting to help us become free from our experiences of problems and suffering and it helps us to become much more kind to ourselves actually, friendlier towards ourselves. We’re able to develop with mindfulness we develop a much more compassionate relationship with ourselves and also with others. So mindfulness is the practice of being not forgetting and being attentively present. So if our object of mindfulness is the breath, that’s what we’re focused on.
But remember I’ve already said about bodhicitta mindfulness, having that sort of motivation, that not forgetting that motivation with everything that we do. So we’re having that awareness, that awareness or that mindfulness, that remembrance of bodhicitta, of this altruistic compassionate attitude, that is with us all the time. Whether we’re mindful of the breath, whether we’re working, whether we’re walking, you know like that. So it’s practice just like practicing the piano, just like practicing to be an athlete. It’s a skill that develops and you know the idea is to relax with it because often with these kind of things we have expectations and we think that our progress should be exponential, that’s a good word, you know.
But it’s better if we just set aside any expectations, any preconceptions or often we judge ourselves, often we’re quite self conscious, know, and just relax and just develop awareness of what’s happening in the present. So daily meditation practice actually helps to do this. So I thought maybe maybe what we could do is to try and do some mindfulness practice on the breath to begin with. And this mindfulness of the breath, it’s an awareness of the breath, it’s not an exercise in breathing. Okay?
Because very often when we start to meditate on the breath we start to control our breathing or try to breathe in a certain way. But it’s not an exercise in breathing. We don’t have to adjust our way of breathing in any way. We don’t need to force it. We don’t need to control our breathing.
We don’t need to bring it deep down into our belly. I mean you do those kind of things, those breathing exercises with yoga and that’s fine, but that’s not what we’re doing here. Okay? We’re simply attending to the breath. We’re getting to know the breath as it is.
You know whether it’s short or long, whether it’s deep, whether it’s shallow, whether it’s smooth breathing, whether it’s rough, you know, it doesn’t really matter. We’re just aware of it. Then when we get distracted, because we will get distracted, don’t expect that everybody’s able to sit and only notice the breath and not get distracted. Often we think that we’re the only ones that have got these distractions happening and everyone else looks so perfect. But we’re all distracted.
So when that happens the idea is to remember that all we need to do is be aware of the breath. Okay? Ah! Don’t forget. Remind yourself.
So we can use the breathing beginning right? And we use the remembrance, the mindfulness of breathing really to help anchor ourselves in the present moment. And when we’re able to rest with an awareness of the breathing then we’re actually helping to or starting to counteract the distractions which are really distractions are very strong. They’re a very strong force. Our minds are distracted most of the time, my mind is anyway.
So when we’re resting in the breath we’re starting to counteract the distractions and when we train the mind, the heart, the body to become settled you know, this is what we do in mindfulness, we train them to become settled and sort of to become unified, you know. One place, one time, one thing, one moment, you know. If your mind is supposed to be sitting in meditation and yet your mind is thinking about what you did at work today then your mind and your body aren’t really in the same place are they? And then when the mind and the body are split up like that then we’re losing a sort of a holistic view of ourselves. So mindfulness of breathing is just such a great ally.
You know when you’re getting angry you know how we have this habit count to ten? You know we go and usually we go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, nine, ten you know but if you can just focus on the breathing coming and going that moves you away from focusing on your anger and so the breathing, mindfulness of your breathing becomes your best friend. It stops you from getting angry and reacting. So in ways being mindful of the breathing and being so familiar with that and remembering that throughout your life. When your life is going up and down mindfulness of the breathing helps to become this kind of stable, equanimous, equanimity kind of it’s a constant if you like in your life.
It helps you to stop being so kind of riding the emotional roller coaster, you know up one moment down the next. Doesn’t mean you become bland and boring but you become more stable and it can help you to let go, I said before is a very important thing. We identify so strongly. I’ve said the other night we take ourselves so seriously so mindfulness of the breathing can help to let go of this kind of identification which can like freeze the body and freeze the mind. So it’s really very, very powerful.
So let’s do some mindfulness of breathing. Are there any questions before we do that? I’ll instruct us how to do it. The moment I pay attention to my breathing, I have a feeling that it doesn’t remain Okay, very good. The idea is we shouldn’t be looking at it in the beginning as to whether it’s long or short.
Those things don’t matter. That’s the point. Those things don’t matter. One focuses just on the awareness breath coming and going. And the way to do it is not too tight or not too loose.
It’s just like if you’ve got a violin or any stringed instrument, if you tighten the strings too much what will happen? They’ll break. If they’re too loose then what will happen? It’s an awful sound. It’s the same with the mind.
You don’t get too tight because if you get too tight you’re going to break. It’s not going really work and if it’s too loose then the mind is all over the place. So it’s about finding that middle way and I think the way I like to kind of focus on the breathing is like I’m really watching it and I almost feel like I sit back like this and I just observe it I’m just looking at the breath you know with my arms folded a bit like oh yeah let’s have a look at you how do you look like you know and so I don’t get too I don’t get involved with breathing. I don’t try to tell it how it should be or anything like. I’m just kind of looking back just watching and it’s similar to things like well you do have cafes here you know like what do you call them on the footpaths?
Yeah, Alfresco. You’re sitting in a well you have lots of these in Holland, in Europe you know especially everyone’s out there in the summer and you see people walking past. You notice them walking past but you don’t get up and you follow them. Right? So it’s the same with when a distraction comes up in the mind you notice there’s a distraction but you don’t get up and follow it.
You don’t start having a conversation with it you know. So you still will notice but yeah so it’s a bit like sitting on a cafe just watching people come and go and you don’t start judging them. Oh don’t like what she’s wearing. No you don’t do that. You just notice they’re coming and they’re going.
Coming and they’re going. It’s the same with breath. You just notice the breath is coming and going. You don’t start judging whether it’s a good breath. Oh I’m breathing good today.
You don’t get involved with that. Don’t start judging whether it’s short or long or anything like that. You just notice it. Know and it’s not with this judging and you don’t get frustrated either. It’s not like I should have been concentrating better.
That doesn’t help. So you don’t get frustrated and you don’t have any expectations. You just kind of just relax with it. And of course the idea is you don’t need to do it for very long periods of time but if you can do it for three or four minutes fantastic. That’s really very, very good.
Really, very, very good. Alright. Let’s have a try. So let’s begin with just sitting comfortably but in a sort of an upright position so that we’re quite alert. And maybe gently close your eyes.
I mean the ideal is to have your eyes just slightly open, but then all I can concentrate is trying to keep my eyes just slightly open. So I find it more comfortable to close. And maybe begin with taking a couple of deep breaths in and out. Just settle into your body, like relaxing any kind of holding on some tightness in the body or any obvious tension. Just remind yourself of course why you would be doing this, you know, because the idea is from the Mahāyāna vehicle of Buddhism to always be mindful of the motivation, the altruistic motivation.
Just remind yourself, yes I’m going to practice mindfulness of the breathing now that it may help me to become more aware, to develop my concentration and my wisdom and my skill so that I’m able to benefit all beings including myself. And then just breathing normally. Bring your awareness to your body. Just sense just for a short while how the body kind of presents itself to you. I mean there’s no particular way to be but just just notice how you are at this moment.
And then from within the body, this part of the body, become aware of your breathing, how how it happens to appear. There’s no right or wrong way to breathe when you’re doing mindfulness practice, but the key is simply to notice how it appears right now. So you let the breath breathe itself. It’s like you receive the breath, the breathing in awareness. So simply notice how your breathing is right now.
Can you notice where in your body you feel the breath most clearly. It could be the chest or the abdomen rising or falling. Could be that sensation of air entering the nose, passing the upper lip. Wherever Wherever the breath tends to appear most clearly, then allow that area to be home, the center of your attention. So keep your attention connected with the breathing in and out, the inhalations, the exhalations, sensing the physical sensations so that you let go of the concerns in the mind that are like on the surface.
Whenever the mind wanders away, whenever it becomes distracted, you gently bring it back to the awareness of the breath. You don’t need to judge the mind that wanders away just like you don’t judge the breath. Soon as you recognize the mind has wandered, then very kindly, very gently, almost playfully if you like. Return your awareness to the breath. If you like to try and keep the awareness, contact between the awareness and the breath, then you can label or use what we call a mental note.
So it’s just softly like a whisper in the mind, labeling in and out, encouraging your awareness to stay present with the breath. There’s no need to force your attention to the breath. The way we train ourselves is to use the gentle power of very kindly, very gently returning your awareness to the breath, resting with it every time that you’re distracted. Even if you have to do it over and over again, Gently, kindly, simply be aware. The breath naturally coming and going.
Good. Very good. So we can feel happy. Happy with whatever level of awareness we’ve been able to generate. And we can think that it may be a cause for us to increase our mindfulness, our awareness, our wisdom, our compassion so that everything that we do in our life becomes highly meaningful by becoming a cause for the benefit of all beings, including ourself.
Then when you feel ready, begin to move the body. And then finally, open the eyes. It’s interesting, isn’t it? What a difference it makes. Did you can you notice a difference meditating?
How everything sort of calms down. Mind you, I think I could almost go to sleep, but so everything come the energy changes. You know? We calm down. So was that difficult?
Think I went to sleep one more time. You know, I’d come over and focus. Mhmm. I feel quite calm. Mhmm.
But was sleep rather than I mean, is it? Mhmm. It’s good that you recognize that. Mhmm. Yeah.
Sometimes, there’s some people as soon as they sit down and meditate, fall asleep, really fall asleep. And that actually is a sign that they’re tired, that they need rest. And so there are certain times when it’s not advisable to meditate, like when you’ve eaten a good a big meal or when it’s too hot or when you’re really tired because yeah. Then then you’re not able to concentrate so well. It’s too hot?
Because it’s almost like the brain fries. Think sometimes it’s just too hot and sort of dealing with the heat takes so much energy out of you. I become very lethargic in the heat, although I love it. I don’t get it very much. But I think that’s what happens.
So in fact, in in Holland, we advise people to turn down the heating when they’re going to meditate, maybe to open the window, let some fresh air come in. So it just depends. K. So why is it that it’s it seems like your body temperature rises anyway. You know?
You get warm. Mhmm. Mhmm. Why is that? I don’t know if that happens for everyone.
No. I get colder. Yeah. I think I think it is it’s different. Yeah.
It has happened with a number of people. I certainly get quite warm and that’s why often we’re advised to sit in a meditation posture where the arms are out from the body like this, especially in Australia, because the air can flow through and that can help to regulate our temperature. But I think that when we’re calm and when we’re concentrating, the body’s probably operating much more efficiently. So, you know, that’s also well, it depends on the person, of course. And I think maybe that, you know, meditative stabilization works better.
I think it depends on the person, though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, of course, just like Helen said, you know, you’re not so distracted by external things so then maybe you become a little bit more aware.
But if you’re becoming aware of your body temperature then you’re not remembering the object that you’re focusing on. So anyone else got any comments about doing that meditation? I become aware of my body sensations. I start switching between the the the the sensations. Mhmm.
Raj is just that little bit step ahead of me every time because that’s actually something that I want to go on to to next. But is it okay? It do that switching. Okay. It happens without my intention.
Idea is to say that we’re supposed to be concentrating on the breath. The idea is to every time you get distracted to bring yourself back to the breath because that’s your object of focus, your object of mindfulness. But when something else becomes so demanding that it’s just pulling you away and it’s so demanding, then it’s good to look at that, you know, to go and examine that and give that all your mindfulness. Say for example, I don’t know, you’re sitting on chairs so you’re lovely and comfortable but when you’re sitting cross legged it often happens that your leg goes to sleep. True?
Yeah. Yeah. So then it can be that you’re trying to meditate on your breath but the pain in your leg becomes excruciating. It becomes so demanding that every time you say no I’m not thinking about that, I’m concentrating on the breath’, it pulls you away immediately. So then the idea is to concentrate on that sensation, on that physical sensation and the more attention you give to it after a while it disappears.
There’s something else that will start to demand your attention. So that’s what we’re going to go on to in the next section when we start to talk about mindfulness, more of the body and the physical sensations. But this one quite important point want to make before we sort of move on further is that it really is about being kind with yourself when you’re distracted, not getting frustrated, not starting to judge, being very kind with yourself. Has anybody ever had a puppy? Little puppy dog?
You still are. Know you’ve got to do little dog. But trying to train a puppy, like to tell it to stay, you you say stay and the puppy looks at you and it won’t be able to stay very long and then it’ll go running off and you bring it back and you say stay and it goes running off and it does this over and over again. If you try to hold that puppy down and say you stay it’s going to squirm and become very uncomfortable and it’ll bite you. True?
It’s the same with the mind. If you kind of try to force it too much or become authoritarian, you do as I say, then your mind’s not going to like it. It’s going to bite you. So it’s a matter of being very patient and being very kind just like with a puppy. You know being very kind, patient, positively reinforcing.
That’s what you do with puppies isn’t it? Positively reinforcing. You give it a little something to eat don’t you? What do you do with your mind? What kind of tidbit do you give the mind?
By feeling happy, just by whatever you have been able to do feeling isn’t that fantastic? Rejoicing in that. Even if it’s not what you expected, well that just expectations lead to disappointments, you know, but you kind of encourage yourself, you rejoice in what ever you’ve been able to do. So you just keep constantly training, having the patience, being kind, being gentle, positively reinforcing. It’s what we do with puppy dogs, it’s what we do with children, what we do with employees, you know, and it’s the same with our mind, same with the mind.
Yeah, very good. I mean the pleasant feeling can be a distraction just like the unpleasant feeling can be a distraction. If the meditation was about concentrating on being mindful of the positive feeling, that’s a different matter. But the meditation object was the breath. So the idea is to remember that you’re training the mind to be able to direct it.
At the moment it seems like the mind has a mind of its own. It running off just like the puppy dog. It goes off to whatever is the biggest distraction or the most interesting distraction and so it takes some time to actually train it to be able to focus on whatever you want it to do. And that’s really important not just like okay so being able to focus on the breath’, you know, that’s so important. It’s what the mind the quality that develops in the mind of being able to do that.
This means that, for example, when we’ve got a big problem, if you think about something in your life that’s been an issue, a problem, it’s like you can’t sleep. You can’t sleep because the mind is thinking about this thing the whole time. It’s, you know, going over and over and over and the more you think about it the more upset you get and you lose sleep, you lose your appetite etc. You know the mind and you say ‘I know I shouldn’t do that. I know I’ve got to let this go.’ I’m sure you’ve had the experience, ‘I know I should let this go’ but it’s so strong it sucks you in.
It’s like a vacuum cleaner goes. Our vacuum cleaner doesn’t make that noise, does it? Anyway. Sometimes. Okay.
Depends on the vacuum cleaner. Well, the straw and the milk shake. Gosh. I haven’t had a milkshake since I’ve been in Australia. Must do that.
You know, the mind gets so sucked in. That’s also what happens. The mind gets sucked into the anger and the other disturbing attitudes, disturbing emotions. So by developing this ability to not get distracted and go back to the breath or the object of your meditation, you’re developing a developing a skill in your mind not to be sucked in by distractions. So that when there’s a difficult situation that happens, rather than the mind being so totally sucked in, you’re able to say, okay, I’m not going to be.
I’m going to concentrate on something else. And you’re able to do that. And that’s what will give you the real peace in your mind and the nice feeling, you know, rather than being sucked in and drawn down and going in that downward spiral. So it’s a very, very effective, technique, you know. And that’s that’s why that’s why I said at the beginning, it’s not about meditation.
It’s not about feeling good. Because if that’s what you always want to try and do when you sit and meditate is to feel good. You never really develop that skill to be able to feel good even when there’s difficult situations. And that’s really the the the art the art to be able to be balanced and sane sane and in control without being a control freak, but in control with your whole life. And that’s how you of this is how you protect yourself, this is how you benefit yourself, you help yourself become happier, you don’t harm yourself, and it’s also the way you don’t cause harm to others, the way you actually help benefit others.
So that’s why having the motivation, being very clear about why you’re doing these things and what the benefit of doing it, they’re so important. To start with, if you didn’t call it That’s okay. If you didn’t call it breath meditation, If I keep the label as meditation on mindfulness Mhmm. I’m more able to do it Mhmm. Rather than just that.
Okay. Because that restriction Mhmm. Breaks the tension. Yes. And I’m a person who breaks loose sometimes.
Yeah. I It is not done intentionally. Mhmm. I find that happening without my wanting to. That’s why I think I can understand what you’re saying very well and I think that often we narrow ourselves by making these kind of labels or having these kind of this is how it has to be’, we’re so kind of narrow in a way.
Think that having a motivation at the beginning is really important that it becomes our choice, that it’s not something that we’re forcing ourselves into. Like being a monk or a nun for example or choosing actually to live within vows. People often think oh you make a great sacrifice’ and some people find it very difficult to live within a certain code of ethics but if it’s something that you’re kind of forcing upon yourself then yes it’s something that you would rebel against, something that you would find uncomfortable. But if it’s something very natural, something that you kind of grow into, that you fit into, that’s a natural process, it’s much easier. So it’s again with mindfulness if the aim is not to be able to focus on the breath coming and going for five minutes but to develop that skill just like we were talking about then to be able to focus the mind, to be able to develop your concentration, the control of your mind then that’s a very different motivation.
And especially if you keep thinking to develop these kind of skills as a tool, as a method to be of benefit for yourself and for others then there’s a very different atmosphere and there’s a lot more space, a lot more scope in what you’re able to do. So I think you’ve learned something, you’ve had a big realization. Anyway, how about we have some lunch? How long do you think you need for lunch?