Buddhist Meditation: Mindfulness
Mindfulness refers to a form of a meditation, as well as a habit.
During mindful meditation, we pay attention to everything that goes on in our minds. We look at our thoughts, our emotions, our desires, where we tend to focus our thoughts, what categories of thoughts do we frequently produce, how we react to different stimuli.. etc. For example, you could be doing mindful meditation while hearing a TV in the background. You may hear the voice of some actor or anchor that annoys you, and you notice that you started name-calling the person, or that you got tenser. You pay attention to anything and everything.
We can also be mindful while going about our daily business. We can try and pay as much attention to how we react to our environment, and how we feel during our daily grind. This, after sometime, becomes a habit.
How does mindfulness benefit us?
By observing your own mind, you may find that you go through stress throughout the day that can be easily avoided. Let me give you a personal example. When I began meditating, I put a lot of effort into staying mindful and practicing informal meditation throughout the day. I began noticing that while driving, I tend to stare down other drivers in that macho competitive way. I also noticed that it was causing tension and stress within me. Noticing this, I would not allow myself to stare down other drivers. It seems minor, but driving has actually become more pleasant since. The more of these little stressors you find throughout your day, and the more of them you work on removing, the better and happier you will feel overall.
So, come on! Pay attention to the crap rattling around in your brain! Help yourself stay relaxed!
Buddhist and Western Meditation
Buddhist and Western Meditation: Maximize your benefit
You often times hear how Buddhist meditation can help you deal with stress. You may hear how it will help you calm yourself down. This is absolutely true. When you are too riled up or caught up in your own thoughts causing you guilt, anxiety, sadness.. Meditation will help you calm yourself down. But, meditation can be so much more powerful. You can actually rewire how you react to unpleasant situations. Before you learn to rewire your reactions, you will actually be able to stop your negative reactions. If you have been practicing Transcendental Meditation (often times taught by therapists) alone, then you’re cheating yourself out of a great benefit.
Transcendental Meditation is basically a snippet of the Buddhist meditative tradition. It involves repeating the same pattern over and over again, which happens to be the basis for much of the Buddhist meditations. You can count sheep (I’m not kidding), you can count your breaths. You can pick words to repeat each time you exhale (“calm…calm…calm…” or “penis…penis…penis…” whatever floats your boat).. etc.
If all you practice is transcendental meditation, you will be cheating yourself out of a greater understanding of yourself, and a higher control over your reactions.
Practice mindfulness. Buddhists sometimes call this the Objectless meditation. It’s very simple, but very useful in the long-term. All you have to do is focus on all the crap rattling around in your brain. What thoughts are you having? What desires are you having? What emotions are you feeling? Is there an easy connection between desires and emotions, thoughts and emotions, thoughts and desires? Make note of all these feelings, and make note of any QUICK connections that you can create between desires, thoughts, feelings, urges…anything that is present in your mind. Buddhists generally teach mindfulness meditation as simply recognizing and noting these thoughts. However, I recommend that if you notice a causal connection in your mind, you should make note of it as well. The practice of acknowledging the various activities in your head will make you more aware of how you actually function. Meanwhile, the practice of acknowledging any causal connections will further expand your understanding of yourself, as well as prepare you for analytical meditation, if you choose to pursue it (recommended).
So, now let me explain how your practice of Buddhist meditation (meditation and mindfulness or objectless meditation) can actually help you when you face an unpleasant situation. If you have practiced basic meditation (if you don’t know how, I’ll describe how to another day) and got decent at it (meaning, you can maintain focus on your object with little distraction), then you have trained your mind to remain focused on any object of your choice. If you have practiced mindfulness, then you have become aware of some precursors to feeling badly due to emotions stemming from a situation.
Due to your increased mindfulness, you may pick up on a pattern of thoughts that you KNOW will lead to you feeling bad eventually. The moment you notice this, you begin meditation. If you have to go to work, you meditate on all the activities that you must do in order to go to work (it’s the same thing as any other meditation, you just focus on your objects which in this case may be brushing your teeth, finding keys, etc, acknowledge any entering thoughts and go back to object). You will be surprised how what you expected to be is a few hours of getting over an unpleasant situation will turn into a few minutes.
Let me give you a personal example. At this point in my life, I have been practicing Buddhist Meditation for about 4 months. I won’t get too personal, but let’s just say that I was counting on something happening really badly, and found out that it will not happen. I’ve been waiting on this for about 6 months now. I did not get what I wanted, and expected to be crushed. I recognized a number of self-defeating thoughts entering my head. The moment that happened, I began meditating. First I meditated on a doorknob. I just focused on it and only it. Then I had to take care of some errands. So, I began meditating on the list of errands, and eventually doing them all one by one. 15 minutes later, I was feeling good, I noticed an optimistic outlook, and felt very proud that I managed to over-come this so easily.
At first, reduction of extreme reactions to situations will be very mechanical. You will have to stay on your toes in order to squash your habitual reaction. However, the more you succeed at doing this, the more natural it will become. Your brain will eventually learn these steps and make them automatic. Theoretically, your brain should learn this relatively quickly as reduction in any kind of a stressor is a positive thing. We learn better and faster when there is a positive reward associated with our actions. So, make sure to take pride in your successes. Feel good about them.
Feel free to contact me regarding any aspect of Buddhist meditation. I’ll get back to you ASAP.
You often times hear how Buddhist meditation can help you deal with stress. You may hear how it will help you calm yourself down. This is absolutely true. When you are too riled up or caught up in your own thoughts causing you guilt, anxiety, sadness.. Meditation will help you calm yourself down. But, meditation can be so much more powerful. You can actually rewire how you react to unpleasant situations. Before you learn to rewire your reactions, you will actually be able to stop your negative reactions. If you have been practicing Transcendental Meditation (often times taught by therapists) alone, then you’re cheating yourself out of a great benefit.
Transcendental Meditation is basically a snippet of the Buddhist meditative tradition. It involves repeating the same pattern over and over again, which happens to be the basis for much of the Buddhist meditations. You can count sheep (I’m not kidding), you can count your breaths. You can pick words to repeat each time you exhale (“calm…calm…calm…” or “penis…penis…penis…” whatever floats your boat).. etc.
If all you practice is transcendental meditation, you will be cheating yourself out of a greater understanding of yourself, and a higher control over your reactions.
Practice mindfulness. Buddhists sometimes call this the Objectless meditation. It’s very simple, but very useful in the long-term. All you have to do is focus on all the crap rattling around in your brain. What thoughts are you having? What desires are you having? What emotions are you feeling? Is there an easy connection between desires and emotions, thoughts and emotions, thoughts and desires? Make note of all these feelings, and make note of any QUICK connections that you can create between desires, thoughts, feelings, urges…anything that is present in your mind. Buddhists generally teach mindfulness meditation as simply recognizing and noting these thoughts. However, I recommend that if you notice a causal connection in your mind, you should make note of it as well. The practice of acknowledging the various activities in your head will make you more aware of how you actually function. Meanwhile, the practice of acknowledging any causal connections will further expand your understanding of yourself, as well as prepare you for analytical meditation, if you choose to pursue it (recommended).
So, now let me explain how your practice of Buddhist meditation (meditation and mindfulness or objectless meditation) can actually help you when you face an unpleasant situation. If you have practiced basic meditation (if you don’t know how, I’ll describe how to another day) and got decent at it (meaning, you can maintain focus on your object with little distraction), then you have trained your mind to remain focused on any object of your choice. If you have practiced mindfulness, then you have become aware of some precursors to feeling badly due to emotions stemming from a situation.
Due to your increased mindfulness, you may pick up on a pattern of thoughts that you KNOW will lead to you feeling bad eventually. The moment you notice this, you begin meditation. If you have to go to work, you meditate on all the activities that you must do in order to go to work (it’s the same thing as any other meditation, you just focus on your objects which in this case may be brushing your teeth, finding keys, etc, acknowledge any entering thoughts and go back to object). You will be surprised how what you expected to be is a few hours of getting over an unpleasant situation will turn into a few minutes.
Let me give you a personal example. At this point in my life, I have been practicing Buddhist Meditation for about 4 months. I won’t get too personal, but let’s just say that I was counting on something happening really badly, and found out that it will not happen. I’ve been waiting on this for about 6 months now. I did not get what I wanted, and expected to be crushed. I recognized a number of self-defeating thoughts entering my head. The moment that happened, I began meditating. First I meditated on a doorknob. I just focused on it and only it. Then I had to take care of some errands. So, I began meditating on the list of errands, and eventually doing them all one by one. 15 minutes later, I was feeling good, I noticed an optimistic outlook, and felt very proud that I managed to over-come this so easily.
At first, reduction of extreme reactions to situations will be very mechanical. You will have to stay on your toes in order to squash your habitual reaction. However, the more you succeed at doing this, the more natural it will become. Your brain will eventually learn these steps and make them automatic. Theoretically, your brain should learn this relatively quickly as reduction in any kind of a stressor is a positive thing. We learn better and faster when there is a positive reward associated with our actions. So, make sure to take pride in your successes. Feel good about them.
Feel free to contact me regarding any aspect of Buddhist meditation. I’ll get back to you ASAP.
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Buddhist Meditation: Introduction
Welcome to Buddhist Meditation for Beginners. I began meditating a while back, following the Buddhist tradition and have seen major changes in my life. I am also studying to become a Mental Health Counselor at Columbia U. Here, you will find information on Buddhism, Buddhist Tradition, and Buddhist Meditation, as well as what you can expect to happen as you begin meditating. If I happen to not answer some of the questions you may have about Buddhist Meditation, please feel free to e-mail me at joe_taloe@yahoo.com.
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