DSC Books: Seven Days: A Journey Into Awareness - Days One to Three

Day One continued (Section 3)

Barbara: One thing that’s very important. If you put your hands far forward, can you feel the pull in your back? Now, put your hands too far back. Can you feel a different pull or discomfort? In time this will really ache. Now, move your hands until you reach a place where there’s no pull. They can be in front of you; they can be on the side, a place that feels just right. Sometimes it’s helpful to have something to rest your hands on, if your lap is too low and creates a pull. You can have a pillow or something to support your hands. If you feel uncomfortable at the start, it’s not going to get any better, so you want to find a position that’s basically comfortable to begin with.

If you need to move after a few minutes because there’s pain in the body, first stop and note that there’s pain. This is part of the whole process. We can move a hundred times in an hour and never get comfortable.

Instead of searching for that perfect position, can you begin to look at what is it that wants to be comfortable, that feels that every little bit of discomfort has got to be fixed? It’s part of the way that we live our lives. Every little bit of discomfort has got to be fixed, and there’s so much tension, so much suffering, real suffering as we try to control discomfort. It’s like the lawn mower or the motorcycle going by. Can we change our relationship with these little bits of discomfort, the little wrinkle under your feet, the hair that’s fallen down around your neck and is tickling? Instead of having to fix it, can you just notice it and ask yourself, “Can I just be here with this?”

If you’re feeling real pain, of course, move. Shift your position. Just be aware of the intention and then of the movement itself. So, there’s no set instruction of when or when not to move. Only, I would say, if you constantly have to move, then ask yourself to try to stay still and examine what’s really happening. What kind of impossible comfort are you searching for?

We’ve got a comfortable and stable body posture, spine erect, arms and legs however. Let the eyes softly close. Not pinched closed tight, just softly closed, the head at an angle so that if the eyes were open you’d be looking at the ground about three feet in front of you. Let the jaw relax. The mouth may be hanging open just a little bit.

Go down the body. Shoulders soft, relaxed. Back relaxed. Chest relaxed. Belly soft. If you’re wearing clothing with a tight waist or tight fit, I suggest you unbutton it. Give yourself breathing space.

Bring your attention to the breath coming in and out at the nostrils. When my voice intrudes as it is now, the ear is touching a sound. Notice the sense consciousness, “hearing,” and simply note it as such, “hearing, hearing, hearing.” And when, as will happen in a moment, when my voice ceases, the hearing ceases, come back to the breath. Please do that as I stop talking. (Pause. Clapping noise.) “Hearing, hearing, hearing.” (Pause) By the time you noted it, it was gone. You’re still hearing because my voice is there. As the hearing stops, go back to the breath.

We’re going to sit now for five minutes. I want you to note every physical sensation in just this way. We’ll talk later about thoughts and emotions. For now, if a thought arises and pulls you away from your breath, simply note it as “thinking, thinking,” and come back to the breath. If a physical sensation, such as itching or tingling in the body arises, simply note it with whatever label is most appropriate. You don’t need a dictionary to come out with the perfect label. As it changes or dissolves, come back to the breath. I’ll be quiet now for five minutes and ring a bell at the end.

(Meditation. Bell sounds three times.)

At the close, again there was “hearing, hearing, hearing.” Now, let’s take this one step further. We have physical sensations. The physical sensations have a pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral quality. If you hear a car motor revving up outside, it may be unpleasant. The bell is probably pleasant. Very naturally, when something is unpleasant, some sense of dislike arises. Dislike is a thought. If something is pleasant, a sound or a scent, liking arises. That’s also natural. Liking is also a thought.

We don’t try to get rid of liking or disliking. There’s no problem in liking or disliking. Where the problem begins is where liking gives way to grasping, or disliking gives way to trying to get rid of. Here, we can start to see just how our minds work. When we are present and notice liking, we don’t have to hold on to the liking. We can see desire coming up in us and may feel a certain unpleasantness about the desire. We somehow think, “If only I could get what I want, maybe desire, this discomfort, would go away.” Then mind starts to grasp. Baking bread is an example. Smelling the fresh bread, “pleasant, pleasant,” then, “liking, liking,” and then, “I want it.” And there’s a certain tension to that “I want it.” The scent is lovely. The liking it is no problem. But the tension that says, “I want it” creates a certain kind of tension.

The tension can lead us into a skillful act of going and saying, “May I have a piece of bread?” But what if you can’t have the bread? You carry the tension. Of course, I’m just using bread as a very simple example. It can be something much bigger than a piece of bread, something we really think we must have or will die without. Then there’s a certain amount of tension that comes up.

Sometimes the object is out of our reach. We’re not the ones who get to decide whether we’re going to get the new job or if a loved one’s health will improve. So, the idea of liking and wanting comes up and then there’s the intense sensation of craving. The craving is something that we can note, seeing how it arose, experiencing precisely how we moved into this craving state, and that the craving itself is just another place where mind has moved but that it carries its own distinct energy and sensations.

Disliking is the same thing, something very unpleasant. Some jack hammers, those things that they break up the concrete with, may be going right outside the window, “unpleasant, unpleasant,” and then, “dislike.” And then the very strong contraction that says “I’ve got to get away from it.”

We can watch how mind gets into these contractions. We do this in meditation practice by watching a thought and how we move into different kinds of thought. There are only so many places mind can go. We can go into remembering, into planning, fantasizing, and opinion types of thoughts, such as liking or disliking. When you’re sitting and meditating, sometimes a physical sensation comes up and then a thought accompanies the physical sensation. This is the experience we’ve just looked at, smelling bread and then the thought of “pleasant” and “liking.”

Sometimes it seems a thought arises with no physical sense connection. You’re sitting and, for no apparent reason, suddenly mind is planning. A whole fantasy is spinning itself out. At that point you’re not meditating anymore, you’re simply fantasizing. As soon as you catch it and note, “planning, planning,” it shatters it. The planning isn’t happening anymore, so you come back to your breath.

With a physical sensation, if there is itching and you noted there is itching, that doesn’t make the itching stop. So, simply stay with the itching until it changes or dissolves, but with a thought, as soon as you’ve noted that thought, it’s not there anymore. It’s not primary. Come back to the breath. If the same thought arises again, and again, and again, we keep noting it again, and again, and again.

After a few times, you may understand, “There’s something here that needs to be investigated.” For example, as I was sitting a thought came up in my mind to send post cards to my child. “Planning, planning.” The thought is gone and I return to the breath. The same thought came up again, a second, a third, a fourth time. “What is this about?”

When I ask, “What is it about?” I’m not going to investigate it with my brain, just to note, “There’s something in this planning, something I don’t yet understand fully.” I came back to my breath and allowed myself to feel whatever is there. The realization came up that I have some guilt about leaving as I did, leaving my seventeen year old son home alone. There are neighbors and good friends and people who are available for him for these twelve days, but I’ve been thinking to myself, “I should call Peter. I should send him a post card. Is he okay?” So I might note, “feeling guilt, feeling worry, feeling some anger at myself, some anger at him,” whatever might be there, just letting myself know what feeling is there, without any judgment. Usually when one knows what it’s about, then the thought stops arising in an obsessive way.

Let us sit again and practice, noting thoughts, also, as they arise.

(A time of silence. Bell rings three times. Brief question period not recorded.)

We’ve very basically covered working with physical sensations, working with thoughts. There’s one more bit of instruction I want to give you here, working with emotions. Often under a thought we find an emotion. Usually there’s some kind of opinion about that emotion. As we get off into the opinions and thoughts and stories about what we could have or should have done, we’re not meditating. If we stay present, just noting, “Here is a thought of planning. Under the thought here is some fear.” Noting fear. Not telling myself about the story of the fear, but just noting its presence, that is meditation. When I get lost in the fear or in any emotion, I’m no longer meditating.

When an emotion arises, we try to stay with it as spaciously as is possible, just noting it. Breathing in, “I am aware of my fear.” Breathing out, “I am aware of my fear,” just noting, “Here’s fear, here’s anger, here’s jealousy, here’s pride,” or whatever may be there. Whatever comes up we simply will let ourselves be spaciously present with it. We’ll work more with emotional states later.

Remember, you’re not trying to keep the mind fixed on the breath, but to allow it to be light, agile, present with whatever is predominant in your experience.