Mindfulness Instructions

Mindfulness (Insight) Instructions

After you have calmed the mind through Concentration practice, one learns Mindfulness (or Insight) Meditation.

The major differences between Concentration and Mindfulness:

• Concentration is only for meditation. Mindfulness is both a meditation (practice) and way of living.
• Concentration has only one object of meditation, often the breath. Mindfulness has many objects of meditation, one at a time.

Mindfulness Defined:

Mindfulness is paying bare attention to what is occurring to us and within us during each moment of experience. It is a kind of attention that is bare of three things:

1. Bare of Judgment - we are not evaluating or judging our experience - we are just observing.

2. Bare of Decision - we are not making any decisions based upon our experience - we are just observing.

3. Bare of Commentary – we are not having an internal dialogue based upon our experience – we are just observing.

What are we observing? All sensations including sense experiences (hearing, seeing, etc.), body sensations (cold, heat, pressure, pain, etc.), and mental sensations (thoughts, images, emotions, etc. in the mind).

Basic Mindfulness Meditation Instructions:

The very beginning instructions are the same as for concentration practice.

Place your attention on the sensation created by the breath as it flows in and out of your nostrils by the tip of your nose. Do not control the length of your breath or follow your breath in or out of the body. Let the breath breathe itself. Stay present with the sensation created by the entire in breath and the entire out breath.

In between breaths when there is no sensation present, keep your attention focused on the place that the sensation is normally felt, waiting for the next breath to begin.

(At this point the instructions specific for insight practice begin)

Experience the impermanence of each breath. Become aware of how the sensations associated with each in-breath and with each out-breath are different.

Try to notice the multiplicity of changes that take place even within one in or out breath.

Remember that you are not really noticing the impermanency of the breath itself, but are focusing on the flow of changes experienced with the changing sensations.

Remember that this meditation is a non-cognitive experience – we are not trying to understand anything.

It is inevitable that your attention on the breath will waver from time-to-time. When your attention leaves the sensations created by the breath and focuses on a new object of awareness such as a sense experience (hearing, seeing, etc.), a sensation within the body (cold, heat, pressure, pain, etc.), a thought or imagine in the mind, that is not a problem. When this occurs, merely experience the impermanency of that new object of attention, and then gently but firmly come back to breath.