The Addiction to Mind
La adicción a la mente
A conversation about combining meditation practices, the power of noting practice, and how its irritating quality reveals our habitual attachment to thinking.
The Addiction to Mind
A conversation about combining meditation practices, the power of noting practice, and how its irritating quality reveals our habitual attachment to thinking.
I really enjoyed the noting. It reminds me of what was said about the mind being like a mirror. It feels like at some point you're just reflecting everything that comes, and it starts to create a sort of reverberating echo. It was kind of wild.
That's great. You could do that for a whole hour. It's very powerful because it takes away the normal activity of thought. It's a Buddhist practice. I can give you more information if you want to dive more into it.
Yes, I'd like that.
It's very powerful. I actually learned it from a teacher whose own teacher had taught him the practice. Then I discovered it's a very ancient Buddhist practice.
I realized you introduced these practices just so we could get a taste of them, doing them together. I've never done these meditations together before; I always did them separately. I really liked doing them one after the other, but I wonder if that makes it a little superficial, doing them in succession.
I don't think so. There's something really valuable in creativity and meditation as well. On one end, it's important to have a practice and a discipline. But there's too much of a sense that everything has to be effort, that it has to be extreme discipline, and that's the only way anything good, or waking up, or any of that can happen. It's actually a balance. It's both.
Discipline and ego
Otherwise, it's going to be all achievement and ego-based. There's a practice, also Buddhist, called the Heart of Compassion. Basically, you stand up with your arms open, fully extended, for as long as you can, for an hour or an hour and a half. The warning is that if you do it too much, it strengthens the ego. That points to the balance, right? If you become an expert in noting and do it all day, it can become a thing in itself that you identify with.
So I'm reflecting that this kind of more playful exploration, doing things with more flexibility, has value. And also, I put them together in a specific sequence because they build on one another. If your mind is very active, you fall back to a more breath-based counting or vipassana practice, which is more what traditional mindfulness is. But mindfulness itself doesn't go very far or very deep, because it doesn't address identity or the beliefs we have. The point of it is just calming the mind, which it does, but then it stops there. You do need mindfulness, though. You need a certain degree of presence in order to observe thinking, to see what's going on and what you're identified with.
What to note
I just wanted to confirm something. Is it the third practice, the noting of sensations, where you say to yourself whatever it is, wherever it is, however it comes up? Was the point specifically body sensations? I wasn't sure exactly.
It's about noticing everything in experience. You give the mind an activity that, in a sense, takes it out of itself, because it directs the mind toward experience that is outside of mind, depending on how you define "mind." Let's say sensation, perception, what you see and hear, body sensation: let's call that outside of the mind, just as a working definition for this conversation. You direct the mind as a tool, to take up an activity that points it away from itself.
So now it's pointing to anything. It could be sound: a bird, the hum of your fridge, some electrical device. It could be sensation: the breath, any sensation in your body, the feeling of the chair or the couch. You could also do it with your eyes open and note what you're observing.
Then, every time the mind takes over and you become pulled in, you'll notice: "Okay, now I'm in the process of thought," because you stopped noting. And then you note that. So now it's "thinking" or "distraction." You can go "thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking," and you kind of shut that down and go back to the breath.
Working with noting over time
Whenever you notice you've stopped noting, you pull yourself back to it. When I first did this, I was much younger. It was excruciatingly painful. We were doing it for about two hours and it was quite unbearable, because it brought up a lot of anxiety. But if you do it over time, it can really create a lot of settling. The noting can become very light. The experience, at least for me, became very light and very easeful. It's a very powerful practice. The noting and the self-inquiry, when I say "powerful," can go much further than just calming or settling the mind.
So just to recap: the idea is to note body sensations and perception, those two things?
Yes. Body sensations, perceptions of sounds, sight if your eyes are open, and thought. It's very important to notice thought and note it: thought, thinking, distraction, wandering. It can be quite fast. You go "thought, thought, thought, thought, breath, breath, breath." Or you can do it slower, one every second or two, depending on how busy your mind is.
You can do it for three minutes, or twenty minutes, or an hour. You can actually start by writing it down, with paper, noting everything in written form. Then you stop writing and do it just internally, or even speak it aloud first and then shift to doing it internally. Then you stop the noting altogether and just be open and present. You can also do it while walking. In Southeast Asia, many retreats do nothing but this practice all day: while sitting, while walking, all the time.
I feel a little sad because I missed all the exercises. I completely fell asleep. I was actually feeling very active today, and then I listened to you and got knocked out. I haven't been here for quite a few weeks because I had exams. I hope to come back more regularly. But this has happened before too. I get so tired sometimes. I feel like it's a good thing, and I feel good now afterward, but I'm also sad because I missed it.
I think it's really important to rest, so there's a recovery period. Having a recording you can keep with you helps. You could try it earlier in the day. If you tend to sleep a lot during meditation, that's honest. It's okay. Have a little snack and you'll be fine.
The irritation of noting
It's an annoying exercise. It brought me here and now, here and now, here and now. There was no way I could go anywhere. It was like, "Who am I?" and then letting the mystery answer, letting the universe answer with no answer, obviously. Honestly, the noting is irritating. It's a pain. But then you go deeper with it, and it keeps you there.
It shows you the addiction to mind that we have. It's just so perfect.
The addiction to mind, yes. I'm glad you said that. I was thinking, "Oh my God, I'm going to say something," but it's obviously necessary for a reason that it annoyed me. I paid no attention to the annoyance, but I was there.