Maybe you've heard of mindfulness, mindfulness meditation and just don't know what it is
Or maybe you've heard about it and know something of it
But just want more of a refresher and get a sort of an understanding,
A deeper understanding of why it's important, and why we should think about it, and how we should practice it
So that's what I'm going to discuss in today's video, coming right up
I'm Doug Smith of the online Dharma Institute, that's onlinedharma.org
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Check out onlinedharma.org and some of the courses that I have over there
So what I'm gonna do in this video is first
I'm gonna talk about what mindfulness is and why it might be important to us to pursue and then later I'm gonna talk about
Some of the practice and how we practice it and talk about a few
Potential books or other sources that might interest you if you want to read further or learn further.
so in general
mindfulness in English means to be aware of or attentive to something or
conscious of it, and it's opposed to, let's say, being distracted or
inattentive or
in some way not present. And,
So mindfulness is the practice of substituting
awareness for inattentiveness
it's a practice of being really and fully present with the way things are right now as
opposed to being lost in thoughts about
the past, or lost in reminiscences of the past, or lost in thoughts about the future: what we're going to do tomorrow or
What we need to do in the rest of the day. And here it's good to keep in mind that
The past is beyond us. The past is already over.
There's nothing we can do to change the past. And the future isn't here yet,
So there's nothing we can do right now about the future
Where we act, where we live, is in the present moment only
so it's the present moment that we really should focus on and
The point is not that we don't focus on the present, or that we should never think about the past or the future,
of course not.
The point is that mindfulness is a practice of
spending more time where we really live and where we really act, which is right here and now, as
opposed to
Losing so much of our lives in in pointless thoughts about times that we really can't affect.
When we do a practice like this, however, of, let's say, trying to stay in the present moment for a time
We find certain things pretty quickly
And I would say you should try this yourself
Because that's part of the practice. But I think we generally find things pretty quickly
First of all, we tend to find that there are certain things that annoy us
in our surroundings. Not always, but often. A sound that we don't like;
A way we're sitting or standing that we don't like over a period of time;
Some smell in the air perhaps; maybe some light that we don't like, it's too bright or not bright enough
And so, the mind begins to wander and begins to sort of think about ways to change that.
Let's say we're sitting in an apartment building. We have neighbors upstairs and the dog is barking
So our mind immediately goes off into some kind of a story about how we can stop that from happening
about if we get up right now and go out our front door and walk upstairs and knock on their door and
We come up with these stories
We see how the mind works and we also note that
This kind of working of the mind has taken us out of the present moment
It's taken us into a future that doesn't exist yet
It's taken us into a kind of a story about how we could act in the future and change things
Nothing wrong with that and in its right place, but right now we're trying to practice being in the present moment
Also, we might be in a situation where there's something that we really enjoy. Perhaps a nice smell of food
That's being cooked. Perhaps a nice cool breeze
that's wafting through the the room that we're sitting in. Perhaps it's a
Beautiful kind of filtered light that we really love, or the warmth of the Sun on our back.
All of these things may be, or others as well, may be things that we enjoy, perhaps it's even music that we enjoy and
What we'll find then is often
That we'll want that to continue. And, if it changes or stops,
We may again be lost in thoughts
ruminations about how to bring that back, about
Worries or wishes of it coming back. If the Sun goes behind a cloud we may be thinking to ourselves
Well, perhaps if I move over here or how long is that cloud gonna be there?
If there's a nice smell and it goes away again
We might wonder why. And again, when this happens, it's taken us out of the present into
Whats and whys and hows of life, which are ordinarily where the mind resides. The third thing that we learn
Is that this syndrome of thoughts and impulses
that comes up in the mind, this syndrome is something that is entirely out of our control
because we've sat down here and said, okay, I'm gonna focus on the present moment and
Almost immediately these thoughts arise, these impulses arise.
Almost immediately, we're brought off into thoughts about the future or thoughts about the past, remembering the last time that something happened similarly
Almost immediately, the mind is pulled somewhere else, and that this is not under our control
What we begin to learn
I think, when we sit down and do this practice, is that this is how we live
Virtually all of our lives in an ordinary way.
Virtually all of our lives, we're at the mercy of these kinds of
Automatic impulses that pull us this way and that. That we're not really in control of anything
because the mind simply brings these things up, brings up these ideas and impulses into
Into the present moment into our thought stream without us
Wanting them necessarily, without us even thinking that they are necessary.
It's just things that arise
And we begin to see them as just things that arise in the mind stream, that pull us away from the present moment
into thoughts, reminiscences; into planning, into thinking about what's happening tomorrow, or
regretting let's say what happened yesterday, or
musing about how nice it was what happened yesterday, and how I can get it to happen again. And
Normally, we live our lives this way, under the control of these kinds of thoughts and impulses.
However, it may be that as you do this practice
You really get to a place where you want to reduce the control that these thoughts and impulses have over you
that you want to reduce the kind of the way that they pull you this way and that,
All the time during your life. And for that you need to practice. And that is the practice of mindfulness.
So what is, then, the practice of mindfulness? Well, the practice of mindfulness begins with calming. So,
It doesn't really matter what position we take, what physical position we put our body in. We can do mindfulness lying down,
We can do it seated on a chair. We can do it seated on the floor on a cushion
We can do it standing up. We can even do it while we're walking
although while we're walking, we'll see, is a little bit different, but similar
so we can do it in any position and
Ordinarily, what you do is you begin by closing your eyes. Now if you're walking that's not going to be possible
but at least closing them a little ways, and that's
To try to diminish the amount of sensory input that you have
Diminishing the sensory input is going to try to calm you down. So the point here is to try to calm yourself down
Because the more agitated we are, the less calm that we are, the more that these kinds of
thoughts that arise in the mind can control us. The more that they arise generally. However,
The calmer that we are, the less frequently they tend to arise, and when they do arise, they tend to arise with less force
So we begin by closing the eyes
Getting into a position that we can hold for awhile without having to move, that is to say, a comfortable position
and we can focus on something. Focus on something is usually something that's that's regular, that's cyclical. A
Great place to start, indeed one way that people can do their entire lives, in fact, is focusing on the breath
Because the breath is always with us. It's a regular kind of
Phenomenon in the body. It's something that is again cyclical. It's something that will calm us down
as we focus on it
and we'll find by focusing on the breath for a while and
Closing the eyes that we introduce a level of calm and so a level of clarity, more clarity in the mind.
So we're able to see a little bit clearer how the mind works and what's going on and how things are happening
If we want, we can count the breaths from one to ten and then going back to one again.
Again in a sort of a cyclical way. Or we can name the breaths; we can say "in-breathing", "out-breathing", or
"inhaling", "exhaling"
"In", "out", it doesn't matter
what words we use, but if that helps us to keep
Focusing the mind on the breath, we can use words like these, naming like this.
Second, we try to get to a place where we're
allowing
negative and positive feelings to arise in the mind without
Without them taking control of us
So if we have a slight pain in our leg, or if there's an annoying sound in the room,
We practice simply sitting with it
We practice simply sitting with it and perhaps even naming it, saying, "an annoying sound", or "a slight pain in my leg"
And that way we can sit with it and see what happens if we do nothing at least for a period of time where we're
simply
Observing it as part of the present moment. And similarly if something good happens, if something nice happens, we simply sit with it
without
necessarily trying to grasp at if it goes away or if it changes. We simply name it, "a nice sound", "a
pleasant breeze"
If we want we can use these kinds of words silently in our minds. And this kind of a practice gives us more mental space
around which simply to embrace these as part of the present moment. To allow them to simply exist as
phenomena that arise and pass, as they
inevitably will; they'll arise and pass, they'll change over time. And
so by doing this practice
We then get ourselves to a place that is more fully present,
That's more fully in the present moment, that is less liable to be pulled this way and that by the vicissitudes of life
in a long-term practice
It's not the sort of thing that you're going to expect is going to have--
is going to create miracles in a day or a week
But over months, over years of a regular practice of mindfulness like this, it will help us get to a place
That's more equanimous in a more equanimous state with our own lives
by being able to
Be in the present moment, by not having our minds be so easily pulled into the past or into the future or
into other places. The ordinary tendency of the mind is to go off into
Ruminations, to go off into into streams of thought that aren't particularly useful or healthy to us
We've already thought about these things enough times so we don't need to think about them the hundredth time or the thousandth time
So this kind of practice allows us to relax around that. And this is especially important I think in today's
what's known as the attention economy where our attention is is being pulled this way and that by the
Enormous amount of information that's being thrown at us all the time through the internet, through cell phones,
email,
texting,
Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest. And I did a recent video about the role of mindfulness in this information economy
And why this kind of practice is indeed so important nowadays.
Now, what I've given here is only
an introduction. There's a lot more to be said. And if you want to see more, I have a playlist about
What are called the four foundations of mindfulness which is the the practice
From which mindfulness originates. And I should say that all of the practices, there are many, many
practices that are related here, that we can do, in trying to expand our
repertoire of
Abilities with the mind and understand various parts of the mind
So I'll put a link to that in the show notes down below as well
And I'll try to put one up here, if I can do it
I will, and there also are many books that are useful. I'll put links to three really good ones down the show notes
that are great sources for further reading
There's a lot of information out there on mindfulness and I think it's worth taking the time to read about in more detail
So if you find this talk useful do check out my Patreon page, it's linked right here. If you liked the video
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Meanwhile, all of you be well