Intro to meditation: Class 3 notes

Yet more self compassion

If you find it difficult to have self compassion, remember the trick we discussed in Class 1: Imagine your friend is in a situation similar to yours. They're struggling or "failing" in the same ways. What would you say to them?

Sensations per breath

Last time, we talked about labeling (give a brief label to each distraction) and connecting (tracking how variables such as in-breath duration change from one breath to the next) as techniques for adding a bit of extra interest to your concentration sits. Today, we'll introduce another method. This one is best used once you're feeling a bit more secure in your grasp on the breath. Don't use it if you're experiencing lots of monkey-mind. Start using if you still forget the breath, but the forgettings are getting less often and shorter in duration.

You may have started to notice that "a breath" has more than one part. Obviously, there are the in- and out-breaths. There's also usually a slight pause after the in and a longer one after the out. Can you pinpoint the exact end of the in- and out-breath? (What does that even mean?)

The new technique is to notice as many of the constituent sensations of breath as possible. Include all the touch senses (e.g. cool/warm, hard/soft, tingling, pulsing, ...). Cultivate a curious, engaged attitude towards your breath.

Reminder: as you sharpen your attention, do not narrow so tightly that you lose your peripheral awareness! You don't want to "clench" on the meditation object. The background sensations are just fine.

As a bonus, once you start to notice more sensations per breath, you will usually be able to find at least one pleasant sensation with each breath. Noticing something pleasant is an excellent antidote to agitation and impatience during your sits.

Group sit: concentration on breath sensations

15min group sit, lightly guided. Four-part transition to practice followed by concentration practice. Estimate how many sensations you feel per breath.

Followed by around the room discussion of meditation experiences in the past week (including this class's group sit).

The "committee" model of mind

I've said before that one of the best reasons to feel self-compassion when your meditation object leaves your attention is that this wasn't your fault. You didn't will that to happen; it just did. So it's not your fault. Now let's go a little deeper into why that is and how it works.

All models are wrong, but some are useful.
– George Box (at least the first half)

The phenomenology of meditation is difficult to describe—self reports of similar phenomena will differ person to person, the phenomena themselves differ widely, it's not even clear that we can meaningfully discuss disparate subjective experiences, etc. So we have an array of mental models. Don't take them too seriously!

One such model views the mind as a committee of sub-minds. The ego, the part of mind most people identify with (feel that they "are"), is the most powerful sub-mind. It's the one we usually experience in first-person. Depending on how you slice the pie, there may several others or thousands of others. For example, one part of your mind may execute your tennis forehand; another may be the part that formed in your childhood to guard against being hurt by others; another may be who you are when you're alone with your spouse. All of the details about how the mind may be "sliced" are approximate, contingent, and not worth obsessing over for our purposes.

At any given moment, several of the sub-minds may vie for the center stage of consciousness. If you think of the sub-minds as forming a committee, whichever sensory or mental phenomenon gets the plurality of votes will appear in consciousness for that moment. For awhile, that may be your breath. But at some point, it may be something embarrassing that happened when you were twelve, or something you forgot to add to your grocery shopping list, or the hum of your refrigerator in the background. Once enough sub-minds get interested in the alternative content, the new content will share the attentional spotlight; then the breath may slip into peripheral awareness; then it may be forgotten.

In concentration practice, according to this model of the mind, we are trying to unify the mind—to get all the sub-minds to agree on what to pay attention to, and to remain there for an extended period of time.

At least, that's the model. As with all other models, it's wrong (and in this case, useful). Realty is far more subtle. By the time you start to see that subtlety, it may be time for you to use the model less often. We sometimes call this developing a "non-discursive" relationship with the content; your understanding has progressed past what words can adequately convey. As Wittgenstein says:

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)
–Ludwig Wittgenstein, "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" 6.54

Choice of practice

This is our third and final session on concentration practice for this class. The next three classes will introduce a new practice each time.

This course is a sampler. But for your ongoing practice after this class, I recommend a steadier approach. Pick one practice and try to do just that for at least several months. It can take dozens of hours to "get" a practice, to start to really get deep. Trust the process!

Closing around the room

What is one thing you will focus on in your practice this coming week?