A digest for conscious living
I am continuing to experiment with the way I order my practice and this morning I once again meditated immediately upone getting out of bed. I went straight from sleep to meditation, with little wakeful time in between. The result is that by the time I am fully awake and getting started with my day, I have already completed my meditation. I like this because its as if my meditative state informs everything I think about and do from the very start of my day. Because of the almost seamless transition between sleep and meditation however, later in the day when I look back at my meditation, it almost feels as if it had been a dream. I have yet to decide which order I prefer- perhaps its good to mix it up…
Recently, I have returned to a more rigorous exercise of counting my breaths, particularly at the beginning of my meditation. When I originally began meditating, this was the primary way that I exercised my concentration skill. It also helped me to gauge whether I was making progress or not. At some point however, after having reached a certain degree of proficiency at this, and realizing that in reality the real content of my sessions took place outside of the world of counting and measuring, I began to do it less and less. It felt as if I no longer really needed the “training wheels” which counting my breaths provided. I was able to delve into silence more directly without that cognitive burden.
Over the past couple of weeks or so, I have had a realization that I can once again best describe by presenting an analogy with violin playing. As anyone who has seriously undertaken the task of mastering any skill will attest to, the pre-requisite for a high level of ability in any field is the complete command of the basics.
When I was younger, if I was feeling diligent, I would begin a session of violin practice with scales and quickly make my way to working on the most difficult sections of whatever pieces I happened to be studying. This approach seemed to work, but as I grew more discerning and demanding with my playing, it became evident that a new method of working was necessary. Particularly when I began working with my teacher at University, I realized that the more attention, patience, and commitment I lent the fundamentals of my technique, the better my playing became overall. Today, when I sit down to practice violin I try to always begin with the most fundametal of exercises and re-establishing good habits of techninque. Even if I feel like everything is “working” with my playing, and polishing the basics is not necessary, I know that it is always beneficial to include this work in my practicing. Its almost as if this fine-tuning work is not just a physical “warm-up”, but also a psychological signal to my subconscious indicating that it is time to concentrate, and focus on the task at hand. It feels good, and it is a beautiful and useful habit.
I now see that counting the breaths, this beginner´s exercise, can also function for me in the same way. Recently, I have been doing it at the beginning of every meditation. I have taken the most fundametal of meditation exercises, counting the in and out breaths, and addressed it with a new measure of rigor. I am as exacting as I can be about focusing my concentration and demanding the purest level of effort for each breath, while striving to maintain the “beginner’s mind” necessary to endulge these exercises. At a certain point, after I have completed the prescribed counting training, I allow myself to sink into the state of obtuse yet sensitive awareness of the breath which is the platform for the deeper meditative state. I have found that by doing this, this state is deeper and more stable.
The counting stops along with thoughts and time…
Goodnight,
Kikta