I've meditated every day for about fifty years, starting in 1970 when I was in college and began studying yoga with a crazed Greek guy whose Christananda Ashram blended Christian and Hindu philosophies in a decidedly weird fashion (for details, see here).
After giving up on the Greek yoga teacher, for the first 35 years of so I followed the meditation practice enjoined by the Indian religious organization I belonged to at the time, Radha Soami Satsang Beas.
It had a strong mystical bent, being focused on concentrating one's attention totally within the mind/brain, with the aim of detaching consciousness from this physical world and entering higher regions of supernatural reality.
All that now strikes me as highly implausible and unappealingly dualistic.
So I've embraced a Buddhist style of Vipassana/Mindfulness meditation. Mainly I follow my breath, sometimes counting breaths, and sometimes simply being aware of my breathing and other perceptions.
I also enjoy listening to guided meditations by Sam Harris via his Waking Up iPhone app (plus Tamara Levitt's Daily Calm).
From his books, I'm aware that Harris has had considerable training in Dzogchen, a Tibetan form of Buddhism. So I assume that his Waking Up meditations reflect that philosophy to a considerable degree.
I found today's guided meditation to be insightful. Nothing special or new, really. What Harris said just appealed to me.
As is common with Buddhist meditation teachers I've listened to via the Internet, Harris started off by suggesting meditating with eyes closed, then becoming aware of the breath. After a few minutes, he said something like, "If you've been captured by thought, bring your attention back to the breath."
There's nothing wrong with thinking, of course. Obviously it's an essential part of being human. However, i agree with Harris that it's the automaticity of thought which is the problem. Or, if "problem" is too strong a word, perhaps "issue" is a better term.
Thoughts do tend to repeat. (I almost added "like a broken record," but likely many people haven't experienced a scratched record playing the same part over and over, a fairly common occurrence in my record-playing youth.)
And those repeated thoughts do have a certain automatic quality to them. It's as if the mind is stuck in a certain pattern, based on prior experiences, where habitual thoughts spring up unbidden. That wouldn't be a problem, or issue, if the thoughts were productive.
Often, though, and maybe even usually, unbidden thoughts aren't necessary or useful. They just seem to be the mind talking to itself. And since I obviously am myself (same is true of you), this inner dialogue is kind of weird.
Just imagine if our thoughts could be amplified and broadcast to people around us. Much of the time they'd view us as stangely as passers-by react to a homeless person with mental problems who is chattering away on a street corner, making very little sense.
So today Harris suggested that if we can markedly reduce the automaticity of thought, what's left are perceptions and emotions. Meaning, seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, along with the feelings that arise within us.
This puts us into closer contact with the only reality that is known with certainty to exist: this world, this universe. We can perceive it directly, whereas there's no demonstrable evidence that supernatural realms exist anywhere but in the imagination, fantasies, and illusions of the minds of religious believers.
What about intentions, though? Aren't these necessary to perform the many actions we need to engage in each day? Brushing our teeth, going to work, cooking dinner, writing emails, and so much more. And aren't thoughts like "I've got to wash the dishes" essential for action?
Well, the way my mind works, and likely yours is similar to mine, a thoughtless intention almost always precedes an action-related thought. For example, when I write, like I am right now, an intuitive image of what I want to say comes before the words that I use to express that intention.
Thus it seems highly probable that each of us could go on a "thought diet" without losing any of the functionality of our mind/brain. While thoughts appear to be highly useful when, say, a difficult problem needs to be addressed, likely we could ditch many or most of our daily thoughts and still function just fine.
The reason being two-fold.
One, many thoughts fall into the automatic category, being repetitive habits of self-talk that serve little or no purpose. Two, often thoughts interfere with actions that we're already skilled at. This is reflected in the oft-heard sports commentary, "She's playing out of her mind."
Meaning, highly skillfully, without the distraction of unnecessary thoughts.
This is readily apparent in basketball games where the score is tied near the end of a game, and a player goes to the free throw line. When the player is loose, smiling, and joking with his teammates, it sure seems like a made free throw is more likely than when a player grits his teeth, stares fixedly at the basket, and looks like he's trying really hard.
Life is too short to spend it unduly stressed, tense, and worried. I love to say to myself, Relax and Let go. Or, I simply relax and let go, which is even better.
Hi Brian Ji
You wrote
"After a few minutes, he said something like, "If you've been captured by thought, bring your attention back to the breath."
"There's nothing wrong with thinking, of course. Obviously it's an essential part of being human. However, i agree with Harris that it's the automaticity of thought which is the problem. Or, if "problem" is too strong a word, perhaps "issue" is a better term."
When you being yourself back, do you notice feeling differently?
A good and a bad?
Thoughts are often conditioned to emotional reactions. So when you start thinking about all that needs to be done, along with it comes a little anxiety. But by pulling the mind away and placing it on something neutral or calming by association, this helps turn down, or off, anxiety - provoking thoughts. And that has substantially positive benefits to our health and our thinking.
Imagine that normal anxiety always there in the background. We are generally unconscious of it, and unaware of how our behavior is a reaction to such anxiety... To fight or flee, or just give up at the least stress. Thoughts and deadlines, insults from others, late bills that need to be paid, dishes that need cleaning, lawn that needs fertilizing, seeding, mowing, watering, trees need pruning, lawn mower gas needs buying, oil needs changing, and someone reminding me., report due today, presentation coming up this morning, .. Why am I even alive? How do I get through the day? And Auntie is ill, what shall I do? One thought leads to a chain, and often follows a tiny anxiety like a tree branch back to the tree trunk anxiety, and before it gets to the actual roots, we can no longer sit still.
So if you break that up, you can relax. You can build a sanctuary of peace by moving back to your breath.
But what if you could relax and watch those thoughts as they move? What if, instead of breaking up that chain, pulling anything anywhere, you let them take that natural journey to the trunk and then the roots, the very source of that line of thought? They very foundation of all that daily anxiety you were trying to pull away from?
What if you found a method that gave you the strength to see things as they are without interrupting them? And without being affected by the least?
Is it possible that all of their own that line of thought would naturally find itself revealing something deeper about you? A deeper peace? Something you weren't aware of? Some greater knowledge that, while not always pretty, leads to an even deeper thought of profound creative beauty? A deeper peace based in the gravitas of understanding the whole? A natural point of absolute stillness, in reaching the root, the full destination of the thought, like the period of a sentence, or the completion of a melody? A more substantial peace that did not require pulling away from, running away from, breaking up anything? That does not require breaking up the train of thought at all? Not avoiding its destination. The discovery that if you accept it, fully attentive, entirely as it is, and travel with that thought into darkness, to its destination, that it will move further out, will move to a place of peace entirely unaided? That the destination of every thought, allowed to progress without reaction but full attention, is always a higher peace and perfect stillness, naturally, on its own without your help? But in fact with only your quiet and complete attention?
That's a different kind of meditation. From a deeper place.
Posted by: Spence Tepper | August 30, 2019 at 09:30 PM
For example, when I write, like I am right now, an intuitive image of what I want to say comes before the words that I use to express that intention.
Thus it seems highly probable that each of us could go on a "thought diet" without losing any of the functionality of our mind/brain. While thoughts appear to be highly useful when, say, a difficult problem needs to be addressed, likely we could ditch many or most of our daily thoughts and still function just fine.
Fascinating topic. I experience the same sort of intuitive flow but
the mind almost always manages to interject a subtle "But, what if",
"Are you sure", "Think it through". All time-tested mental recipes for
entanglement. My challenge is to deepen the mindfulness to not
engage.
Posted by: Dungeness | August 30, 2019 at 11:18 PM
Hi Dungeness
You wrote
" I experience the same sort of intuitive flow but
the mind almost always manages to interject a subtle "But, what if",
"Are you sure", "Think it through". All time-tested mental recipes for
entanglement. "
Entanglement or intuition? Maybe these are suggestions from the unconscious because at one level something isn't quite connecting, and you need to consider it a little more deeply.
How does one distinguish between pure unfocused distraction and a solid intuitive hunch that we need a plan B?
Posted by: Spence Tepper | August 31, 2019 at 12:13 AM
Imagine how less annoying most meditators and mystic yoga practitioners would all be if they just said what you did. "It appealed to me."
What else is there to say? You like something, so you do it. It's an enjoyable or otherwise desirable activity to the person doing it. No need to change the world or seek ego obliterating union with the "ineffable absolute."
Posted by: Jesse | August 31, 2019 at 12:34 AM
Theres a simple system you can google : you tube called:
YOGA NIDRA .try it...it WORKS too and is very centering
Lying down just dont fall asleep.
It gets one in touch with entire system and drops all of it including the mind nto a very deep centering place.
Can follow the guided meditation as often as you wish..
Chy
Posted by: Chy | August 31, 2019 at 01:11 AM
Perhaps a bit Buddhistic but this is my take on the process of meditation:-
Seeing that meditation arises as a natural consequence of awareness.
Seeing how the mind is composed of information.
Seeing how information continually creates and sustains a ‘self’.
Seeing how identifying with a ‘self’ creates a ‘me’ with a seemingly fixed identity.
Seeing how attachment to identity arises.
Seeing how attachment to identity creates suffering and conflict.
Seeing that whatever explanations proceed from the mind is partial and ever changing.
Seeing that life is constant change, everything is continuous movement.
Posted by: Turan | August 31, 2019 at 02:05 AM
If anything is pseudo bullshit mumbo jumbo Sam Harris is the epitome of it.
Congrats for chucking out the wheat and hanging on to the chaff.
Posted by: Hariram | August 31, 2019 at 03:13 AM
Entanglement or intuition? Maybe these are suggestions from the unconscious because at one level something isn't quite connecting, and you need to consider it a little more deeply.
How does one distinguish between pure unfocused distraction and a solid intuitive hunch that we need a plan B?
I'm theorizing that, if your mindfulness is deep, you'll know the difference.
Hm, I'll change "My challenge is to deepen mindfulness to not engage"
to "...SENSE WHEN not to engage" though.
Of course, once the mind knows you're probing for the truth, it'll find
new tricks to make you confuse the two.
Which reminds me of the story about a sleeper who's awakened by
a voice telling him to "wake up, time to meditate". He's suspicious and
finally gets the the mind to admit that it was a " ruse. Why, you ask?
Because crappy meditation doesn't get you anywhere but if you were
to sleep all night and feel guilty, you might redouble effort to meditate
more seriously."
Posted by: Dungeness | August 31, 2019 at 07:21 AM
I'm a bit of a fan of Zen Buddhism, much of it reflects current research and thinking into the questions of self, and mind. It also also gives one something to work in enquiring into the infamous 'who am I' question.
To add to my previous comment on meditation is the axiom common in many forms of Zen (Soto Zen), Chan etc. is :-
To study Buddhism is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.
It makes sense to enquire into the self/mind structure in a world where reactionary thinking and action is the norm.
Posted by: Turan | August 31, 2019 at 12:43 PM