Time: 8:10am
What: 20 minutes seated practice
Focus: First Foundation / Exercise 1 - 4
Sitting down late (hello, habit energy). Little bit of anxiety in sitting. Tumultuous nature to layers of thought and thinking. Training, job, PRY sequence, play list, teaching tonight?, Green Day song, practice, meeting... Felt the mind wander further away from the experience of the breath without the firm structure of the concentration practices. Continue to ponder how to write about sitting without layering the impression of preference or opinion over top of experience. Wonder if this practice (exercises 1 -4 in Ana- and Sati- Sutta) is more suited to eyes closed? Thich Nhat Hahn mentions eyes closed in "Breathe You Are Alive!". Suggestions or recommendations welcome.
1 comment:
The Buddha would often tell his students, "Come, see for yourself." So, try with eyes closed. AND you can 'think' of the first two exercises (which are basically simple breath awareness) AS the concentration component of practice.
Then, once a bit concentrated, expand awareness from locus of felt breath out to whole body. Now, when you do this, the lasar-like quality of concentration certainly diminishes. The felt-sense of whole-body awareness will feel different from focusing just on belly/chest/nostrils.
Try it and let us know how it goes....
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