FIRST WEEK

Getting Started

The first step in starting a mindfulness practice is to establish the basic elements. These include mindfulness of breathing, sitting meditation, and daily-life mindfulness. In this chapter, you will learn how to use your breathing to establish mindfulness and increase your awareness. You will also learn the basics of sitting meditation and get suggestions for creating your own daily-life mindfulness practice. In each subsequent chapter in this section, you will build on the practices you learn here and add new ones, so by the fourth week you will have the essentials of mindfulness practice in place.

Mindfulness practice comes in two varieties: formal and informal. The formal practice is what we would normally call "meditation," for which we set aside a specific time to sit silently with mindful awareness of our breathing, or to walk slowly and silently with mindful awareness of our breath and our walking. The informal practice involves mindfulness of our daily-life activities, and is just as much "meditation" as the formal practices are. Because the heart of mindfulness practice is the enactment of mindfulness in everything in our lives, both the formal and informal practices of mindfulness are equally important. Each supports the other. Without formal practice, it is difficult to develop a deep understanding of our minds and our true nature as living beings. Formal practice gives us a controlled, simplified environment where we can encounter ourselves and the world in the present moment. Informal practice puts mindfulness into every act and increases our concentration and awareness. Without informal practice, we would develop split personalities, with one deeper level of awareness when we are doing sitting or walking meditation and another less open level of awareness at other times.

Daily Formal Practice

Doing some formal mindfulness practice every day is important. It strengthens our concentration and gives us the opportunity to do nothing and to be present in the moment. Be is the operative word here: be and not do. We all have plenty of "do-ing" in our lives, and not enough "be-ing." We need both. Not only do we encounter ourselves and the world differently when we are be-ing rather than do-ing, we also learn quickly that the secret to living well is to "be" in the center of our "do-ing." Or to put it another way, we learn that the secret to an awakened life is to be completely, deeply still, expansive and present in the heart of whatever we are doing. We stop, come to rest. Only when we can rest from our mind's constant running can we be present to this moment.

The first formal meditation practice you will learn is sitting meditation.

Sitting Meditation

Meditation teacher Arnie Kotler likes to say that sitting meditation accomplishes two things: It allows us to get to know ourselves, and it improves our concentration. Getting to know ourselves means looking deeply into our own nature and the nature of everything around us, and cultivating our willingness to allow our preconceptions about ourselves and our lives, and about everything else, to fall away. As we get to know better the true nature of our minds, we start to understand that thoughts are thoughts and feelings are feelings, and to become less invested in the drama that our thoughts and feelings can so easily create. We begin to live more gracefully.

Mindfulness meditation is not about being in a trance, or about escaping from reality. It is about waking up. We spend most of our lives caught up in the conceptual knowledge we have acquired, and in our concepts of who we are, or what our lives mean, or what a tree is or what a boulder is, and so on and on. This layer of concept sits between us and the reality of the present moment. To touch the present moment, we must allow this layer of concept to drop away. To allow this layer to drop away, we first have to be able to stop. We have to stop both body and mind. Only when our minds stop racing, only when we allow ourselves to be in one place, can we truly be present in the here and now. This is the first step we take in mindfulness meditation: We use mindfulness of breathing as a way to help us stop and truly be here. As we continue to practice mindfulness meditation, our capacity to stop and be present increases. Out of this we naturally develop deeper concentration and the capacity to look deeply into ourselves or into whatever we encounter.

This process of looking deeply is not analytical. It is spontaneous and unstudied. We don't have to figure anything out or make anything happen. All we need do is to sit, be aware of our breathing, and allow our concentration and mindfulness to penetrate whatever comes along.

In sitting meditation we begin by focusing our attention on our breathing. If we can truly be present with our in-breath and out-breath, we have stopped ourselves in the present moment, allowed our concept about what breathing is to fall away, and begun to touch the true nature of breathing. If we stay concentrated on our breathing, we will notice that our breathing changes, that no two breaths are exactly the same, and that other things, like thoughts and feelings, arise and ask for our attention. In this way we come to know ourselves, our feelings, and our minds directly, in a way that sits outside conceptual knowledge.

Posture

To do sitting meditation well, you need a good and stable posture. If you sit in a chair, sit with your back straight so that your legs are at a 90-degree angle (or as close to one as you can put them) and with your feet flat on the floor. If you are sitting on a cushion, sit with your legs crossed or in a half- lotus position (or if you are really flexible, in a full-lotus) and with your back straight. It is helpful to have the cushion tilt your buttocks forward slightly to stabilize the base of your spine. Please do not lean against the back of a chair or against a wall, because if you do, you are likely to go to sleep.

Your arms should be near, but not touching, your sides. Make sure you are not pressing against your chest; this will inhibit your breathing. Your chin should be slightly tucked in. Your hands can be in any comfortable posture.

You can close your eyes during sitting meditation, or if you wish, you can keep them slightly open, with your gaze adjusted to about a 45-degree angle and directed at the floor in front of you. If you keep your eyes open, here are two...