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A technique to use when one is having a hard time concentrating or keeping up the practice.
These notes were not taken from what-buddha-said.net, but were primarily transcribed from question #327 in Dhamma on Air episode 106. The 10 or so minutes in which the Bhikkhu explains these concepts were used as a starting point, to which i have added a few of my personal interpretations.
This page is divided in two parts: the fist is some sort of checklist, a summary, a table of contents of the entire concept, which i drafted after having taken the notes i the explanation section. I created this with the intent to keep looking at this part to remember all the steps, kind of like a checklist.
Awareness and Comprehension (all the time)
Become aware by contemplating:
Broom the Mind (before meditation)
Lethargy and Laziness → what is missing?
Doubt and uncertainty: what is the evaluation of others regarding:
Lack of stability, lack of mindfulness, lack of awareness, lack of Sathi happens as soon as the mind stops looking at itself. That’s when the mental defilements (aversion, doubts, restlessness, laziness) creep in. As soon as mental awareness is established, they will disappear.
Progress happens only when one is in the state of mindfulness. But as soon as one is not in the state of mindfulness, then one starts to relapse and regress. So it’s a continuous up and down.
Both awareness and clear comprehension are to be trained constantly, from dusk to dawn, from the moment of waking until the moment of falling asleep.
Whatever object or experience we perceive of the real world, only appears to be out there. In reality, what we consider to be the real world is only a collection of experiences, which we have witnesses through one or more of our sense doors. This means that everything that is out there, from our perspective, can only be experiences, not the actual physical object. And experiences are almost purely mental (they cannot be purely mental, because the mind and the sense organs are involved, which is a physical object).
This does not exclude the possibility of the presence or the interaction of an actual physical object or phenomena: it merely means there we cannot be 100% certain that there is a physical object. There could be, but there could also not be.
Either way, the point of coming to this conclusion is that by contemplating as described above, it becomes easier to de-tach from (as in not get attached to, not cling to) the world: it’s not me, not mine, not what i’m participating in, it’s just an appearing, a flickering state of being which comes and goes. We can use the wisdom as a tool to help us come out of craving and clinking.
Act clearly comprehending whatever one exactly is doing right now. While going forward, one clearly comprehends one is going forward. While eating, drinking, defecating, walking, standing, lying down, while falling asleep, while speaking, while keeping silent, one clearly comprehends one is doing this.
Then, as one trains the awareness using the four contemplations of body, sensations, mind and phenomena, and then as one trains clear comprehension by clearly understanding what one is doing, then these skills are applied to the pillow and/or to real life.
In the classical teachings, labelling is used. Here the individual labels whatever he or she is doing with what they are actually doing: “Eating? Eating” or “Talking? Talking.” “Walking? Walking.”. However, this technique might have the drawback that the mind will easily most likely sooner or later learn how to imitate this task blindly, without awareness. And one will eventually automatically repeat to one self “Eating? Eating.” when one is eating, while actually thinking about something else.
Another trick of becoming acutely aware and clearly comprehending is to analyze whether or not there is awareness in this very moment of experiencing whatever one is experiencing: awareness of awareness itself. If one is aware of awareness, then awareness is definitely on. But when one starts to think about the beauty of the forest, for example, and how much happiness there is out there, then one has already lost awareness, and gone into auto-pilot of emotional reaction.
A practice done before starting meditation, in order to momentarily get rid of the five mental hindrances. These techniques will not, alone, eradicate the five hindrances. They will only move the minds attention away from them, in order to allow the mind to increase its concentration.
Whenever sense desire arises (food, sex, itch, objects,…), replace the thought of the sense desire with something very repulsive. Can be a visual image, a taste/flavor, a smell, a sound, whatever memory one has of something that is, for them, repulsive can be used in this practice. Whenever the mind is in a repulsive state, it cannot simultaneously be in a state of sense desire.
For this, one needs to develop a vocabulary of revolting memories, possibly without harming one self and without harming others. A picture of a corpse can be very revolting, and is often used. Bhikkhu Samahita had on his website a password protected section called “Ashuba” (with password “ashuba”) a collection of revolting images which, however, are probably lost at this point.
Universal Friendliness, with the thought “This being will also be enlightened”.
Substitution with opposite state, as soon as one is aware of it, and one knows the opposite state, then one can substitute then and there, and the mind comes back to equilibrium
In this case, we substitute with inner calm. First we need to be aware “Ah, there is restlessness and regret”. Then we can substitute with “There is calm of the body… and there is calm of the mind.”
Calm of the body is a state opposite of when one is running, for example. “Calm of the mind” is a state opposite to stress and agitation.
Just the notion that there are these kinds of minds is enough to calm the mind. As soon as one recognizes and becomes aware of it by saying “Ah, there is restlessness and regret”, then one substitutes restlessness and regret by repeating this two factor stanza “There is calm of the body and calm of the mind”. The body is very upset
Bodily calm conditions mental mind. Mental calm conditions bodily calm. And same is true for the restless mind and body. To calm the mind, start by calming the body. To calm the body, start by calming the mind.
Irrational attention to lethargy and laziness. When one is aware of it, then one needs to substitute with alertness. How to do this?
Say you are lying on the sofa and would like to get the dishes done. There are three qualities necessary to get the job done: Initiative, launching and endurance. When laziness takes over, at least one of these is missing. This three-factor tool will start by identifying which one is missing.
Initiative. Initiative is purely mental. This is when you are lying on the sofa, and you decide “Ah, now i want to do the dishes”.
Launching. Launching is when the body participates as well, and physically gets you from the couch to the dishes, where you can perform the task.
Endurance. This quality is necessary to get the job done, to finish the task. necessary in order not to leave the job half done.
One will have to work on these qualities for a very long time, because lethargy and laziness are only eradicated with arahant-ship, at the moment of awakening. But the first thing to do, is to start noticing: “Is there laziness in this body and mind?” and, if there is, which one of these qualities is missing?
The mere breaking down, and identification of what is missing, and it’s acceptance is enough to make the energy level (Virya) slowly increase with time.
Is there skeptical doubt or uncertainty in this mind? When there is, one uses four-fold evaluation. What is that?
When doing this, then one’s evaluation of what is optimal becomes narrower and narrower. As one first asks oneself the question, because there is doubt and uncertainty, there must be a broad space between the advantageous and the disadvantageous options, a very large gray area, making it hard to understand if what one is doing or wants to do is advantageous or not. This is one’s own evaluation.
Then one starts thinking about everybody else’s evaluation, in particular the evaluation of those whom one has much respect for: “What would the monks say of this given phenomena? What would the Sangha say? What would mum and dad say? What would my buddhist friends say?
Then gradually the gray area becomes narrower and narrower.