Compassion – Page 2 – Living A Mindful Life

Meditation: Why Bother?

What is meditation?

As I outlined in this post, mindfulness practice has two components:

Informal practice – techniques deployed throughout your day to maintain present-moment awareness.
Formal practice – which refers to meditation, this being the mind-training practice of focusing your attention (typically on your breath).

While there are many traditions of meditation, Zen likely being the most recognizable, there are two main goals of meditation that complement one another:

Shamatha meditation enhances your ability to concentrate, focus, and pay attention. It develops the inner calm necessary for practicing Vipassana meditation.
Vipassana meditation, also known as “insight meditation”, involves contemplation of the deeper truths of life to help us become better people and lead happier, more peaceful, more compassionate lives.

Both forms of meditation are essential in that they support one another. Concentration on its own can be aloof to the sorrows of the world and so needs insight to nurture compassion.

On the other hand, acquiring insight is nigh impossible without first developing the ability to concentrate, to still the mind and direct your focus where you want it rather than where your mind involuntarily takes you.

“Without the steadiness of concentration it is easy to get caught up in feelings, perceptions, and thoughts as they arise. Notice the profound difference between being aware of a thought and being lost in it. It is the power of concentration that keeps the defilements at bay.”

Joseph Goldstein, “Mindfulness – A Practical Guide to Awakening”

Why Meditate?

Here are some of the benefits of making a formal meditation practice part of your daily routine:

It enhances attention and the ability to concentrate.
It enhances emotional balance.
It provides inner peace and psychological well-being.
It increases our compassion, for ourselves and others.
It counteracts our tendency to be self-centered and self-absorbed.
It has been found to decrease anxiety, decrease the risk of depression, and decrease anger.
It boosts the immune system and helps reduce blood pressure in those suffering from hypertension.
It induces positive emotions.
It teaches us how to deal with negative thoughts.
It brings us back into the present moment with a mind that is clear, calm, and attentive.
It gives our mind a much-needed rest, helping us to access the wise part of our brain, the frontal cortex, while quieting the reactive part of our brain, the amygdala.

In short, meditation is good for us mentally, physically, and inter-personally.

So, while informal mindfulness techniques are exceedingly helpful, they only get us part-way toward our goal of living a life filled with peace, joy, compassion, and wisdom. It takes a formal meditation practice to get us over the goal line, so to speak.

“Training the mind is crucial if we want to sharpen our attention, develop emotional balance and wisdom, and cultivate dedication to the welfare of others.”

Matthieu Ricard, Buddhist monk and author of “Why Meditate?”

Starting a Meditation Practice

From all I have read and heard from others, my experience with starting a daily meditation practice is completely typical and one you are likely to experience as well:

In the beginning I was completely unable to maintain a focus on my breath for longer than a few seconds. Over and over I would catch myself thinking about work, or things I had to do, or friends and family, or aches and pains.
In embarrassingly short order I found myself squirming on the meditation chair, tense, tight and just wanting the session to end.
I found myself skipping days, sometimes multiple days, between practice sessions. I lacked commitment to the practice.

“Whether your meditation session is enjoyable or irritating, easy or hard, the important thing is to persevere. If you get bored while meditating this is not the fault of meditation itself but is due to your lack of training.”

Matthieu Ricard

The good news is that things do get easier, and better!

After about a year I began to notice that my ability to focus had most definitely improved, as had my stamina on the meditation chair; my squirming and discomfort had steadily diminished.

So, just like sports training, my guidance is to push through the initial discomfort because you will come out the other side – trust me – and be all the better for it!

“Everyone knows that it takes time and perseverance to master an art, a sport, a language, or any other discipline. Why should it not be the same with training the mind?

It is a worthwhile adventure. We are not talking about acquiring some ordinary ability, but rather about a new way of being that will determine the quality of our entire life.”

Matthieu Ricard

How to Meditate – The Basics

I am going to assume you are sitting in a straight-backed chair for your meditation. I personally use my meditation stool or meditation futon.

Here, then, are the basic steps:

Set a timer for how long you plan to meditate. For this I use an app called “Insight Timer“, one of the most popular meditation sites. It offers both a free version as well as a premium paid version (which I personally subscribe to). Here you will find not just a timer but also thousands of spoken guided meditations, calming music to meditate to, as well as hundreds of short mindfulness courses.
Sit comfortably, feet flat on the floor.
Your back should be straight but not tense. Keep your back away from the back of the chair.
Lay your hands palm up on top of your legs in a position that’s comfortable, your elbows resting at your sides.
Tilt your head slightly downward and close your eyes.
Make any final adjustments to get comfortable.
Consciously relax all your muscles. Here I mentally envision all my body parts as being melting wax, softening gently under a comforting heat. As an aside, a good opportunity to practice muscle softening is when you feel a sneeze coming on. Rather than giving in, practice relaxing your facial muscles. You’ll soon be amazed at your ability to stifle a sneeze just through the conscious softening of your muscles!
Take two or three slow, deep breaths, inhaling to the count of four, holding for seven, and exhaling to the count of eight (or even longer as I often do).
Begin breathing normally.
Focus your attention on where you most easily sense your breath. For most people this is near the tip of their nostrils, but could also be in your chest or belly. Wherever it is, maintain a gentle focus on that spot to sense your in-breaths and out-breaths. An excellent opportunity to practice focus is when you feel the urge to scratch an itch during a meditation session. Rather than giving in, re-double your focus on the breath and see if the itch doesn’t just go away all on its own, this through re-direction of your attention to where you want it.
If it helps maintain focus, mentally count your in-breaths and out-breaths, counting to ten and then starting over. Alternatively, mentally repeat the words “Peace” for the in-breath and “Calm” for the out-breath. As you gain experience you will likely find you no longer need these aids to maintain focus.
Whenever you notice that your focus has wandered, just gently bring it back. With practice you will experience less wandering and greater ability to remain focused. This is actually one of the goals of meditation – to be able to turn your mind to where you want rather than to where it wants to take you!
When the timer goes, slowly and gently move your fingers and toes, breathe deeply, stretch, and open your eyes.

Variations on Meditation Practice

Here are instructions for doing a few of the better-known meditation practices:

Body-Scan Meditation (shamatha)

This meditation helps to develop your ability to maintain focused attention and awareness. It also serves to bring you firmly into the present moment.

Begin by following steps 1 through 9 as outlined above.

Starting with the small toe of your right foot, turn your attention for a few moments to any physical sensations there – tingling, pressure, warmth, etc. In addition, mentally soften the muscles of that toe just that little bit more.

Gradually turn your attention to each part of your body in turn and simply repeat this process.

Difficult Emotions Meditation (vipassana)

This meditation helps you deal with difficult situations and to dissipate troubling thoughts.

Follow steps 1 through 10 above.

If you are going through a difficult time, it is a virtual certainty that your mind will soon wander away from your breath and latch on to your troubles.

When it does, determine the feelings that underlie these troubles – anger, frustration, fear, envy, embarrassment – whatever they may be.

Once determined, call the feelings out by mentally naming them. For example, if feeling afraid, gently repeat to yourself, “I am feeling afraid” or “Hello again, fear”. By bringing negative feelings into conscious awareness, by facing them head on, they will gradually dissipate.

To speed their departure, soften those parts of your body that are feeling tense or tight. Because body and mind are closely linked, relaxing the body automatically relaxes the mind, and vice versa.

Once the negative thoughts and feelings have softened, simply return your focus back to your breath.

If the negative feelings return, repeat the process, remembering to be gentle and compassionate with yourself the entire time.

Loving Kindness Meditation (vipassana)

This meditation helps to enhance your compassion for others.

Once again, follow steps 1 through 9 above.

Starting with yourself in mind, mentally repeat these phrases to yourself:

May I be happy and content
May I be healthy in mind, body, and spirit
May I be safe from mental and physical harm
May I have ease of being

Next, repeat these phrases with a loved one in mind.

May she be happy and content
May she be healthy in mind, body, and spirit
May she be safe from mental and physical harm
May she have ease of being

In succession, repeat these same wishes while envisioning a close friend, then someone you are indifferent about, and finally someone you find difficult.

When you have completed this cycle, repeat the phrases one last time to take in all living beings everywhere.

May all living beings be happy and content
May all living beings be healthy in mind, body, and spirit
May all living beings be safe from mental and physical harm
May all living beings have ease of being

Now, you may be asking yourself, “Why would I want to extend well wishes to someone I despise“? For these reasons:

If difficult people were happy, healthy, safe, and felt an ease of being, they would cease being difficult people.
People don’t choose to be difficult. It is only through their ignorance that they remain so. Scratch the surface and you will find an individual just like you, someone who wants the same things in life that you do – to be happy, healthy, safe, and free of worries.
As discussed in this post, Buddhist philosophy teaches that “I”, “Me”, and “Mine” are simply mental constructs that we mistake for reality. In our ignorance of this, we create needless discord between ourselves and others.
Is sending good wishes to those you despise likely to have a discernible impact on them? Probably not. But it certainly has a positive impact on you for having done so – the tightness you feel every time you encounter them softens. This in itself is no small achievement and, if sensed by that person, may indeed help produce a softening in them as well. There’s certainly no downside to this practice and it most definitely beats the alternative.

“Meditation will start to clarify your natural ethical sense. If you take up meditation with any degree of seriousness, you will realize that meditating regularly becomes more and more incompatible with acting in ways that harm others or yourself.”

Subhadramati, author of “Not About Being Good – A Practical Guide to Buddhist Ethics“

Tonglen Meditation (vipassana)

This meditation, similar to Loving Kindness, helps you to deal with difficult situations and enhance your compassion for others.

Once again, repeat steps 1 through 10.

Once settled, contemplate all those who are suffering just as you are, perhaps even more.

On each subsequent in-breath, imagine you are breathing in, from all the parts of your body, the totality of their pain – all of it. Sense the heaviness, darkness, and heat of their suffering as your body breathes it all in.

Then, on the out-breath, imagine you are sending out to them (and to yourself) an ease of being and relief from suffering – breathing in others’ troubles and breathing out relief. While doing so, imagine a feeling of lightness, brightness, and cool accompanying each out-breath.

Wisdom Contemplation (vipassana)

This meditation reinforces key mindfulness teachings such that, with repetition, they become inculcated into your very being.

This is my favorite meditation, one I do almost every morning. Reflecting on the core teachings of mindfulness helps point me in the direction of peace and goodwill.

Again, follow steps 1 through 9 above, then observe the routine outlined in this post.

To access a handy two-page summary of this meditation suitable for printing, click on this link.

Sound Meditation (shamatha)

This meditation strengthens your ability to focus your attention and helps bring you back into the present moment.

Again, follow steps 1 through 9 above. Then turn your attention to any and all sounds around you. Notice their pitch, loudness, and duration.

Make a point to not label them as good or bad or to judge them in any way; simply listen intently.

Chocolate Meditation (shamatha)

This meditation is a practice in mindful eating and also serves to enhance conscious awareness of your senses. It’s also fun and tastes great!

In turn, consciously engage each one of your senses as you slowly (!!!) go through the process of eating a piece of chocolate:

Touch – how does it feel in your hands?
Sight – notice everything about it; colour, texture, shape.
Aroma – take in all its many essences.
Sound – what sound does it make when you break a piece off?
Taste – there are over 300 compounds in chocolate; how many can you sense?

Next post: “Weight Watcher’s Meditation” 🙂

Mantra Meditation (shamatha or vipassana)

A mantra is a word or phrase repeated over and over again, either mentally or aloud, during a meditation session.

A mantra with no meaning is selected if it is to serve simply as the focus of one’s attention (rather than focusing on the breath). An example would be a meaningless phrase such as, “Va ja poh ta may”, this one long enough to be carried through both the in-breath and out-breath.

More typical, however, is a mantra with some meaning, such as for its spiritual, affirmational, or aspirational features. The Loving-Kindness meditation discussed above is but one example. Another, and one of my favorites because of its sentiment, is “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu”, a Sanskrit mantra translating roughly as, “May all beings everywhere be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all.”

Eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, are replete with mantras, many examples of which can be found on YouTube.

One can also use a personal affirmation such as, “I am perfect just as I am”, to reinforce a desired attribute or belief.

Himalayan Singing Bowl Meditation (shamatha)

This is a favorite soothing meditation of mine, and judging by the number of singing bowl recordings on YouTube, is favored by many others as well!

Here are the steps I follow:

I sit comfortably on my meditation futon and set my timer.
I take one of my singing bowls and cup it in the palm of my left hand, making a point to avoid touching the bowl’s side (as this would otherwise quickly deaden the bowl’s singing). This hand rests on top of my left leg.
In my right hand I hold a felt-covered wood striker . These are available wherever singing bowls are sold and often come with a bowl purchase.
I gently but firmly strike the side of the bowl with an upward motion to make it sound.
I close my eyes and focus on the sound, listening intently to the various frequencies and pulsating rhythms until they fade completely away. I then continue to listen for a few moments to the silence.
I briefly open my eyes and repeat steps 4 and 5 until the timer chimes.

Very soothing and grounding! Do try it for yourself!

Warmest wishes,

Rob @ Living a Mindful Life

“Meditation is not evasion. It is a serene encounter with reality. The person who practices mindfulness should be no less awake than the driver of a car. Be as awake as a person walking on high stilts — any misstep could cause the walker to fall. Be like a lion going forward with slow, gentle, and firm steps. Only with this kind of vigilance can you realize total awakening.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk and teacher, peace activist, and prolific author (1926 – 2022)

Mindless by Design

Do you see yourself as being a pretty good person? Of course you do – most everyone does – and is.

So why do we fall short of our best intentions so often?

The unfortunate truth is that we are not designed to be mindful – we have been dealt an evolutionary hand that inclines us to be mindless.

Fortunately, this does not mean that we’re destined to always act in a mindless manner. By being aware of this hand we’ve been dealt we can take steps to minimize its unhelpful tendencies.

Stepping Into the Shoes of a Neanderthal

To help understand these evolutionary influences, let’s consider what would have been important for the survival of our Neanderthal forebears:

Trait #1: The ability to sense potential danger

Back at the dawn of civilization when life-threatening danger was an existential risk, it would have been safer to judge a situation harshly and be wrong than to let down your guard and be wrong.

So, with this as our inherited inclination, we tend to be judgmental:

We tend to judge others’ behaviour and, with some frequency, find it wanting because it differs from how we would behave in the same situation. We tend to maintain a running internal dialogue about how others behave, dress, eat, drive – all in an effort to protect our deeply-held views of how the world should work.
We’re also self-critical. Why? Because we fear being judged by others and having them find us wanting. We desperately want to fit in and be accepted. This is evidenced by our near-universal fear of public speaking, a prime example of not wanting to be seen as “flawed” in front of others. In our own eyes we’re often not pretty enough, or tall enough, or smart enough, or good enough, or …..
We’re also prone to zeroing in on the “bad” things in our life rather than focusing on the “good” things. For example, we’re vacationing at a beautiful Caribbean resort and what do we fixate on? That the waiter is too slow bringing us our drinks, or that it’s too hot, or too cold, or too windy. We are cursed with what is known as a ‘negativity bias‘, the tendency to focus on the bad rather than on the good.
When we think about the future we’re often anxious, fretting over what could go wrong. And despite experience to the contrary, we fail to learn that the future tends to turn out just fine and that we were fully up to its challenge.

So, a mechanism that kept our ancestors safe from life-threatening danger now inclines us to be judgmental.

Trait #2: The ability to quickly react to and flee from potential danger.

When faced with potentially life-threatening danger it would have been essential to react immediately. This would not be the time to carefully ponder the wisest way forward.

As a result, all animals (including us humans) developed the ability to react unthinkingly, habitually, and automatically. This is our stress response – the fight-flight-freeze mechanism – driven by one of the oldest parts of our brain, the amygdala. While quick, the amygdala is decidedly not wise.

To be wise we need to access the newest part of our brain – the pre-frontal cortex (PFC), responsible for our executive functioning (emotional control, impulse control, and creativity).

Unfortunately, when we are upset (even by the most trivial of circumstances) our PFC goes off-line and we lose access to our wisdom – just when we need it most. And what do we do when this happens? We think and act mindlessly.

So, once again, that which helped keep our ancient ancestors alive now inclines us to be unwise, reactive individuals which results in some of our most cringe-inducing behavior and stupefyingly bad decisions.

The good news is that there are tell-tale signs when our stress response is about to take our wisdom off-line and turn us into the equivalent of Neanderthals. We experience:

a furrowed brow
downturned, pursed lips
a faster heart beat
a tightening of the muscles, especially the jaw
a dry mouth
faster, shallower breathing
an empty feeling in the gut

We need to become sensitized to these sensations and, when they occur, use them as our signal to not continue down that path.

Specifically, we should pause, breathe slowly and deeply, smile, relax our tight muscles, and slow down our thinking.

Doing so activates our calming parasympathetic nervous system, shuts down the amygdala, and helps us access our PFC and its inherent wisdom.

In a calmer, clearer state of mind, we choose to respond to life rather than react to it unthinkingly.

Trait #3: Protecting our own

From an evolutionary standpoint, passing one’s genes on to the next generation is the prime directive. How is this best accomplished? By being selfish – looking after yourself first, then those who share most of your genes, and then those who would step forward to raise your offspring should you die prematurely. In other words, look out for Number One, then relatives, then friends.

Of course, this is a description of being self-centred and indifferent toward those you don’t know. Little surprise that neither of these traits is compatible with being mindful.

As confirmation of these tendencies one interesting study ran a variation of the Trolley problem the essence of which is to force a participant to decide whether to sacrifice one individual for the sake of saving multiple others.

Given what we now know, it should come as no surprise that test participants were more willing to sacrifice non-relatives. In addition, the closer the relation the less likely they were to sacrifice that person for the survival of multiple “others”.

Aware of our tendency to be self-centered, selfish, and nepotistic, we can instead foster the opposite traits – to be generous, considerate, kind, thoughtful, caring, and helpful – toward everyone, not just those within our limited charmed circle.

Trait #4: The ability to automate repeated tasks

We have a built-in mechanism that turns repeated actions over to the subconscious part of our brain (e.g. learning how to type, learning to play a musical instrument, or learning to play a new sport).

This is obviously a very useful system as it makes us more efficient at such tasks. Imagine a caveman having to think about each individual muscle movement involved in tossing a spear accurately at a moving target – starvation would quickly result.

So, through practice, this automating system makes repetitive tasks easy, requiring near-zero conscious thinking.

However, problems arise when we cede too much of our life to this automatic mode; we fail to see the roses, let alone stop to smell them. Much of life becomes invisible to us.

We’ve all experienced this – we’re driving to work along the same route we’ve used the past umpteen years. Being repetitive, the task of negotiating the journey is handed off to our subconscious and under the guidance of this automated system we arrive safely at our office but without any real recollection of the terrain we’ve just traversed.

The sunny day, scudding clouds, passing birds, interesting people, beautiful foliage, while in full view are, for all intents and purposes, invisible to us.

Instead we’re lost in our little thoughts of the past, the future, or spaced out in utter fantasy (how often do we uselessly replay past conversations or do imaginary run-throughs of future ones).

If we are not careful – if we are not mindful – much of our life is lost in the trance of automated behaviour.

In a life spanning 90 years we are, in effect, dead at 50 having lived much of our life only marginally aware of our surroundings – only marginally aware of what is actually happening in each moment lived.

Trait #5: The drive to do, achieve, and acquire

It has been surmised that the unpleasant feeling we call boredom is actually the essential trait that drove our ancient ancestors to get off their collective butts and innovate for the survival of our species.

Think of it this way – any species for whom doing nothing all day felt totally fantastic – well, they were the ones quickly expunged from the evolutionary record.

So, while we take the act of “doing things” for granted, it nonetheless is still driven by biological nudges and impulses. In this instance being the desire to relieve the unpleasant feeling of boredom.

In addition, we also inherited a system that makes us feel good when we are about to acquire a reward (e.g. food, sex, or buying something we crave). In anticipation of a reward we receive a hit of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that sends signals to the pleasure centres of our brain.

Put these two systems together – pain for not doing and pleasure for doing – and we are primed as a species to accomplish a great deal.

However, there is a dark side to all this doing and acquiring, this being that there is no logical end to it. We do, do, do, accomplish, accomplish, accomplish, and acquire, acquire, acquire and yet still feel empty.

Why? Because no matter how much we do, no matter how much we accomplish, and no matter how much we acquire, it’s never enough.

As soon as we stop “doing”, the unpleasantness comes back and our craving for another hit of pleasure sends us back for more – we become addicted to “doing”.

It is this feeling of always falling short that lies at the heart of society’s chronic anxiety, stress, and pervasive dissatisfaction with life – a sense that no matter how fast we go or how much we do, accomplish, or acquire, we never quite ‘make it’ in life; we are chronically discontent.

Our Evolutionary Inheritance: Mindlessness

So, these five traits, each one a part of our evolutionary inheritance, incline us to behave mindlessly:

We are inclined to be critical and judgmental of others, ourselves, and situations we encounter.
We pay greater heed to the few negative things in life rather than the many positive things.
We react to life unthinkingly, habitually, and automatically.
We are prone to be self-centred and selfish.
We are lacking in compassion for those who are not our close relatives or friends.
We cede much of our conscious awareness – much of our life – to automated actions.
We are chronically discontent and, therefore, endure a never-ending cycle of doing, achieving, and acquiring.

Needless to say, this is not a great way to live a life.

“I began to wonder whether people were thinking at all. Decades of research later, I have found the answer is a resounding “NO”. Mindlessness is pervasive. In fact, I believe virtually all of our problems – personal, interpersonal, professional, and societal – either directly or indirectly, stem from mindlessness.”

Dr. Ellen Langer, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University and author of, “Mindfulness”

The Solution: Mindful Awareness

As mentioned earlier, biology is not destiny. We can take steps to ameliorate the negative aspects of these otherwise useful traits. How?

By acknowledging their existence.
By sensitizing ourselves to their negative side effects.
By altering our behavior when we sense they are about to influence us to act in a mindless manner.

Only by applying mindful awareness to our base tendencies can we save ourselves from wasting much of life in a fog of mindless behaviour.

Of course, we’re only human, and so will inevitably fall short of our best intentions from time to time. However, that’s why it’s called mindfulness practice. And, with dedicated practice, the frequency of our mindless moments diminishes.

Compassion, Not Judgment

As this essay has made clear, our inherited mindlessness compels us to extend compassion, rather than anger, toward those whose behavior we find offensive; because none of us chose our evolutionary inheritance and it’s not our fault that we are inclined to be mindless.

And the result of extending a compassion that recognizes the innocence of our human frailties? A kinder, gentler, fairer, more understanding, and more peaceful world for all of us.

Warmest wishes,

Rob @ Living a Mindful Life

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Stepping Into the Shoes of a Neanderthal

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