Lessons
Introduction - Why Meditate?
15:12 2How to Meditate - Taking Your Seat
12:59 3Placing Attention on Breath
04:32 4Labeling Thoughts as Thinking
06:35 5How to Meditate - Leaving Some Space
12:19 6Bringing Meditation Into Everyday Life
11:30 7Digging Into the Practice Part 2
05:51 8Obstacles Along the Way
08:29Obstacles Along the Way Part 2
08:59 10Body, Emotions, Mind, Stress, Anxiety
26:56 11Body, Emotions, Mind, Stress, Anxiety Part 2
06:28 12The True Meaning of Success
18:28 13The True Meaning of Success Part 2
03:40 14Developing Compassion for Ourselves & Others
04:39 15Compassion for Ourselves & Others Part 2
29:34 16Compassion and Mindfulness
26:27 17Compassion and Mindfulness Part 2
08:11 18Happiness and Joy
18:15 19Happiness and Joy Part 2
04:06 20How to Go Forward
10:59 21How to Go Forward Part 2
07:31Lesson Info
Placing Attention on Breath
the first one is taking your seat. The second part of the, of the instruction is where to place your attention. So this is called placing your attention or placing the attention. So that's what I want to talk about next is placing attention on the breath and how to go about that. Excuse me. So the second tier is as you're sitting there, you deliberately become aware of your breathing right? Mindful of the breath and there's a couple of things to think about. One is we're gonna for now follow the breath throughout the full cycle of breath in breath. All right, breathing in breathing out, right? And we're not talking about an abstraction here. This is you on your cushion, now breathing. So there's no metaphysics involved whatsoever. This is directly experiential. You are sitting there, you're breathing and you're paying attention to your breathing going in and out. Now, having said that, it's kind of a light touch. Some people will become what I call iron lung meditators at this point an...
d I'm gonna try to steer you away from the iron lung. You know that would be called too tight to habitat. Others will be just kind of like yeah, yeah. Uh huh that's too loose. So a lot of times we say and not too tight, not too loose, that's a guideline right straight through a light touch of awareness on the breath going in, going on. And it doesn't mean we shut down our awareness of the space. That sort of sense perceptions are still around. So sometimes we say even just at 25% awareness on the breath is enough like a thread we call it. Bear awareness, a threat of mindfulness of the breath. But the simplicity of it is the elegance of it. So just as simple bringing the attention to breath and when it wanders, bring it back, that's the whole, that's the second instruction now, what may come up for you Since now we're starting to sit for a bit is if your body begins to become your enemy, you know and you feel like oh my God, I'm really, I can't sit like this for one more minute, you can shift your posture. So going back to that, if we're doing a sort of serious period of sitting and you're thinking like my knee is frozen here and I'm going to not be able to think about anything. Like other than that, you can just bring up your legs in front of you like that and just sit like this for a moment and don't look at it as a big vacation to hawaii a big break. Just keep the awareness of the breath going and then when your legs have come back, you know the energy circulating again, you can just cross your legs up again and resettle your posture and just we say, take a fresh start, boom, like you're starting all over again, attention on the breath in and out, mind wanders away, you come back to the breathing that's really the heart and essence of this practice, But there's more to it at stage two. So again, the middle way is what we talked about, not too tight, not too loose, so if there is kind of like this is one version of to loose, you know this is too tight, you know, a nice middle way approach because you wanna be comfortable enough so that your body doesn't become your enemy and you hate this practice and you never do it, that's not that's not a good outcome, you know, at the same time cultivating a certain discipline, so at a certain point like you could develop a certain kind of physical presence that's very strong from taking your seat in this way and even if you're moving around there's a sense of still a seat, a seated kind of quality, a present kind of core. Okay so what I'd like to do is invite everybody here and remembering that you can shift your posture if you need to and we're gonna sit now with that instruction of taking your seat and following the breath in and out for five minutes. So I know in tv time that's a long time. So for right now take your seat, everybody take a good seat. Okay good posture. I'm going to ring the bell and then we'll have five minutes go by where you're just simply placing your attention on your breath as as we did and bring you back when you wander.
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