Search Inside Yourself: Increase Productivity, Creativity and Happiness [ePub edition]
either, both, and neither. The real answer is, each has its upsides and downsides, so it is good to understand and play with the options.
Keeping your eyes closed during meditation is good; it helps you stay calm and keeps away visual distractions. The problem is it becomes easy to fall asleep. If you keep your eyes open, you have the reverse problem. You do not drift into sleep so easily anymore, but you get distracted by visual objects. What to do? What to do? There are two compromises, one temporal and one spatial.
The temporal compromise is to start with your eyes closed and then open them occasionally when you start drifting toward sleep. The spatial compromise is, if you can, keep your eyes half open. I like to joke that this is easy for me because I am Chinese. But really, the idea here is to open your eyes slightly, look slightly downward, and gaze at nothing in particular. In my own experience, this last option is the optimal one. I suggest trying each option out to see what works for you.
Often in our meditation, we get distracted by sounds, thoughts, or physical sensations. I suggest a four-step plan to work with such distractions:
1. Acknowledge.
2. Experience without judging or reacting.
3. If you need to react, continue maintaining mindfulness.
4. Let it go.
Acknowledge
Just acknowledge that something is happening.
Experience, Without Judging or Reacting
Whatever it is that you are experiencing, just experience it. Do not judge it to be good or bad. Let it be, let it be, as a famous song suggests. If it is possible, try not to react to it. If you have to react (for example, you really have to scratch), try to take five breaths before reacting. The reason to do this is to practice creating space between stimulus and reaction.
The more we are able to create space between stimulus and reaction, the more control we will have over our emotional lives. This skill that you develop here during sitting can be generalized to daily life.
If You Need to React, Continue Maintaining Mindfulness
If you need to react, for example you need to scratch or to stand up, maintain mindfulness over three things: intention, movement, and sensation. Remember that the goal of this practice is not keeping still; the goal is mindfulness. So as long as you maintain mindfulness, anything you do is fair game. This means, for example, that if you need to react to an itch on your face, first bring attention to the sensation of itching, then to the intention to scratch, and finally to the movement of your arm and finger and the sensation of scratching on your face.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
Let It Go
If it wants to be let go of, let it go. If not, just let it be.
Remember that letting go is not forcing something to go away. Instead, letting go is an invitation. We generously allow the recipient to choose whether or not to accept the invitation, and we are happy either way. When we let go of something that distracts our meditation, we are gently inviting it to stop distracting us, but we generously allow it to decide whether or not it wants to stay. If it decides to leave, that is fine. If it decides to stay, that is fine too. We treat it with kindness and generosity during its entire presence. This is the practice of letting go.
Finally, if you do not remember a single thing you read in this chapter so far (maybe because you do not care about this book but your wife made you sit down and read it), happily, Jon Kabat-Zinn has a one-phrase summary of this entire chapter:
Breathing as if your life depends on it.
If you can only remember a single phrase in this chapter, remember this, and you will understand mindfulness meditation.
Sitting Time
Now that you have learned about the theory and practice of mindfulness meditation, let us now spend a few minutes sitting in mindfulness.
There are a number of ways you can do this. The simplest is just to extend the two-minute mindfulness exercise from the previous chapter. First, sit in a meditation posture that allows you to be alert and relaxed at the same time. Then whenever you are comfortable doing so, you may practice the Easy Way (which is to pay attention to the process of breathing and gently bringing attention back every time it wanders away), or the Easier Way (which is to sit without agenda and simply shift from doing to being). If you like, you may switch between Easy and Easier anytime. Do that for maybe ten minutes, or as long as you would like to. That will be your meditation practice.
If you prefer something more formal and structured, you can apply the Process Model of Mindfulness Meditation discussed earlier in this chapter. Start by sitting in a meditation posture that allows you to be alert and relaxed at the same time. Once you are comfortable, invite an intention to arise, one that is based on why you are sitting here, which will encourage you to continue your practice. Bring your attention to the process of breathing. If the mind is calm and concentrated, abide in that mind. If the mind gets distracted by a sound, a thought, or an itch, acknowledge the source of the distraction, experience it without judging it, and let it go if it wants to be let go. If you need to move, maintain mindfulness of intention, movement, and sensation. Gently bring your attention back to your breath. If self-criticism or self-judgment arises, invite a thought of self-directed kindness to arise, if it wants to. If not, just let it be; everything is fine. Do this for ten minutes, or as long as you would like to.
MINDFULNESS MEDITATION
Let us begin by sitting comfortably. Sit in a position that enables you to be both relaxed and alert at the same time, whatever that means to you. Or, if you prefer, you may sit like a majestic mountain, whatever that means to you.
Let us now take three slow, deep breaths to inject both energy and relaxation into our practice.
Now, let us breathe naturally and bring a very gentle attention to your breath. You can either bring attention to the nostrils, the abdomen, or the entire body of breath, whatever that means to you. Become aware of in breath, out breath, and space in between.
(Short pause)
If you like, you can think of this exercise as resting the mind on the breath. You can visualize the breath to be a resting place, or a cushion, or a mattress, and let the mind rest on it, very gently. Just be.
(Long pause)
If at any time you feel distracted by a sensation, thought, or sound, just acknowledge it, experience it, and very gently let it go. Bring your attention very gently back to the breathing.
(Long pause)
If you like, let us end this meditation by inviting joyful inner peace to arise.
Breathing in, I am calm.
Breathing out, I smile.
This present moment,
Wonderful.
(Short pause)
Thank you for your attention.
Dude, Where Is the Science?
Meditation has at least one important thing in common with science: its heavy emphasis on the spirit of inquiry. In meditation, there are two aspects to the spirit of inquiry. First, a lot of meditation is about self-discovery. Yes, we start with training of attention, but attention is not the end goal of most meditation traditions; the true end goal is insight. The reason we create a powerful quality of attention is to be able to develop insights into the mind. Having a powerful attention is like having a powerful torchlight—it is fun to have, but its real purpose is to allow us to look inside the dark rooms of the mind and ourselves so that we can, well, search inside ourselves. And because it is ultimately about developing insight, the spirit of inquiry—at least of internal inquiry—has to be an essential component of one’s meditation practice.
The second aspect of this spirit of inquiry extends beyond the internal and into the external world. Because meditators are so used to inquiry, we have also become very comfortable with science and scientific inquiry