1.0 Instruction: Balancing Relaxation and Clarity

So a lot of people,

When they think of meditation,

Think of the word concentration.

So it is not concentration.

I don't like to use that word,

Because that connotes the furrowed brow.

It's a mental isometric or something.

I am focusing my attention,

And it's like pushing against this wall until my arm begins to tremble,

Something like that.

That is not what we are doing.

What we are doing is developing a very anomalous form of attention that very,

Very few people know about and very few people cultivate.

Some people realize that the key to all great performance lies in this,

But they don't understand it,

And they don't know how to consciously get into this state.

So as meditators,

We recognize that what we,

First of all,

Have to do is to relax.

And so we have to develop this deep state of relaxation.

And then the anomalous part about this is that unlike when you relax deeply when your head hits the pillow at night,

Now we are going to develop a relaxation that is balanced with clarity.

So first of all,

The first meditation skill,

Relaxation.

The second meditation skill,

Which you could call the first meditation balancing act,

Because all of shamatha,

Shamatha meaning this system of meditation that was developed in India and really perfected and came to us from Tibet largely.

This shamatha means developing single-pointed concentration,

Quiescence,

But it's all about developing a balance of stability and clarity.

And so as you move through what are described in the classical traditions as nine stages of shamatha,

Where you begin with just being able to place your attention on your chosen object,

And then at stage nine,

You are effortlessly able to keep your attention on your chosen object for four hours,

Effortless four hours of single-pointed concentration.

So to get from one to nine,

It's just a succession of more and more subtle balancing acts.

So the first balancing act is balancing relaxation and clarity.

So you have to become relaxed and give up striving,

Give up effort,

And just release,

Just release all muscular tension,

Release all mental turbulence,

Just release,

Release,

Release,

Release.

And I will talk you through that in the first meditation.

But then as you are deepening your relaxation,

You balance that with clarity.

And basically,

Clarity,

We know what that is.

That is a brightness of engagement.

So that is like walking through Times Square or something,

If you like Times Square at night.

It's bright.

Your attention is,

You know,

You're not falling asleep.

Basically,

What that means is it's the opposite of boredom of your attention sinking into itself.

It is a bright,

Keen,

Curious engagement.

So call that clarity,

A quality of your attention.

So we're maintaining developing relaxation,

Balancing that with clarity.

And basically,

At the beginning,

That means maintaining the clarity that you begin your meditation with as you continue to deepen your relaxation.

And you can see that we have meditation mats laid out here.

The reason for that is that we are going to experiment with,

During this retreat this weekend,

A number of different meditation postures,

Because the Buddha authorized four different meditation postures for a very good reason.

And that is that each of them has a specific purpose.

And you could say that the meditation postures are arrayed on a continuum from over here,

The continuum describing relaxation,

And over on this side,

Clarity,

Because these are the two qualities of our meditation that we are trying to cultivate in shamatha.

So stability and clarity.

But first of all,

We're talking about stability as relaxation.

So a posture,

You have a choice of a posture that really supports relaxation.

And that is shavasana.

That's what the mats are for.

The first meditation position I would like you to experiment with is shavasana.

So this is,

I think,

All of you have experience with yoga here,

Probably.

And so you know that there are some technical qualities associated with shavasana.

But the only ones that I'm going to really mention are that,

First of all,

The whole point of this position is it's supposed to be comfortable.

So in order to support comfort,

You can use a low pillow under your neck with the idea that your chin and your forehead should be parallel with the floor.

So if your chin is too low,

Basically if you have too high a pillow,

Your chin will be compressing your neck or stretching your neck,

I guess,

Towards your chin.

And if you don't have a pillow,

It could be that you will be compressing your neck and your chin will be higher than your forehead.

So you can use a pillow under your neck.

You can use a bolster under your knees if that's comfortable,

Because that will help to keep your lower back from your sacrum from compressing as you become more and more relaxed and stretched.

And if you have lower back pain in shavasana,

Then often what will take care of that is if you actually elevate your feet on a chair while you are in shavasana.

So first of all,

Get comfortable.

And then one tip that could really help is keep your palms up at your side.

So don't put them on your chest.

Don't put your palms down,

Because this is probably a position more associated with sleep when you fall asleep on your back.

But it's a rare person,

I think,

That falls asleep when they go to bed at night with their palms up.

So this is a little somatic clue to you that this is meditation time,

Not sleep time.

So the goal is to not fall asleep during this meditation session.

So palms up,

That's pretty much it.

Your eyes can be open or closed.

And one reason that you would choose to have your eyes open rather than closed,

There are a number of reasons we'll talk about tomorrow why you might choose to have your eyes open rather than closed.

And that's part of the progression of meditation technique.

By the time you get to awareness meditations,

The instruction says your eyes must be open.

But to begin with,

Working on stable attention,

Your eyes can be open or closed.

And one reason that you would choose open or closed is that if you are feeling lax,

If you're feeling drowsy,

Especially in shavasana,

Just open your eyes.

That will allow brightness,

Clarity,

The room in.

And that will help to maintain clarity as you continue to deepen your relaxation.

And then one last thing that we're going to talk about much more as we go through the subsequent sessions,

And that is peripheral awareness.

So I am just now going to tell you,

Maintain peripheral awareness as you are going to begin to give exclusive attention.

I'll just say there are two types of ways that we engage with the world.

One is awareness,

And the other is attention.

And it's very important,

This distinction between the two.

And we are going to,

As we proceed,

We are going to begin to develop another anomalous form of training the mind.

And that is that we are going to maintain awareness and attention simultaneously.

This is a tremendous skill that very few people,

Even meditators,

Even know about.

But this will,

From the very beginning,

If you begin to cultivate this from the very beginning,

This will add tremendous potential.

You will make progress developing attentional stability much faster.

And basically,

Awareness is open,

Receptive,

Global.

I am aware of,

With my peripheral vision,

I am aware of all of you in this room right now.

But I am attending only to Abhilokitesvara in the back of the room right now.

You know that you can be aware of multiple things,

But they don't have to steal your attention.

So that's what we are going to begin to do,

Maintaining peripheral awareness of a number of things.

And this will become much more clear as I talk you through the meditation.

And as we begin to focus,

First of all,

With attention,

And then begin to narrow the focus of our attention.

One more thing,

Bare attention.

In Tibetan Buddhism and Buddhist psychology,

It is said that there are six sense fields.

So we have the five physical senses,

And then the mental as well.

This is regarded as a sense power.

And what we are going to be doing with bare attention,

The quality of bare attention,

Is developing a skill in which we are engaging with an object with only one of the sense fields at a time.

So as the Buddha said,

In the seen,

There is only the seen.

In the heard,

There is only the heard.

In the felt,

There is only the felt,

Dot,

Dot,

Dot.

In the mentally cognized,

Only the mentally cognized.

And normally,

We aren't aware of that.

What we do is we think we are attending to the sunset with our eyes.

But what we are really doing is we are engaging it conceptually with our minds,

Oftentimes.

And we go back and forth.

But we begin to compare this sunset.

We identify the colors.

Is this orange or red?

We say,

Boy,

The sunset really,

There must be a lot of humidity in the air today.

I wonder if the sun is going to fall between these two buildings in the Manhattan skyline so that I can actually see it all the way down.

Or,

Oh,

It's going to set behind the Empire State Building.

Oh,

I wish I had a camera.

All of that.

Then the sun is down before I realize that I haven't been actually engaging it with my sight for several minutes.

So bear attention,

Being able to disentangle the sense,

Perception from the conceptual overlay.

Yeah,

That's about it.

So find your comfortable position now in Shavasana.