Tag: health

You Have a Choice

A question came up recently in a Drop-In class: what do you do when you’re doing the open awareness mindfulness practice, but the mind is resisting doing the practice and wants to go off onto something else? In this case the ‘something else’ was a broad, spaciousness with a hint of the Buddha Amitabha’s love and a large dollop of pleasure.

We were almost out of time, and so my response was brief. I said, at that point you have a choice. You choose whether you are going to stay with the practice you started with or let the mind go onto some other type of practice. You make a conscious decision.

This is OK as far as it goes, but it’s a bit of a limited answer. So here is a more extended one.

Firstly: what are you choosing?

Secondly: who is choosing?

Both of these are in the realm of Samprajana or ‘clearly knowing’. Let’s look at number one.

When you choose to go towards a different practice mid-practice it’s worth looking at your motivation. This is especially true when – as in this case – there is resistance to being with what’s already happening. What is that resistance about? Usually there is some sort of un-seen view that the experience we’re having is not ‘enough’ – not pleasurable enough, not significant enough. We want ‘more’ and we want something different. Sometimes just recognizing and being with what resistance feels like in the mind is enough to transform the experience.

At times, though, resistance comes when we’re putting in too much effort to be aware and we need to ‘settle back’ and bring a greater quality of relaxation into awareness.

When we ‘clearly know’ what is happening in the body-mind we might decide that the condition of the mind needs something else in the moment. We might realize that the mood is flat or sad, for example, and the awareness is not very strong. We can keep plugging away with bringing mindfulness freshly to each moment, and in fact, that’s what I’d suggest initially. But at a certain point, and especially if the mood is going down, suggesting the awareness is not effective, you might decide to look into your toolbox and see what might help. This action is not coming from resistance to the current experience but ‘samprajana’ raising the question ‘what would be helpful for awareness to grow?’ or ‘what would help the mind quality improve?’

You might then choose to resource the mind through a short metta based practice leading to some uplift of heart-mind. Or to take an anchor to increase steadiness and stability of mind. Or you might open yourself to faith through a Buddha figure you have a connection with. It’s helpful to be clear why you are doing what you’re doing and what your aim is. And once you’ve accomplished some stability or positivity or confidence in yourself, you’re able to return to awareness.

Ideally you make the choice at the beginning of a session of meditation rather than switching part way through, though sometimes that becomes necessary.

So, who is choosing? Who is in the driving seat of the practice? With awareness practice we are training in ‘growing’ the qualities of mindfulness and right view/wisdom. We want them to be strong enough factors in the mind-heart to ‘choose’. They give rise to a more impersonal way of guiding our practice that is not based on personal preferences and conditioned habits of mind. They allow us to access different possibilities and to go where our minds don’t usually go. Understanding and clear seeing is a fruit of this type of mind.

When the desire to switch practice comes, we can ask ourselves is wisdom choosing, or is it craving (with their cousin, aversion)? How much of that ‘wanting’ is the same old conditioned mind going down familiar pathways? And can we strengthen awareness and wisdom further, by recognizing in the moment, what that experience of wanting or not wanting feels like, really know it for what it is?

When awareness becomes stronger, and we develop some momentum in the practice we can more easily identify this benign and impersonal quality directing our practice. With wisdom in the driving seat we can trust where the awareness takes us.

The Power of Vedana

A few years ago, I went through a period of what I could call ‘grace’ or ‘flow’. For several weeks I was extremely happy in a way that was characterised by contentment and ease. Difficult things still happened but the mind didn’t react to them.

Right at the beginning of this time I had to make a solo return journey to Virginia Waters, near London. I’m not a confident driver, particularly when I also have to navigate, and I hadn’t been there before.  To add to the potential stress, it was December, and the return 3-hour drive was after dark. At some point a few miles from my destination I missed a turning and got lost. Luckily, I had the google lady adapting to my errors and between us we got me there in the end.

What struck me during the whole journey, and particularly the part where I didn’t know where I was going, in heavy Christmas traffic, was the lack of stress and anxiety in my system. I felt calm and joyful. When I didn’t know where I was, I did my best to listen to the instructions, and to read the road signs. When I arrived, it was with none of the tension and tiredness I would normally experience in such a situation.

For weeks this continued – sunny, open, skilful and joyful states and no or very low reactivity in the mind. And then gradually it declined, and a more familiar mix of mind states started to reappear.

So, what had precipitated these lovely few weeks?

I’d been investigating craving in the mind for quite a while. What this looked like was being curious whenever I noticed desire in the mind, or the mind was hankering after a particular object. I’d narrowed down my field of craving to fairly obvious ones that arose most days. I was specializing in noticing craving for simple sense objects associated with the sense of taste, though this was just a way to look more deeply into how feeling and craving were working in the mind. I tried to be aware of whenever there was pleasant vedana (feeling tone) in relation to taste, or the mind sense’s desire to taste something (craving).

Rather than either having the object (chocolate, pizza, second helping etc) or intellectualizing myself out of having it, I tried to ‘stay with’ with feeling of liking something or wanting it. Each time the mind latched onto something it desired I’d notice the pleasant feeling associated with the object, and any liking or stronger desire to act on the feeling. I’d ask myself whether that little ‘jump’ between a pleasant feeling and acting on the desire it led to, was inevitable.

Explore further on an online retreat in Dec ’24

I kept the awareness light and steady. I was aware of both the object of desire and the reactions in the mind and body. Sometimes I’d deliberately lean into the pleasant vedana of the desired object and then notice the strong physical sensations, and a sort of mental ‘lift’ of liking that would drive the craving. It was very interesting to the mind to observe in this way, and usually the awareness was strong enough not be overwhelmed by the desire and to not have the tasty thing. It was important to the investigation that I didn’t rely on will power but on awareness, and to see that awareness was often enough.

The night before the long drive I was making an online food order at home. I added some Christmas goodies including my favourite ice cream. As my partner looked down the list, he teased me about the ice cream, and I realized I’d completely forgotten about my craving project. Awareness sort of lit up and came ‘online’ and there was a short inner mental tussle followed by several ‘aha’ moments and realizations around craving.

I remember the quality in the mind was completely ‘cool’ towards the ice cream though able to see very clearly the thoughts and different layers of conditioning towards it, and towards the treat mentality I was prone to. Feeling was just feeling, nothing more.

I had a clear sense that it wasn’t inevitable that I act on pleasant feelings. And there was a big moment when I realized that the same was true of all desired objects. I understood that seeing through craving, not acting on it wasn’t a once or twice action but an always action – and I experienced this as liberating.

Even though the effects of these ‘seeings’ lasted a few short weeks, it was very helpful and confidence-giving to see the effects on my whole being of even partial understandings. Since then other ‘seeings’ pop up regularly – the bizarreness of preferring one food stuff over another (not liking apricots in salad, or bananas in curry), or through the mind sense, being with awareness of the unpleasant feelings of anger or shame and feeling their energy liberate.

The earlier experience left a lasting – though inconsistent – habit of ‘staying with’ the feeling. This helps me recognize the craving or aversion present. The mind has developed the habit of finding its own feelings, sensations and thoughts more interesting than having the nice thing or blaming or rejecting the unpleasant aversive object.

Sometimes I notice the feeling tone of ignorance, the mind quality that actively ignores what’s best. The feeling is fairly neutral but undiscerning. The tone is one of low energy with a powerful wilfulness that looks to counter awareness with unawareness. It’s a toss up in those moments who will win out!

‘Staying with’ the feeling with awareness has its own emotional tone. It’s one of satisfaction and meaningfulness that is very close to understanding. Staying with vedana rather than getting lost in the ‘object’ lessens and alleviates dukkha and dis-ease. It helps awareness and right view flourish and strengthen. Awareness of vedana has the power to bring suffering to an end if we can keep the required focus on it.

Explore Vedana further with me in Ways to the Deep: an online retreat between Xmas and New Year.