Recap - Week 1
Working definition of meditation
The word meditation can mean many different things depending on the person, religion, tradition, or meditation-app they have been using. There doesn’t exist a widespread consensus. Throughout the course, we use the following working definition.
Meditation is the act of intentionally cultivating certain mental traits using a set of exercises.
Components of breath meditation
We introduced three parts of breath meditation that we will be exploring throughout the course:
Observing the mind
A concentration exercise
Cultivating kindness
1. Observing the mind
The mind is what the brain does. Things that are part of the mind are:
Consciousness
Imagination
Perception
Thinking
Judgement
Language
Memory
Emotion
Instinct
Observing the mind simply means noticing what it is like to have one. The tricky thing is that we don’t have full access to the mind; we only have access to our conscious experiences. We can only work from there and try to infer what is going on.
Your mind has thousands of memories stored in it. This is something you have inferred—you don’t have direct access to them. You can assume that this is the case because memories pop up during the day, this happens consistently, and it seems that there are many of them.
When we talk about observing the mind we don’t mean analyzing the mind. It is about observing your experiences on a moment-by-moment basis. The analysis is something you can keep for after the meditation.
2. A concentration exercise
This is what most people think about, when they think about breath meditation.
You feel the physical sensations of breathing in a specific spot.
Eventually you get distracted and start mind-wandering.
At some point you notice—you wake up—and you bring yourself back to the breath.
This is the first step in practicing to be more present. You’re practicing waking up, over and over again.
After a while, you start to notice mind-wandering quicker.
After a while, attention will stay longer where you place it.
3. Cultivating kindness
When we meditate, the following cycle can start to emerge:
Maybe not initially, but after losing the breath for the 100th time this is very common. We don’t want to be frustrated; there are a few reasons for this:
It is not enjoyable.
The mind doesn’t want to become aware anymore. Every time you become aware, you punish it, instead of rewarding it. We should be happy when we become aware; this is why we’re practicing. We want to catch those thought loops.
What you practice often, you become very good at. So, in the worst case, you’re systematically cultivating frustration, doubts about yourself and maybe even anger.
We want to work towards the following cycle:
Kindness comes in many flavors, but it is always good to start with the “first aid” equivalent of kindness, the first line of defense, which is acceptance. So, to be clear, there are many forms of kindness, but we start with acceptance, and we will deepen the concept as the course progresses.
Acceptance is the willingness to experience a situation as it is.
How to apply acceptance during a meditation session? Every time you wake up, try one of the following options:
Say in silence to yourself, “It’s okay”, in a kind and gentle voice.
Give a little compliment, things like “Good job” or “Nicely noticed”
Smile a little bit
After a while, the whole acceptance thing becomes a non-verbal move, but we start by using language in the beginning.
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