Donald Rothberg: Guided Meditation: Developing Concentration and Mindfulness, Ending with Three Reflections on Practicing Wise Speech

Yeah, thank you so much, Aliana. And welcome to people. I'll do again my usual Zoom greeting. You can do this if you wish. I didn't do this before getting on Zoom during COVID. Yeah, but it's sort of naturally evolved and I've heard that other teachers now use it as well. So we shall see. So I want to welcome everyone, anyone here for the first time to our Wednesday gathering? You can raise your hand. Anyone here for the first time? Yeah, I want to welcome you. And this was started by Sylvia Borstein I think in the early 1990s. So it's been going well over 30 years. I started, I joined with Sylvia, who was a main mentor for me. I joined and started teaching in 2001. So 25 years for me working, working with this, teaching with this gathering. And our format is that we'll have a meditation that will be rather lightly guided. And then at the end, today I'm going to be giving some reflection questions that are related to the theme of the talk. Then we'll have just a few announcements, both from me and from Aliana. And then we'll go right into the talk and discussion. We finish at 1130 Pacific. So about an hour and a half from now. And anyone here who is either pretty new to mindfulness practice or rusty in terms of mindfulness practice? You can raise your hand. Yeah, good. So yeah, I'll work with two main forms of practice, which were the two forms actually that the Buddha offered, developing greater stability of mind, developing some body or concentration. Those practices he inherited from the Indian traditions of his time, the yogic traditions. And then the mindfulness practice, which was the great innovation of the historical Buddha. And so we'll do those two practices, which are the fundamental practices, really of the tradition, sometimes called developing concentration and developing insight. The understanding is that one needs significant amount of stability of mind to see clearly. If the mind is just in his usual habitual patterns going all over the place, it's very hard to see clearly. So we begin by developing some stability, some further concentration, less distractiveness. We can start by giving a little bit of attention to the posture. We want to have a posture in which we can be both relaxed and alert and very helpful if you're on a chair or on a cushion, we want to have a good connection with the ground or floor. If you thought on the floor, if you're in a chair, as much as possible, the heart area open, spine straight as much as possible. It can work for you. It's even helpful to not be leaning too much against a chair that research has shown that actually using some of the back muscles a little bit, not in a way that's leading to straining, but just to hold the spine straight. Those muscles actually help with alertness significantly. Interesting, isn't it? So see if you can keep the spine straight. We typically have the eyes closed, but if you're practiced with the tradition where the eyes are open, that's fine. If the eyes are open, you want to have them sort of lightly open, not focused, looking downward somewhat. That eyes open approach is how one practices in Zen tradition and also in Tibetan traditions, most of them. So then we find a place where we can be attentive to some aspect of experience, stay with that, and bring back the attention every time it wanders. That's the core practice for developing concentration. We often do this with the breath, where the breath is easy as to follow. Although there are alternatives, the breath doesn't work for everyone. If we're with the breath, we can be with the breath if you're in the nostrils, just keeping the attention on the air coming in and out, maybe on the upper lip or at the tip of the nostrils, nothing the breath as much as possible, be natural, not forcing the breath, being with the sensations of breathing. When the mind wanders, we just come back. We could also be aware of the breath, the area of the heart area, the lungs expanding, contracting, or the belly, the belly rising and falling, some people even keep their hand on the belly to help them stay with the sensations. Same practice there, be with the sensations of the breath as much as possible without controlling the breath, loving the breath, being natural. One technique that I sometimes give, an optional technique that can help, particularly if there are any tendencies to control the breath, is practicing what's called the three-part breath. So one can be aware of the in-breath and you have a very quiet label in and then you notice the out-breath and you can have a very quiet label out. Then right when the out-breath ends, there's a pause, which is different for different people, but usually about half a second or a second and you bring your attention to something like the hands or the connection with the chair, sensations of sitting on the chair or the feet, or could be the whole body, just for like half a second or so. And then you let when the in-breath comes again, you switch so it really can help. You just let the in-breath start on its own rather than sometimes happens deciding, oh, now the in-breath should happen. So we go in, out, and just say pause. It's just very brief, half a second, sometimes a second. And as soon as the new in-breath starts, we bring the attention there. This can take a little while to feel natural, it can feel awkward at first, but after you do it for a while, it can be natural, it can be really, really helpful to both to go against any tendency to control the breath and also can be really helpful for continuity because naturally enough, when the pause occurs and the breath isn't happening, enough sensations of breath often the mind wanders. It can be a very helpful technique. And I've worked with it with a lot of people. Almost uniformly, they find it helpful. Again, it does take some time to feel more natural and feel awkward for a little while. And then we'll just stay with the breath. If that works well for you. Other possible places to focus could be on sound, could be on the hands touching together, the contact with the chair or cushion, the feet on the floor or if we're sitting cross-legged, just the feet as they're on the floor or cushion. So if the breath doesn't work so well, you can choose one of those alternatives. Another alternative would be doing loving kindness practice. One of the other heart practices. So we'll stay now with developing samadhi or concentrations for a short period of time. We will actually go about seven eight minutes. The mind wanders coming back over and over, combining relaxation with coming back over and over again. And as we continue to say quietly, we'll now move into the second main form of meditation of practice, which is cultivating mindfulness. The way it's been typically taught in the West is that we stay with developing samadhi or concentration. And when the mind wanders, rather than simply coming back as we do in developing samadhi or concentration, here we name what's come up. And often it ends at that point, we just go back to, for example, being with the breath. So we may notice planning thought, we say planning very quietly, planning, and go back. Often, particularly for thoughts which don't have too much charge, just the mind doing its thing, it'll simply go back and we can go back to the breath or whatever else is our primary focus or anchor. Sometimes we notice something and it stays. This would be the case if, for example, there are loud sounds outside of where we are, maybe in our space, they take our attention and they continue. And we would stay with the sounds and simply be mindful of the sounds as long as they were predominant. Maybe someone's warming up a car right outside, can hear it, it takes your attention, you stay with it after a minute, the engine is either turned off, maybe the driver goes away and you don't hear it, then you would go back to the anchor. Could be a sound, could be body sensations which take your attention. Maybe a sense of warmth in the body is not too intense, but it takes your attention. You stay with it as long as it's predominant, there's no longer predominant back to the anchor. Sometimes there are thoughts and emotions which have some charge. Maybe thinking of something difficult that happened yesterday or the day before, it comes up, you're with it, you notice it, it's still around, the energy is still there, still emotions. Plus maybe for a few minutes, then we would be mindful and we could go from what I sometimes call one channel to another, we could go to an O. Let me be with the emotion. Oh, there's some irritation. Let me stay with that for 30 seconds. Oh, let me now feel after 30 seconds the body. What's going on with the level of the body? Can you stay there for 30 seconds? Let me notice the thoughts. I call those the three channels. We can stay with one of them. If one of them is really, really strong and predominant, be the emotional level or the bodily level especially, we could just stay with that exclusively. So we stay with that as long as it's predominant, then it's no longer predominant or we're not sure what's predominant, then we go back to the anchor. And so let's stay now with the mindfulness practice. We've got six or seven minutes. Staying with mindfulness, coming back when the mind wanders, noting what's happened, more and more getting a sense of the core patterns of our experience. Now as we continue to sit quietly for the last few minutes of the practice session, a set of three reflections, which I'll give one at a time, related to the practice of wise speech and particularly the practice of being truthful, which we explored last week, although the questions won't depend on having been here last week. First question, and I'll just say these and give a chance to reflect for a minute or two for each of them. How do you practice wise speech in your own everyday life? And what helps you to remember to practice wise speech? Second question, how do you work with the wise speech guideline of being truthful in your speech? If you were here last week and you explored this during the last week, what did you find? How do you practice to follow the guideline of being truthful? You know, particularly maybe noticing where there may occasionally be untruths or exaggerations or half truths or omissions and so forth. How do you work with truthfulness? And the last question, how do you balance the guideline of being truthful with the other three guidelines of being helpful, coming from a kind heart and having good timing? How do you bring those together? You might even think of a specific situation where you did that or where in the future that might be helpful. Yeah, thank you. Before going to announcements, I just wanted to give a little bit of time if there are any questions of any kind related to the practice that we just did, particularly developing concentration and mindfulness. We'll come back during the talk and discussion to looking at the questions related to wise speech. So anything that came up? Am I doing it right or am I following the instructions correctly or this came up? How do I work with it? Probably for one or two questions. Anyone? Yeah, please, Sarah. Thank you. It's nice to see you. Nice to be here. Yes, when I manage or when I am trying to work with thoughts, naming or labeling is helpful or I just say thought. But is there something else that you could advise me to manage when I notice a thought combined with an emotion? How can we manage that during my practice? Yeah, there are two aspects I think related to your question. One is how do we label and the second is how do we stay with it with mindfulness? So in terms of the labeling, what can be helpful over time? If we're not sure, we can just say thinking. That's okay. But if it can be helpful actually to give more specific labels for the different kinds of thoughts or it could be planning, remembering, we might, for the ones that come up a lot, it could be discussion with Susan, something like that. Or we can give a more specific label to something that comes up a lot, finances or whatever. Because giving that label will help us to know how often that particular thought occurs. So that can be helpful. Then in terms of when it's there and it lasts for a while, we can, you know, if you're something like the example I gave, something's happening for a while, we can, the practice of what I call changing channels can be really helpful when something's there for a few minutes with some energy. And so let me just tune into the emotions, even though, you know, thoughts are still coming through. Let me just be with the emotional energy. Okay, I feel irritation. Let me just be mindful of the emotion. Stay with that for a while, 30 seconds or a minute, then move to the body. Very helpful to know the bodily dimension of a particular thought. Stay with that for 30 seconds. You know, I once did this, I had a retreat where I was angry a lot. And I just, sometimes I would just stay with the emotion of anger, but some was really helpful to notice, okay, how does anger manifest in the body? Oh, very interesting. Okay, where's the tension that burned in my hand from my heart area or whatever in my head. And then also just give some time, notice the thoughts coming through. So using that model of the three channels, you can call another name, but that can be really helpful. Does that feel complete? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks very much. Any time for one more for this one?