Mindfulness meditation brings enjoyment of extraordinary attention to everyday experiences. You become attentive and conscious of what’s happening moment-to-moment. No more mindless numbing out and daydreaming. Vipassana give you a mental’ microscope to look into your own being.
FREEDOM FROM SUFFERING
Traditional psychotherapy is about your personality and individual life problems and does not bring lasting psychic change; vipassana is about insight into your spiritual self, enlightenment and freedom from suffering.
EQUANIMITY
Equanimity is the attitude of not interfering with the operation of your 6 senses. This is not passivity or denial of feelings, but instead is radical permission to feel, openness, akin to love.
You get insight into impermanence of all things and this purifies your grasping mind anxiety, which is foreign to your spiritual nature. Equanimity allow you to work through and purify out cravings, aversions, painful memories and bad habits. When you observe, but do not react, they cease to cause pain. If you try to “fix” a discomfort, it only gets stronger; leave it alone and its energy eventually burns out.
THE FORMULAS
Ordinary experience (rigid and heavy) + mindfulness (paying attention) + equanimity (not reacting) = insight into the nature of impermanence
Pain (#1) + Resistance (#2) = Suffering (#3)
Pain (#1) + Equanimity (#4) = End of Suffering (#3) + Enjoy Flow of Awareness (#5)
FLOW OF AWARENESS
Your experience becomes very clear and very transparent; it lifts you up as it flows along, you feel completely at peace with how you are moment-to-moment. You are not a thing; you are a process.
SUMMARY:
You bring mindfulness (specific awareness) and equanimity (non-interfering with awareness) to ordinary experience.
You get mental, physical, emotional and spiritual purification, a release of blockages to happiness.
You get deep insight into impermanence, so you don’t obsess about feelings.
You become empowered and free, because of mind no longer tries to control everything.
You stop addictions and craving what is bad for you.
You stop running away from problems and uncomfortability.
You have happiness that is not dependent on certain conditions.
A person hears about meditation and decides to learn to help them control anxiety, depression or addiction, or to enhance their spiritual life. The media leads people to think that meditation is an easy, quick fix for psychological, emotional and physical problems.
No matter how hard the teacher tries to explain that all kinds of wild and crazy thoughts and feelings are part of meditating, people seem to think they aren’t supposed to have them – that their mind should be blank or they should feel some huge rushes of good feelings.
Each time they sit to meditate, all kinds of old repressed thoughts, feelings and body sensations can come up, and this can be uncomfortable, even though it’s part of the healing process of meditation, like “cleaning up” the nervous system. Old stresses have to come out before more peace can be felt.
In my experience, beginners have a combination of pleasant and unpleasant experiences in early meditation, but the people who are bound to drop out focus on the negative. I re-explain how important it is to “go with the flow” of the mind and body as they release stresses, but the discomfort is just too much for some people and they quit meditating.
I teach vipassana mindfulness meditation, which uses all those thought and feelings as part of the process. Students learn to concentrate on them, experience both the pleasant and unpleasant ones with exceptional clarity and to have equanimity (in other words, to be OK with the thoughts and feelings, not to resist them) with whatever comes up.
The more people meditate, the easier it is to be OK with whatever comes up, and they feel better and better all the time. They don’t get upset about things that used to cause them grief, and they are happier most of the time.
But, to reach this state of equanimity requires biting the bullet when unpleasant thoughts and feeling come up, the ability to just sit and let them go. Like the Beatles said, “Let it be” and like REM sang, “Everybody hurts, sometime, everybody cries.”
- Meditate 20 minutes a day to start. When you are comfortable, go to 30 minutes or more. MAKE the time; cut out some TV, etc.
- Read the printed instructions from your training. Listen to instructions in the Sober Buddha’s The Listening Room.
- Watch vipassana educational videos from Shinzen Young on YouTube. Also google neurologist Sam Miller’s videos on vipassana. Both very important!
- Read two essential vipassana books: THE NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH by Bhikku Bodhi and MINDFULNESS IN PLAIN ENGLISH by Bhante Gunaratana.
- Consider joining a meditation group. Consider joining the Sober Buddha group on Sundays at 9:30 a.m. UCI also hosts a group Wednesday nights and Sundays mornings.
- Visit www.shinzen.org for information about retreats in Palos Verdes. You should go to at least one retreat every year. Or visit www.basicmindfulness.org to find out about how to do an online retreats.
- Call Michael at (949) 212-4149 any time you have questions.
- Return to Sober Buddha Counseling for complementary refresher training. No charge for lifetime phone, Skype, FaceTime, email or face-to-face refreshers (by appointment only, limit 3 per year.)
www.shinzen.org (Shinzen Young vipassana, retreat schedule, CDs, home site)
www.basicmindfulness.org (Shinzen Young Home Practice Program)
www.the-wandering.com (excellent interpretations of important Buddhist texts)
www.mindful.org (site for MINDFUL Magazine, excellent)
www.buddhistgeeks.org (for all you techies)
www.brn.org (Buddhists Recovery Network)
www.goamra.org (American Mindfulness Research Association)
www.lionsroar.com (Tibetan Buddhist site)
www.theunboundedspirit.com (excellent daily writings on conscious living)
www.buddhanet.net (ultimate list of other Buddhist sites)
www.ownerlessmind.com (Hindu spirituality)
www.tricycle.org (TRICYCLE – THE BUDDHIST REVIEW magazine site)
www.plumvillage.org (Thich Nhat Hanh’s online monastery)
www.buddhism.about.com (About.com’s Buddhism learning page)
www.spiritualityandpractice.com (a great guide for the journey)
www.tinybuddha.com (solid, classic meditation info)
www.thebigview.com (ditto)
www.theintelligentoptimist.com (how to think/act from a higher level)
www.higherexistence.com (just plain fun!)
www.expandedconsciousness.com (ditto)
www.feelguide.com (neurology of higher consciousness)
www.themindunleashed.com (ditto)
www.elephantjournal.com (conscious living lifestyle tips)
www.tracycochrane.org (powerful blog from PARABOLA magazine)
www.the-open-mind.com (benefits of higher consciousness)
www.jungiantherapist.net (excellent articles by practicing Jungian analyst)
YOUTUBE / DVDs
Shinzen Young Channel on YouTube (40+ lectures, training videos)
Dr. Sam Miller talks on meditation (google Sam Miller)
Doing Time, Doing Vipassana (DVD) for purchase on Amazon
MEDITATION APP
Insight Timer (uses selection of temple bell sounds to start and end meditation)
MAGAZINES
Tricycle, the Buddhist Review
Buddhadharma
Mindful
The Shambhala Sun
Parabola
Spirituality and Health
BOOKS / CDS
The Science of Enlightenment Audio CD Learning Course – Shinzen Young
The Noble Eightfold Path – Way to the End of Suffering – Bhikku Bodhi
Mindfulness in Plain English – Bhante Gutaratana
Be Here Now – Ram Dass
The Thirsty Addict Papers: Spiritual Psychology for Counselors – Michael Hoffman
The Places That Scare You – Pema Chodron
Waking Up – Sam Miller