This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Counting; Supporting Samadhi (1 of 5): Mindfulness in Daily Life. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Liz Powell at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
I’m very happy to be with you this week and to continue with the beautiful practice that Gil’s been coaching us in of developing samādhi1 step by step. This week, I’d like to support that practice by offering the opportunity to continue to grow our independent ability to cultivate samādhi. One way we’ll do this is to use the morning session to have a little more time independently to explore the practice. We may sit for a little longer each day, and I’ll offer the mornings with a little more silence and a little less guidance.
Gil has given us such beautiful guided meditations, and they’re so helpful in giving us a good sense of the practice and how to go about it. With these guided meditations, you really get a feel for what you’re doing in the practice, but then it’s very important to do it independent of the guidance to really understand how it’s working in your own mind, heart, and body. By allowing more time this week to experiment with what Gil has already taught us, we’ll discover what supports for samādhi work for us.
One form of support I’d like to offer was based on a request I heard in Friday’s community meeting. There will be a second 20-minute silent sitting each afternoon at 4:00 PM Pacific time that will be on Zoom. You’ll check the IMC calendar for the Zoom link and the password, and that way you’ll get that extra time to explore the practice in silence.
By spending a little more time this week on our own, another support we’ll get to discover—often this comes up more when you’re not listening to a guided meditation—is what kinds of things surface in the mind. Those might be helpful things, you know, kind of self-coaching, little soft ways you encourage yourself. They might be some of the hindrances that Gil mentioned last week that fragment our attention. And so we’ll find ways to support ourselves with that.
Gil suggested on Friday that we next try counting to 10 with the breath. So we’ll do the guided meditation this morning with that, remaining very closely attuned to the breathing in the foreground, and then staying with it from the very beginning of the in-breath, feeling it, staying with it throughout the course of the in-breath to the very end. Being with perhaps any pause that’s between the inhalation and the exhalation, and then staying with the entire out-breath until the end, and perhaps returning each time to the still, quiet place from which the breath arises and passes. So keeping the cycle of breathing in the foreground and keeping the counting in the background or kind of in the periphery. It’s just a way to keep the mind present. So with that, we’ll start with the guided meditation.
Briefly settling in, taking your time. Perhaps a few longer, slower, deeper breaths.
Allowing yourself the time to breathe into and out of any areas of tension or preoccupation, and releasing any tension that can be released. Allowing what cannot be released, but perhaps softening a little around any chronic areas of tension or any preoccupation that’s remaining.
Here, allowing breathing to provide alertness and relaxation, a balance.
And gradually turning the attention to being present with the breathing. Feeling the sensations of the inhalation as the body rises or expands as the breath comes into the body. And following the exhalation, perhaps the body has a slight falling or comes back inward as we release the breath.
Following each breath with fresh attention.
And while keeping breathing in the foreground of awareness, we can introduce very soft, quiet counting in the mind, counting from one to 10 with each breath. So as you begin the inhalation, softly in the background, the count of one. And with the next breath, two.
Counting each breath up to 10, and then beginning again at one. This is simply a way to keep the mind focused on the breathing in the foreground. So the primary attention is on the sensations of the breathing, the inhalation from the very start, and in the background, one. Being with a pause if there’s a pause between the inhalation and the exhalation, and then releasing the breath and following the sensations as it leaves the body.
Staying with this practice and giving it a chance throughout this meditation. It takes time. Taking the time to settle into it, to notice what’s happening with it. A very light touch of attention, a relaxed state of attention to the breathing.
If the mind starts to drift and awareness returns, noticing that it’s drifting, compassionately come alongside of where it had drifted for a few moments and gently turning the awareness back towards the sensations of breathing and resuming very soft counting in the background.
If counting one, two, up to 10 for each breath is not enough to maintain the awareness on the breathing, you might try one with the in-breath and two with the out-breath, three with the next in-breath, four with the out-breath, and so on up to 10.
Softly noticing any shifts that naturally occur as you continue. If you need to start again, it’s always fine to start again with one, breathing in, respecting what’s happening.
Hello everybody. I’m very happy to be with you today and extremely happy for the beautiful volunteers at IMC who support the technology and who helped overcome the multiple tech glitches this morning. So, happy to be with you this week.
This process of cultivating samādhi is supported by spending time independently discovering how it works for you. So we’re taking the time this week to more deeply cultivate what Gil was teaching us last week: ease with thinking if it arises, simplicity through counting, settling, steadying with the breath, and opening to spaciousness.
This idea of spending extra time meditating in silence each day is one of the very important supports for samādhi. So for anyone who didn’t hear this earlier, I’m offering a second sitting on Zoom at 4:00 PM Pacific each day this week. You can find the Zoom link and the password on the calendar on the IMC homepage, just by clicking on 4:00 PM. And please know, it is not on YouTube, it’s only on Zoom. So it’ll be a silent sitting again to give us more time. And of course, if you can’t make 4:00 PM, you can do this on your own.
So that’s one support. A very important support for what happens on the cushion with samādhi is what happens during the rest of the day. Both sati2 and samādhi, both mindfulness and this settledness, collectedness, work hand in hand. They’re very important strengths to cultivate together. And you can support samādhi this week by watching what happens during daily life as much as possible. Of course, we’re using mindfulness as well in maintaining awareness on the breathing as we do the meditation with samādhi. But in this development in daily life, one of the things that Gil mentioned to us early on was that we could start to recognize how we’re getting in our own way, how we’re fragmenting our attention, how we’re not whole. We’re trying to come to wholeness, to a settled alignment of everything right here and now within.
By applying mindfulness in daily life and also on the cushion, we can see ways that we fragment our attention, become distracted, become preoccupied. And one of the ways we do this is the hindrances that Gil mentioned. So we can see that in meditation and in our daily lives. For example, we might notice the habit of mind that clings to wanting things to be the way we want them to be, the way that’s pleasant, ideal, the way we think things should be rather than the way they are in this moment. So keeping in mind that the hindrances are very common and human strategies that are trying to bring us to happiness and to a good life, but they’re just strategies that we find out over time don’t work. So when we find ourselves wanting things in meditation or in daily life to be the way we want, not the way they are, we can take a few breaths, relax, and soften with compassion. Wow, look at that. Look at what my mind’s doing. Of course, I want it the way I want, but here’s how they are right now.
Or we could be wanting things to go away, to not be the way they are. We want to push them away, avoid them, not have it happening even though it’s happening. So this aversion is another thing that we can greet with a pause, a breath, and some compassion. Wow, look at how much energy it’s taking me to push this away, to resist what’s actually happening instead of responding.
A third hindrance that can happen, that you might notice on the cushion or in daily life, is when lethargy comes up. You had a full night’s sleep, but for some reason, as you’re working on a particular task, you keep getting drowsy, or you’re falling asleep while meditating, and it’s not from lack of sleep. If it’s from lack of sleep, you can just get more sleep. But lethargy can arise. Again, approaching it with compassion.
Same with restlessness, the fourth hindrance that can arise. We can get caught in the idea that we can control things if only we worry about them enough, if only we make things be a certain way, if we work really hard at it, if we do, do, do, then we can conquer life and be happy. But again, bringing some compassion to that, it just doesn’t work. It keeps us tied up in knots, it keeps us exhausting ourselves. Perhaps releasing some of the tension that arises in restlessness with a whole series of out-breaths, using the breath throughout as our ally in this practice.
And then of course, doubt can come up. And it’s very useful during meditation, if it comes up, to say very quietly, “I see you, doubt, and you’re not going to stop me.” In daily life, you could write down what your questions are, or if it’s about yourself, you can practice the exercise of doubting the doubt, writing down all the reasons that you can imagine that the doubt is not true.
So as we work with these hindrances and they get more and more subtle, we start to benefit by seeing that what’s coming up is just phenomenon rolling through, experience rolling through. It’s not ours, it doesn’t have to be about me, it’s just what’s happening. So this opportunity during daily life to strengthen mindfulness will support the ability to settle the mind. When we notice the mind getting caught in a hindrance or distracted or in some way preoccupied during the day and mindfulness arises, awareness arises, we can notice the impact that it’s having on us. We can learn the truth of what the Buddha is quoted as saying in the Middle Length Discourse 193, which Thanissaro Bhikkhu4 translates as “Two Kinds of Thinking.” Here’s his translation with slight alteration in gender: “Whatever one keeps pursuing with one’s thinking and pondering, that becomes the inclination of one’s awareness.”
This is so important. Have you noticed the impact of what you frequently think about during the day, of what you’re frequently occupied with? If you can check in from time to time during the day, whenever mindfulness arises and you realize, “Oh, let me see what the mind is doing right now,” we can see how what we’re pondering, thinking, any hindrances present, is shaping what’s happening with our attention and our awareness. And that has everything to do then with how settled we can become on the cushion when we’re meditating, or whether we’re caught in the preoccupations, the concerns, the hindrances.
So the invitation today and this week is to check in frequently, as frequently as you can remember to. Sati also is translated as remembering, remembering to be mindful and checking in with what are you preoccupied with? What are you engaged with mentally? Is it in the direction of more agitation, more activity? Is it in the direction of peacefulness, calm, responsiveness? So see what happens if you take maybe two minutes, five minutes during the day from time to time as well to check in with the breath, come back to this still, settled place. All of these things that happen during the day will support the cultivation of samādhi.
So thank you for being patient with our tech attack today, with my lateness, and I hope that these are of use to you, of support. And I’ll look forward to seeing you all in the Zoom, or seeing as many of you as can make it to the Zoom this afternoon at 4:00 Pacific. Be well.
Samādhi: A Pāli word that refers to a state of meditative concentration or a collected, unified mind. It is a key component of the Buddhist path. ↩
Sati: A Pāli word meaning “mindfulness” or “awareness.” It also carries the connotation of “remembering” to be present. ↩
Middle Length Discourse 19: Refers to the 19th discourse in the Majjhima Nikāya (MN), a collection of the Buddha’s teachings. This particular discourse is the Dvedhāvitakka Sutta, “Two Kinds of Thought.” ↩
Thanissaro Bhikkhu: An American Buddhist monk of the Thai Forest Tradition. He is a well-known translator of the Pāli Canon and a prolific author of Dhamma books and articles. The original transcript said “Tanis biku.” ↩