TheMindIlluminated

• Great guide!
• There is surprisingly little information about how the mind works and how to train it. This book is an attempt to fill that need.
• Meditation is the systematic process of training the mind. For your personal reality to be created purposefully rather than haphazardly, you must understand your mind and develop a deep intuitive understanding.
• This book explains what skills you need to cultivate, in what order, and how to go about doing it. This is a major stumbling block for many meditators. Teaching by stages is an easy and effective way to reach the highest goals. Unfortunately many excellent maps lie hidden in the literature of various Buddhist traditions. The modern road-map offered in this book combines experience, tradition and science.
• The five most important Insights are: impermanence, emptiness, the nature of suffering, the causal interdependence of all phenomenon, and the illusion of the separate self.
• To get insight you need stable attention and mindfulness. (stable attention without mindfulness only leads to blissful dullness)
• Stable attention + mindfulness + insight leads to Awakening. Awakening is an accident, but continued practice makes you accident-prone.

Awakening

Mindfullness

• Distinction made between attention and awareness; supported by cognitive psychology and neuroscience.
• Reread "An overview of the Ten stages" when you are unsure where you are heading.
• Isolated meditation experiences can happen at any time, but if they cant be repeated, consistently and intentionally they are of little use.
• For householders who practice properly it is possible to master the Ten stages within a few months or years. What you need is a daily practice of 1 to 2 hours per day in combination with supplemental practices described in the appendix.
• If the skills and insights we learn on the cushion dont infiltrate our daily lives, progress will be quite slow.
• The most important factor for improving quickly is a clear understanding of each Stage: recognize the mental faculties you need to cultivate, and the methods to overcome specific obstacles.
• The untrained mind produces distractions that lead to forgetting that results in mind-wandering.
• All we are doing in meditation is forming and holding specific conscious intention. Intentions lead to mental actions, and repeated mental actions become mental habits.

Mindfullness SystemsNotGoals

• The two major objectives to meditation practice are stable attention and mindfulness.
• We have two forms of conscious experience: attention and peripheral awareness. Attention dominates our conscious experience, but through awareness we are generally aware of things in the background. (Similar to relationship between visual focus and peripheral vision) Two different ways of knowing the world.
• Starting your practice: -) Relax your mind, take some moments to appreciate the fact that you're gifting yourself the time to do this. -) Resolve to practice diligently for the whole session. -) Allow your attention to stay centered on your meditation object while your peripheral awareness remains relaxed and open to anything that arises -) As soon as you recognize that you have become distracted and have drifted away, take a moment to appreciate the fact that you have remember to meditate and give yourself a pat on the back -) Repeat
• Sustaining attention is harder than directing it. It is possible to voluntarily direct attention, however the part of the mind that sustains attention for more than a few moments works unconsciously.

Mindfullness

• Just by intending to observe an object and coming back to it when we get distracted, we're training that unconscious process to help us stay focused more continuously. Formulating the conscious intention to focus on the meditation object gives a new piece of information for unconscious processes to take into account.
• Skillfully applying conscious intention can completely restructure the mind and transform who we are. This is the essence of meditation: we reprogram unconscious mental processes by repeating basic tasks over and over with a clear intention.

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• Mindfulness is the optimal interaction between attention and peripheral awareness. It allows us to recognize our options and choose our responses wisely.
• Attention turns its objects into concepts or abstract ideas. Peripheral awareness is only minimally conceptual, it is concerned with the relationship among objects and to the whole.
• Attention analyzes our experience and peripheral awareness provides the context.
• Attention is self-centered. Uses the filter of self-interest.
• Peripheral awareness can observe the overall state of mind.
• Who we are and how we behave, everything we think, feel, say, etc - depends on the interaction between awareness and attention. Mindfulness is the optimal interaction between the two.
• Most of us have never learned to use peripheral awareness effectively. We overuse attention because its under direct conscious control whereas peripheral awareness isn't. In meditation, where other distractions are minimized, we can learn to use peripheral awareness effectively, and become skilled at using the two together.
• Making your consciousness more powerful is like weight training, where you practice sustaining close attention and strong peripheral awareness AT THE SAME TIME.
• When you have cultivated mindfulness, life becomes richer, more vivid, and more satisfying and you wont take everything that happens so personally. You become more objective and clearheaded and develop an enhanced awareness of the whole.
• Stage One: Establishing a Practice
  • The goal for stage one is to develop a regular meditation practice
  • When your intention is strong and clear the appropriate actions naturally follow
  • The basic practice used in this book is simple: direct your attention to a well-defined meditation object. Whenever you attention wanders, redirect it back. Repeat.
  • Diligence means engaging wholeheartedly in the practice rather than spending you time thinking of something else.
  • Step One: Focus on the present. The only limitation you make on movements of attention is to remain here, now in the present. Disregard any thought not related to the present
  • Mindfully observing thoughts is tricky, better to focus on sounds, smells and sensations.
  • Let it come, let it be, let it go.
  • Step Two: Focus on Bodily sensations: Whenever you notice your attention going to sound or thought bring it back to the body. Notice any pleasant sensations; spend a few minutes enjoying the sensations.
  • Repeat this as often as needed until the mind can rest easily with your attention focused only on bodily sensations. No need to hurry to the next step.
  • Step Three: Focus on the bodily sensations associated to the breath: Without suppressing anything in your field of conscious awareness restrict your attention to breath-related sensations.
  • Step Four: Focus on the breath at the nose: Aim is to tame the constant movements of attention, while at the same time, maintaining peripheral awareness of things in the background
  • Counting your breaths at the start of the session helps to stabilize your attention
  • Once you have moved through the four steps, count your breaths at the nose. Goal: to follow continuously for 10 consecutive breaths. (For now, continuous = aware of both inhale and exhale and didn't loose count)
  • Consider the beginning of the out-breath as the start of the cycle.
  • Stop counting (but keep observing the breath!) after 10
  • If your mind wanders for a long time, dont immediately return to the breath at the nose. Go back to step 2, focus on bodily sensations, then step 3 and then come back to the nose.
  • Counting is important no matter where you are on the path: it will give you valuable information on your state of mind and the distractions you're most likely to face.
  • Emphasize relaxation, peacefulness and pleasure over willpower and effort.
  • Once seated, you must train yourself gently and without self-judgment, to actually meditate rather than engage in some more entertaining mental activity.
  • The real solution to obstacles is to enjoy your practice. A simple and powerful technique is to intentionally savor all feelings of physical comfort and deliberately cultivate the pleasure that can be found in the quietness
  • Ideally, you should meditate at the same time everyday. Strongly recommend at least one daily 45 min sit.
  • Let go of expectations and generate an attitude of faith, trust and confidence: faith in the method, trust that the results will come with continued practice, and confidence in your own ability.
  • Joyful effort and diligence are the right attitude. Rather than striving focus on the pleasant, positive elements of each session, joyfully repeating the same simple tasks as many times as needed to achieve the goal.
  • You've mastered stage one when you rarely if ever procrastinate on the cushion by thinking and planning or doing something besides meditating.
• All the mental skills needed in meditation are innate abilities we can selectively choose to cultivate.
• Meditation is like mental exercise that train "mental muscles"
• The capacities that we develop and use in meditation are completely natural and normal, however, so too are the activities of the mind that can hinder our practice. In daily life, these hindrances serve necessary and useful purposes.
• There are five hindrances to overcome: Wordly desire, Aversion, Laziness and Lethargy, Agitation due to worry and remorse, and Doubt. These hindrances are evolutionary adaptations for improving survival + reproduction.
• To overcome them we need positive reinforcement of other natural tendencies of the mind. suppression or self-punishment will not work.
• When we behave virtuously we dont create further causes for Remorse or Worry.
• Virtue is the practice of inner purification, which RESULTS in good behavior.
• Doubt is like a perverse faith in failure that saps our will and undermines our intentions. The remedy is to envision the possibility of long-term success.
• Meditation is about attention and awareness.
• The antidote to the Monkey-mind is to get grounded in the body.
• Insight: Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional
• The five hindrances are more than just obstacles to meditation. They are the same obstacles that thwart a happy, productive existence.

• Stage Two: Interrupted Attention and Overcoming Mind-Wandering
  • The goal for stage two is to shorten the periods of mind-wandering and extend the periods of sustained attention to the meditation object.
  • Willpower cant prevent you from forgetting the breath, nor can you force yourself to become aware that the mind is wandering.
  • Instead, just hold the intention to appreciate the "aha" moment that recognizes mind-wandering, while gently but firmly redirecting attention back to the breath.
  • You've mastered this Stage when episodes of mind-wandering are brief, while your attention to the breath last much longer.
  • The combined problems of forgetting and mind-wandering will dominate your sessions in Stage Two.
  • Forgetting means we forget the meditation object.
  • Mind-wandering is what happens after we've forgotten what we were doing: the mind will wander from thought to thought, often for a long time, before we "wake up" to what is happening.
  • Selection pressures have favored spontaneously moving attention more strongly than stable attention.
  • Our natural tendency when we catch ourselves mind-wandering is to quickly return to the breath, often forcefully and with self-judgment. This misses a key opportunity for training the mind.
  • Use the "aha" moment of realizing that three's a disconnect between what you doing, and what you intended to do.
  • The process that discovered the "aha" moment isn't under you conscious control.
  • The way to overcome mind-wandering is to train this unconscious process to make the discovery and bring it into consciousness sooner and more often. Do this by taking a moment to take a moment to enjoy and appreciate "waking up". Savor the sense of being more fully conscious and present. Conscious intention and affirmation powerfully influence our unconscious processes.
  • Avoid becoming annoyed or self-critical about mind-wandering.
  • Dont try to limit peripheral awareness.
  • "You" are not in control of "Your" mind. Mind wandering happens constantly. we rarely notice it, which leads us to believe that we are in constant control.
  • The mind is a collective of mental processes operating through consensus, or through temporary dominance of one over the others.
  • The basic rule for meditation is that you always intentionally select the locus of attention.
  • The best way to avoid or resolve impatience is to enjoy your practice.
  • Success comes with repetition with a relaxed attitude, rather than effortful striving.
  • "Relax and look for the joy; observe; let it come, let it be, let it go. Recite it every time you sit.
  • You have mastered this stage when you can consistently maintain your focus on the meditation object for minutes, while mind-wandering lasts only seconds.

• Stage Three: Extended continuity of Attention and Overcoming Forgetting.
  • The goal for stage three is to overcome forgetting and falling asleep.
  • You have mastered this stage when you no longer forget the breath.
  • Our field of conscious awareness contains much more than just the meditation object. Any one of these is a potential distraction, but an actual distraction is one that competes with the meditation object for your attention.
  • As you follow the breath, attention alternates between the breath and a changing variety of subtle distractions in the background.
  • You overcome forgetting by catching distractions before they cause you to forget. To do this, you first need to extend the periods of attention to the breath so you can look introspectively at the mind and see whats happening.
  • The other key to overcoming forgetting is cultivating introspective awareness through labeling and "checking in".
  • Once you perceive all major points in the breath cycle clearly and vividly, you need a bigger challenge. Practice recognizing the individual sensations that make up each in- and out- breath.
  • Your intention should be to follow the breath with vividness and clarity, and to be aware of very fine detail.
  • As you engage more closely with the breath, its very important to maintain extrospective awareness: remain aware of bodily sensations and external stimuli – Hard but important, without this you will be more prone to forgetting and drowsiness.
  • Goal is to exercise both attention and peripheral awareness.
  • "Connecting" is an extension of following that involves making comparisons and associations.
  • Once you reach stages 4 and 5, introspective awareness will have improved enough that you can start connecting details of the breath cycle with states of mind. This allows you to detect and become more fully aware of subtle and changing states of mind.
  • With introspective awareness you're aware of whats happening in your mind as you continue to focus attention on the breath.
  • Use labeling to practice identifying the distraction in the very moment you realize you're no longer focused on the breath. Always avoid analyzing distractions which only creates more distraction; once you've labeled distraction, gently direct attention back to the breath.
  • Introspective awareness will eventually be strong enough to alert you to a distraction before forgetting happens.
  • "Checking-in": intentionally turn attention inward to see whats happening in the mind. Requires longer periods of stable attention.
  • Yes, checking in disrupts your focus on the breath, but it trains and strengthens introspective awareness by using attention, making awareness of the mind's activity a habit.
  • When you notice a distraction, tighten up attention on the breath to prevent forgetting. It may help to take a moment to label the distraction before returning to the breath.
  • Train yourself to check in regularly (eg: every 5-6 breaths, but dont count them) checking in should become a habit.
  • Labeling distractions trains awareness to know which distractions to watch out for. When checking in you can also use labeling.
  • Meditation on harmless sources of pain gives us Insight into the nature of desire and aversion by seeing how resistance and impatience create suffering.
  • Physical pain is unavoidable, but suffering of every kind is optional.
  • You have mastered stage three when forgetting and mind-wandering no longer occur, and the breath stays continuously in conscious awareness. The mind still roams, but is tethered to the meditation object.
  • The ability to continuously sustain attention on the meditation object is remarkable, take satisfaction in your accomplishment. You can now do something most people cant.
• Walking Meditation:
  • Too often not taken seriously enough, but just as powerful as sitting for developing stable attention and powerful mindfulness. Even more effective for some things, best way to make progress is to combine the two.
  • The practices of walking and sitting are essentially the same: stabilize your attention while sustaining or increasing peripheral awareness. However you fix on the sensations in the soles of you feet, rather than the breath at the nose.
  • The progression of walking techniques follow the same sequence as for sitting practice.
  • Stage one: allow your attention to move freely while keeping awareness open as you walk. By the end of the state your attention will be continuously focused on the sensations of walking.
  • When you catch your mind wandering simply bring yourself back to the present by focusing your attention on the sensations in your feet.
  • You attention can move from your feet to anything happening in the moment, however these must always be intentional movements of attention.
  • The relaxed quality of walking provides a valuable antidote to excessive striving.
  • Checking-in: We stop walking when we realize forgetting or mind wandering has occurred. Intentionally pause to address distractions.
  • Think about walking as "staying in the PLEASANT moment"
• Analytical Meditation:
  • Structured thinking about something. Carefully choose a topic and systematically examine it with stable, clear, focused mind.
  • Topics: teachings you want to understand deeply, problems you want to solve or decisions to make, and experiences or realizations that seem to point to insight.
  • When selective comparison and combination in the the unconscious mind solve a problem, the answer appears in consciousness suddenly and unexpectedly. This is called insight problem solving. "intuition" and "insight" refer to unconscious information processing.
  • When it comes to working out complex and subtle problems non-insight problem solving isn't as effective, because consciousness is a single thread. The unconscious mind involves large number of mental processes, running in parallel.
• Three parts to Loving Kindness Meditation:
  • Generate these feelings as strongly as you can in your mind,
  • generate a strong wish for others to experience the same feelings,
  • remind yourself that you too need to feel at peace.