Being Present

In the blog about Essential Practice I I talked about how to start a basic foundational practice of following the rise and fall of the breath in the belly.

This first stage of practice asks us to follow our breath and the sensations of breathing occurring in the rise and fall of our belly with each inhale and exhale. When we find ourselves distracted by the mind wandering to other bodily sensations, sounds, or thoughts, we notice our attention has wandered and guide it back to the sensations of breathing in the belly without judgment or criticism.

It is natural to have the mind and attention wandering in our practices, especially early in our habit-building. We often refer to this busyness of the mind wandering as a monkey mind. A mind constantly chattering at us or wandering from one thing to another with little prompting.

The next stage of our practice, once we feel comfortable with having managed to hold our attention on our breath and belly movement for a few weeks, is to bring curiosity to where the mind wanders.

Here are some guidelines for strengthening and deepening our mindfulness meditation practice.

We start with attention and concentration on the rise and fall of the belly with each inhalation and exhalation. We quietly whisper “rise” and “fall” with each movement.

Soon, our mindfulness – awareness in the present moment – leads us to become aware that our mind has wandered to another sense – touch, bodily sensations, sounds, thoughts, or smells.

When we become aware of our attention on another object, note and label where the attention is. For instance, noticing sounds, we whisper “hearing, hearing” to ourselves about the sense that drew our attention. Or it could be noticing our mind wandered to our thoughts. Then, our noting would be “thinking, thinking.” Maybe our attention landed on the sensations of an itch. Our noting would be “feeling, feeling.” Often, we experience other bodily sensations that are uncomfortable while sitting in meditation. When this happens, and our attention wanders to the discomfort, we notice and label the discomfort with “pain, pain” or a direct description of the discomfort, such as “tight, hot, stinging, etc.”

After noting what has drawn our mind and attention away, we simply return to the original object of our mediation – our breath and the rise and fall of the belly.

One teacher, Bhante Gunarantana (Mindfulness in Plain English), suggests keeping a couple of questions in our practice toolbox to ask as we meditate. One question is, “Am I concentrating right now?” In other words, is my attention on the object of my meditation, my breath. If the answer is no, return attention to the breath and begin again. Another question is, “Where is my attention right now?” Return awareness to the breath if it is on something other than the breath and rise and fall of the belly.

Remember in all of these practices to be kind to yourself. The mind wanders; it is the nature of the mind. It is the nature of our attention and awareness to meander without consistent training to hold them in one place. It happens to all of us. This is common to all of our practices. A little gentleness and kindness about these habits of mind can help us stay engaged in our meditation practices and cultivate more stability of mind over time without activating the inner critic.