Week 1
Recordings
Ideally, you have listened to the material below at least a couple of days before attending the study group meeting. Furthermore, we hope you have practiced daily using the method outlined in the guided meditation.
Although it is tempting to use the guided meditation recording for every meditation session, this is not our intention. Make sure to also practice on your own without any guidance.
Rob talks about working with energy in the body. Although I don't believe we have any magical energy streams moving through the body, the words he uses map well on the experience. Other words might work better for you, like vibrations, bubbly sensations, tingly sensations, or the texture of the body.
Talk One: Introduction to the Art of Concentration
This summary is my personal interpretation of Rob Burbea, which has been helpful for me. In no way can I guarantee that this is Robs view.
Samatha
Pali word that can be translated in many ways: calm, tranquility, collectedness of mind, unification of the mind and body and concentration.
Samatha leads to pleasure, wellbeing and happiness.
Although developing samatha requires some techniques, it is best described as an art. You can't just follow a set of instructions and expect it to work, it requires a lot of responsiveness to figure out how it works for you.
No. 1 thing to remember: practice with play and patience.
Play
What is play? It means that you bring to the practice creativity, curiosity and experimentation. Play like kids play, very seriously, but enjoying every bit of it.
What are we going to play with? The breath. The way we breathe and the way the mind relates to the breath in the body. For some this might be a little controversial, since many meditation traditions emphasise just noticing the breath, not doing anything with it.
The goal is to learn to relate to the breath and the body in a way that is as pleasurable and comfortable as possible. We're going to play with the breath until it feels good.
Patience
Expect progress, but in a non-linear fashion. It will be going up and down, and that is fine, but over the period of a month there will be a clear trend going upwards.
Body and the breath
When Rob talks about the whole body, subtle body or energy body he is aiming towards the felt sense, in the moment, of the whole space, a little bit bigger than your physical body. It’s the vibration, the feeling, the texture, or the energy in that space, as opposed to sensation of contact or that kind of thing.
And when he says the breath he means the movement of energy within that, as well as the air coming in and out and the sense of that.
Getting the conditions right
Someone asked the Buddha once, "Okay, Samatha sounds great. What does it depend on? What are the causes for Samatha and Samadhi arising?", and he said "The most important thing is happiness." Which sounds odd. We just said that Samatha leads to happiness, but actually also depends on happiness. It depends on a certain foundational level of sense of well-being.
Rob has some suggestions on getting the conditions right:
Appreciation and gratitude
It's so easy for human beings to focus on the negative, and it seems so compelling. It seems so believable and so true. So partly, what I want to suggest we all do is to just keep shifting that to a mode of appreciation, of gratitude. Whatever it is that tunes you into that sense, drop it in periodically, especially when you notice your mind slipping into grumbling mood.
The easiest way to work with this is by adding a gratitude practice to your day:
Write five things down you are grateful for, today or yesterday.
Do a little meditation aimed at remembering
things you're grateful for that exist in the world
things you're grateful for that others did for you
things you're grateful for that you did for yourself
things you're grateful for that you did for others
Nature
Go for a walk. Open the being to seeing, smelling, hearing, to nature, and the beauty of nature.
Exercise
It may be that you do yoga or Chi Gong or Tai Chi or Qua Gong or whatever. Or some other Oriental thingy. Do that thing. It's going to help in the sense of the body and the body energy.
Five precepts
Rob recommends following the five precepts:
to abstain from taking life
to abstain from taking what is not given
to abstain from sensuous misconduct
to abstain from false speech
to abstain from intoxicants as tending to cloud the mind
The Bodhisattva precepts are very similar, but add to every precept the phrase —nor encourage others to do so. Something I really love.
Things like ethical guidelines might seem weird to mention in a retreat focused on cultivating concentration. But as Daniel Ingram remarks in Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: "if you are finding it hard to concentrate because your mind is filled with guilt, judgment, hatred, resentment, envy, or some other harmful or difficult thought pattern, work on the first training." This first training he is talking about is sila, which can be translated to morality. Acting in a way that helps you sleep at night, that brings you peace of mind, will also help you open up to samatha.
First Morning Instructions
Rob introduces many different ways of relating to the breath, which can be a little overwhelming. I personally use the following structure in my practice:
Settling into the posture
Since this meditation is aimed at developing comfort in the body, it makes sense to start with a good posture. It can be really worthwhile to spend some time outside of meditation, investigating all the options available.
Intention setting—although Rob doesn't do this explicitly in this session, it almost always is helpful.
Bring up your motivation
Give yourself permission to let go of anything that might come up
Let go of any expectations you might have
Commit to the flight plan below :)
Connecting with the normal body
Noticing the sitting:
Checking in with the sensations of contact, of sitting, the buttocks, the feet, the legs making contact with the cushion, the chair, the floor.
Relaxing any tension: for this you can use something like the seven-point relaxation exercise.
Connecting with the subtle body
Becoming sensitive to the body texture/energy/vibrations, this can be described in many ways:
Opening the awareness, filling the body with awareness, permeating the body with awareness. Like air fills a balloon.
Feeling into the sense of the body. Feeling into the texture of the body, the texture of that area that we call the body.
Having a global sense of the body. Being sensitive to the whole body. Tuning into the body.
It might help to imagine the body as an area of water and the mind as a hand of salt. Where you try to dissolve the salt into the water.
Playing with patience
Going forward you continually want to have a very light and sensitive awareness of the whole body. This awareness will systematically shrink, or weaken, then you have to awaken it again. This is something that happens over and over again.
While maintaining this awareness we start playing with the breath and different ways of relating to our body, with the goal of nurturing comfort—see the list below for some options. We're continually checking in; what actually feels best right now?
Play, play, play, play. Don’t fear mistakes. You’re going to make mistakes; we’re all making mistakes. That’s not a problem, that’s how we learn.
If any sense of comfort arises make sure to include it into your awareness. Make sure to be content with any pleasantness you have—no matter how small it is. Don't put pressure on it, you're just holding it gently. It’s the consistency of attention with the area of comfort that allows it to grow.
Sometimes you stay with the sensation.
Sometimes there is some space to spread it a little bit, in nearby areas.
Things to play with
Some important notes:
Keep in mind that this is a list of very useful suggestions, but that there are many more ways of playing with the subtle body. What you need is extremely personal and often changes on a moment by moment basis—this is why it is considered an art.
All of them require a very light and sensitive awareness of the whole body. This awareness will systematically shrink, or weaken, then you have to awaken it again. This is something that happens over and over again.
Furthermore, most of them can be mixed.
The longest breath that is comfortable Long, slow in breaths, long, slow out breaths. Comfortably long. So you’re not forcing the breath; you’re allowing it to really open and expand. If you have a blocked nose or a cold, fine to breathe through the mouth. Not necessarily moving a lot of air, but just lengthening, slowing down the breathing, filling the body with the energy of the breath.
Noticing expanding and contracting Feel into the whole body expanding, the whole body expanding with the in breath. Reversing that expansion with the out breath.
Noticing energisation and relaxation You may also be aware, perhaps, of a sense of the whole body being energized, feeling energized as the breath comes in. The sense of the body being energized. And as the breath goes out, there is a natural letting go, a natural relaxation that happens.
Noticing different areas of the body Perhaps you notice something in certain areas, and perhaps not, and it’s really fine.
Front of the body
Torso
Throat
Face
Spine
Legs
And others
Playing with the breath Allowing yourself to play and experiment with the breath. So seeing if you can get a sense, allow yourself to play—what kind of breath feels best right now? Feels most comfortable? How does the body want to breathe? Keeping a large awareness, does the breath want to stay long? Or to be shorter, or to be even much shorter? Does it want to be smooth or rough? What feels best right now? So really allowing yourself to play with it, to make it the most comfortable it can be. Not just falling back on the default, unconscious way of breathing, but really engaging, playing with the breath like a child would play with plasticine. Really feeling into what feels best. A strong breath or a subtle breath? This will change. Keeping responsive, keep playing in that large awareness. Just encouraging the breath and the body to feel just as good as they can, right now, however that is.
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