Tag: mindfulness

Mental Stabilization

We have been discussing the six perfections for the past four weeks. Someone sent an email asking me what the purpose of six perfections was. The function of these six perfections is to make our lives smoother and with less friction. Today we will continue with this series and look at mental stabilization also known as concentration. What is concentration? Concentration is a mind whose nature is to single-pointedly focus on a virtuous object and whose function is to prevent distractions.

To understand this, it is important to look at what it is not. Concentration is not an act of will to force ourselves to focus on something or another. It is not like we say let’s focus on this pen. It is actually to eliminate that which does not belong. Here is a perfect example. I am sure you all have tried concentrated orange juice. It is simply the removal of water from the juice. Meaning removing water from the juice.

So there are several components of concentration. The first one is the stability of mental capacity. We have talked about this before the human mind is incapable of multitasking. What we call multitasking is rapidly switching from one task to another but it is not multitasking. Just like when we see a fan moving, the blades can seem like one because they are moving so fast. Similarly, multitasking is an illusion. Anything other than what you should be doing is a distraction such as texting and driving.

Part of concentration is not about narrowing our focus. Because when we narrow our focus we lose the context. So an aspect of concentration is actually to zoom out. When you talk about someone who is not with you and someone mentions a bad quality of the person who is not with them, the mind zooms in as to why that person is no good, and all of a sudden, that person becomes the worst person in the world in our mind. When we like or dislike something, we tend to justify it. When we try a new thing, a lot of times, we judge before we even try it. So it is not the object that is good or bad but our feeling towards it makes it good or bad. Once our feeling is set, we will follow the feeling as opposed to keeping the context.

A perfect example is when one falls in love. The person can do no wrong. They are not looking at context but just their feeling. Sometimes goes by and now they have a few arguments. All of a sudden the feeling towards the person changes and they can do no right! Everything they do annoys the person. Again, no context at all. No person is all good or bad. But it is the lack of context that makes things difficult.

Another element is to keep an eye on important vs urgent. We respond to emails all day long without regard to whether it is important or not. Urgent tends to distract your concentration from important. We have discussed this before as well and often we get hung up on urgent matters of the moment rather than keeping our focus on the larger goal.

Another aspect of concentration is stability for personal benefit.

Relaxation is very important for our personal benefit. Tension is distracting. When there is tension in any part of your body, it requires your attention. For example, if there is pain, our mind keeps going to that part of the body as opposed to being here and now. It is important to relax. Relaxation includes relaxation of the body and relaxation of the mind. When we are tense, we would trigger a flight, fight or freeze response within ourselves. We need to make decisions consciously rather than make reactive decisions. A reactive decision tends to be a mistake. Always perform a check to see if you are relaxed. We as a society don’t value relaxation but that is very important for our long-term health.

Interest is another quality that is needed for concentration. When we look at something, we don’t value differences between experiences. Sometimes we think we have already done something or experienced something, but there are always subtle differences. If we think it is the same, we are not paying attention and if we are not paying attention, we are not concentrating. So if we cultivate interest, it will increase our concentration. Because interest prevents us from being distracted. We need to develop a beginner’s mind towards everything that we are doing right now. Because a beginner’s mind is always interested. That means you are mentally present as opposed to in the past or the future.

Confidence is another quality for the development of concentration. Confidence in the certainty of one’s path. If not, you will not be putting in your full effort and lose concentration. Once you chose to take a path, remove all self-doubt. Every action is beneficial; you either accomplish what you wanted to or learn from the experience.  Don’t let outsiders influence your decision and break your confidence.

As you can see, concentration is one of the important perfections and if we understand and apply it correctly, it is of great benefit.

Effort

Let’s continue with our series on six perfections. After discussing Giving, Patience, and Moral Discipline, in the past weeks; I thought we will discuss perfection of effort today. This is also known as vigor and enthusiasm. The effort is a mind that delights in virtue. The effort is not something we practice on its own. The effort is something we practice with all of our actions.

I am sure you have heard this expression that goes half of life is just showing up. I used to tell this to my kids all the time. All that means is to make sure that you are consistently showing up for what needs to be done. Keep giving your efforts without regard to short-term results or lack thereof.

Let me give you an example. When I came to the US, during the first semester, I was paying for all my expenses. As an international student, the fees are really high. So the goal for most international students is to receive a research assistant position where the University waives their tuition and pays them a small stipend on top of that. Within the first month of starting the semester, I started talking to professors about a potential research assistant position. One professor told me, he had a grant application out with the National Science Foundation and if it was approved, he would have two or three positions open. I would go visit the professor every two weeks to see if heard anything from the NSF. About two months later, one day I visited the professor and asked if he heard anything. To my surprise, he said, yes his application was approved and he would need three research assistants on that project. He said there were about ten students who were asking him for a position. Then he said something totally surprising. He said he was going to interview everyone for two of the position and he was offering me one of the positions. I thanked him and he went, do you know why I offered you this position? I had no clue. He explained that I was the only one, who was persistent, meeting him every two weeks, and wanted his lead researcher to be someone with that kind of drive. Who knew?

The point here is that no matter how many times you hear no, or fail, we must get up and move towards our goal.

Now to apply effort, we need to overcome three types of laziness: 1) procrastination; 2) attraction to what is non-virtuous; and 3) discouragement

What perseverance means is that we must become independent of internal and external influences when we are moving toward a goal. All of you are here listening to these meditation videos and attending sessions because something in you tells you that you want to become mindful. You want some level of mental peace and joy and bliss within you. if that is the goal then please make sure that you don’t get influenced by outside factors. You will have good meditation days and not-so-good meditation days. Some days you may feel like you met Buddha himself and other days, your mind is so wound up that nothing brings peace it seems. That is perfectly OK. With time, you will be able to get into a situation where no matter the external conditions, you will be able to bring your mind to peace.

What you want to avoid is I will start meditating once the kids are out of the house or I will focus once I retire and so on. These are just examples of procrastination. Essentially it is an unwillingness to put effort into what is meaningful to you. This is dangerous because this opportunity to practice is easily lost once we are distracted by other things.

The second type of laziness is when we do mundane things instead of what is meaningful to us. I call this busywork. There are so many people who stay busy for the sake of staying busy that it boggles my mind. When one is busy for the sake of busyness, you don’t have time to think about what is important and what would make you better or what would take you places.

The third type of laziness is discouragement. Don’t get discouraged because you think you are not making progress in your meditation practice. You are certainly making a progress. Even if you get 10 seconds of peace within you that is 10 seconds more than you had before.

There are three types of efforts: 1) armor-like effort which is a strong determination to succeed; 2) the effort of gathering virtuous actions which is the effort we apply to accumulate positive karma, and 3) the effort of benefiting others which is the effort we apply to help other living beings.

Another thing about effort is how we apply our effort. Some people begin their effort with huge fanfare and go full force to begin a task but then fizzle out after a while. This is called the waterfall effect. We want to be more like a river in our effort constantly flowing as opposed to intermittently applying effort.

Hope this is useful in your daily activities, especially your meditation practice.

Patience

We started discussing the six perfections in detail last week with the perfection of moral discipline. I thought we would talk about one of the other perfections—patience today. Now if you talk to anyone who knows me, they would tell you, I am the least qualified person to talk about patience! So today is the “let’s do what the teacher says and not what he does” kind of lesson!

In “The Boddhisattva Vow” Geshe Kelsang Gyatso defines patience as a virtuous mind that is able to bear harm, suffering, or profound Dharma. Patience is useful whether we are interested in spiritual growth or not. You see, without patience, we are prone to anxiety, frustration, and disquiet. If we lack patience, it is difficult for us to maintain a relationship with others.

Patience is the opposite of anger. We have all seen what anger can do. At a minimum, it prevents us from judging the situation accurately and causes us to act irrationally. Worst of all, it destroys our peace of mind. Anger normally is triggered by something very insignificant, such as a comment we find offensive or a habit we find annoying, and so forth. It leads us to do and say things that create harm to us and others. If we look at all the wars in this world, there is no doubt that they were caused by angry minds. External enemies harm us in slow and subtle ways. Anger, on the other hand, harms us from within.

Patience helps us in this life and all our future lives. The famous Indian sage Shantideva once said, “there is no evil greater than anger, there is no virtue greater than patience”. With patience, we can accept any pain that is inflicted upon us. With patience, nothing destroys our peace of mind and we do not experience any suffering. There are three types of patience:

  1. The patience of not retaliating
  2. The patience of voluntarily enduring suffering
  3. The patience of definitely thinking about Dharma or spirituality

To practice the patience of not retaliating, we need to be mindful of how anger can destroy our peace of mind and be alert when situations arise when we might get angry. We need to think that if someone hits us with a stick it is not the fault of the stick. Similarly, when someone tries to harm us, it is their delusion to be blamed and not themselves. I know, tough to reconcile, right? Another way to think about this is to realize that when someone harms us, it is our Karma that created the situation. We must have harmed them in the past and by patiently accepting the situation, we are able to pay off that karmic debt.

The second kind of patience is the patience of volunteering enduring suffering. If we don’t have this patience, we will give up our tasks as soon as they become difficult. We will become more and more frustrated and we will end up accepting mediocracy. We often come across unpleasant conditions and misfortune. By voluntarily accepting these adversities, we eliminate sufferings from our lives. That does not mean the pain goes away, but it need not cause suffering within us. Instead of self-pity, we strengthen our resolve. We recall that these unpleasant conditions or misfortunes are the results of our previous negative karma and resolve to avoid negative karma moving forward. If we are able to endure adversities, we will be able to reap great rewards. Our present sufferings will diminish. Also, suffering helps us dispel pride, develop compassion and abandon negative karma.

The third type of patience is the patience of definitely thinking about Dharma or spirituality. If we listen to, contemplate, and meditate on spirituality and Dharma, we are practicing patience of definitely thinking of patience. So every Tuesday, when we meet for meditation, we are practicing patience of definitely thinking about Dharma. This is important because it creates a happy and patient mind.

So hopefully, we can all try a little harder to develop the type of patience that we need to work on. We may find a particular type of patience more difficult to practice than others depending upon karmic tendencies. But important thing is to make progress and not get discouraged.

Moral Discipline

In the past, we briefly touched on the six perfections. Six perfections are the guide to living a life on the right path the path that leads to enlightenment. Now that is a tall order for sure but practicing these six perfections would certainly make our daily lives joyful and would bring joy to people around us. So today, let’s talk about the perfection of moral discipline.

In “The Boddhisattva Vow” Geshe Kelsang Gyatso defines moral discipline as a virtuous mental determination to abandon any fault or any action that is motivated by such a determination. That’s it. It is that simple. If we know something is wrong and we make a determination to avoid that, and follow through with it, we are practicing moral discipline.

There are three types of moral discipline; 1) the moral discipline of restraint; 2) the moral discipline of generating virtuous karma; 3) the moral discipline of benefiting other living beings.

Let’s look at each one in detail. The moral discipline of restraint is abstaining from non-virtuous acts. You see to practice this type of moral discipline we first need to understand the dangers of committing negative actions, make a promise to abandon such negative actions, and then follow through on it. Simply not doing something without knowing that it is wrong is not moral discipline. For example, a two-year-old does not know that killing is bad. If they abstain from killing they are not practicing moral discipline. Now, on the other hand, a five-year-old knows killing is bad and then avoids killing ants, they are practicing moral discipline. So if we understand the dangers of ten non-virtuous actions that we have talked about at length during our karma series, promise to refrain from them, and then follow through on that promise, we are practicing the moral discipline of restraint. If we are not ready to abandon all of the negative actions at once, we can take a vow to refrain from one particular type of non-virtuous action for a certain period. Once we keep that promise, we can increase the duration of our promise for a longer time in the next iteration.

To practice this, we need to rely upon our M A C technique. We need to be mindful so we don’t forget our vows. We need to stay alert so that when delusions crop up, we can use our conscientiousness to avoid non-virtuous actions.

Next is the moral discipline of generating virtuous karma. To me, this is easier than the first one but like anything else depending upon our own karma we find one type of moral discipline easier than the other. In this moral discipline, we need to try and generate virtuous karma. Again, it is important to be mindful of what it is that we are doing for that to be considered moral discipline. I am sure there are some benefits of accidental positive karma but positive karma created by mindfulness had the full effect if you will.

The last type of moral discipline is of benefiting living beings. This is the moral discipline of helping others in whatever way that we can. We can offer material help if someone needs it or we can offer advice to them if they are going through a difficult stage in their life or we can teach them dharma or we can pray for them at a minimum. When we help others, we should be sensitive to their needs, state of mind, experience, and point of view. If we come down as Hollier than thou, no matter how good the advice may be, they are not likely to follow it and we are not doing good to anyone.

There is an interesting story of a Tibetan monk. He had a good size following and one day he was giving teaching from a throne to a few hundred followers. There was this lady in the village whose daughter was sick and someone told her that if she put the daughter in the monk’s care, that would save her daughter. So the lady takes a few-month-old daughter in a basket to the monk when he was giving a lecture and said out loud, here keep your daughter. She is your daughter so you raise her. Then she quietly told the monk to save her daughter. Monk just nodded and took the baby in his lap and continued with his teaching. Over the next few years, he raised this baby like she was his own. Once the lady realized that her daughter was healthy she came back to pick her up. Now talk about the moral discipline of helping living beings! Most people would have worried about their reputation and whatnot. Not this monk. He wanted to help and realized that if he challenged the lady, he would not be able to help the baby.

I know none of us are monks but if we apply some of these teachings at a small level in our lives; the world would be a better place.

Why Meditate?

I was at a party over the weekend. During our idle chatter, someone asked me why I meditate and what is the purpose. They continued if that brings 10 minutes of peace in one’s day. I thought it’s been a while since we looked at why we are getting together every Tuesday so it would be nice to look at that again. Surely, we want to find that peace within us on a daily basis for however long that we can find it. But the purpose of practice is never the practice.

What do I mean by that? Let’s say you decide to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Now unless you are used to climbing fourteeners, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro is no small feat. Especially, on the last day. The first few days it is relatively easy but on the last day, you are supposed to start climbing around 9 or 10 pm. You will reach the peak just around dawn. You take a few pictures and then continue with the descent for about four hours or so before getting to a camp. This is not an easy day for anybody. You will be essentially on your feet for 10 hours or so. In this case, you will start conditioning your body before you head out to Tanzania. You begin a daily exercise routine and probably weekly climbing practice. The purpose of this conditioning is not to get good at conditioning but to prepare yourself for the climb on Mount Kilimanjaro.

Our daily meditation practice is supposed to condition us for our daily worldly activities. For example, let’s say you buy a 10,000-piece Lego puzzle. That’s a lot of pieces and would take you a few days to complete for sure. Now you begin to organize your pieces in different piles first. Then you begin to build the puzzle. You spend say 30 minutes doing this. If you spend the next 23 ½ hours breaking what you have already built and mixing all the pieces you had separated what is the result? The next day, you will have a bigger challenge on your hand.

So when we meditate, we are trying to find that peace within us for sure. The bigger purpose however is to make sure that we carry that with us throughout the rest of our day. We want to be centered no matter what life throws at us. That is the real purpose of our meditation. Getting grounded within ourselves. If during our meditation practice say you had a rough time concentrating on a particular day. But after meditation is complete, you can be kind and loving towards everyone you come across. That is a successful mediation session. On the other hand, if you had a peaceful meditation where you came close to enlightenment but after the meditation session you have difficulty showing compassion towards anyone, that was an unsuccessful meditation session.

And of course, there are actual health benefits of meditation that we have discussed before. They include reduced stress, lower anxiety, improved self-awareness, and so on. In a nutshell, meditation leads to a peaceful mind. It puts us in a relaxed state of being both physically and mentally.

Before we begin our meditation I just want to remind everyone about the 10 x 10 practice we have discussed in the past. Try to take 10 deep breaths approx. 10 times every day. Each breath comes from your diaphragm. Put your hand on your stomach. As you breathe, your stomach should expand. So take a deep inhalation. You will feel your stomach expand. When you exhale, you deflate your stomach – they say to try to reach your spinal cord with your stomach.

Even if you are in the middle of a project, just stop and take 10 deep breaths. You can do this every hour – the easiest way to do this is to put an alarm on your phone so you have a reminder. When you take these breaths, be sure to focus on the sensation of your breath in your nostrils. I believe this will help you calm down in the middle of the day and will bring you can to your center if you are having a difficult day.