"Keep it simple and focus on what matters. Don't let yourself be overwhelmed." ~ Confucius Jack: In this session, we will bring together the mindfulness trainings you’ve worked with so far into one unified practice. This is what we have been calling your core practice. The core practice uses the power of mindfulness and kind attention, or loving awareness, to notice experience just as it is with a spacious and nonjudging attention. As you’ve learned, after beginning with the anchor of breath and body, mindfulness can open to the whole play of experience. Continuing to practice in this inclusive way, your understanding, balance, and compassion grow. You become the spacious and relaxed witness to whatever arises, steady and attentive in the midst of them all.
So, let’s spend the rest of this class establishing a steady sense of this core practice. Begin the core practice as you have, by settling yourself and acknowledging the circumstances around you. Sit in whatever way helps to bring a relaxed and alert attention to body and mind. After establishing this suitable posture, take some initial deep relaxing breaths. Once you feel settled, to develop some steadiness of attention, begin with mindfulness of your anchor - your breath or body focus. For the first minute or two, return to this anchor gently each time the attention wanders, but all the other experiences you may notice, whether sensations and sounds or thoughts and feelings, rise and fall like waves of the ocean around the breath or body anchor. Take some time to steady yourself in this way.
Having settled for a time on your breath/body anchor, you can now expand the mindfulness and include the stronger waves of experience that arise, pulling at your attention. Let’s practice with sound. Whenever a strong sound arises, let go of your attention on the breath and body and receive the sound with the same kind attention you gave to your anchor. Name it gently, “hearing, hearing,” and when the sound has passed or you’re at ease with it, then return for a time to the anchor of breath and body. In the same way you’ve noticed sound, now let your mindfulness include other strong waves of experience. When strong sensations, or emotions, or thoughts arise, pulling attention away from the breath and body, shift your attention to receive this new experience mindfully and kindly. You can name it with a simple acknowledgement - “tingling, tingling,” “sadness, sadness,” “planning, planning.” When the experience you’re naming has passed or you’re at ease with it, return your attention again to the anchor. Your mindfulness will now alternate with attention on the breath and body or in other experiences as they arise.
Keep the practice simple. When several things appear simultaneously, focus on one experience at a time. Notice it; name it gently. When it has passed, return to your anchor or acknowledge the next strong experience. Trust your mindfulness to notice and allow whatever arises, pleasant or unpleasant.
Just here and now, loving awareness of whatever is present. Let yourself become the spacious and relaxed witness to the breath and body, or to the rising and passing waves of experience. Stay steady and attentive in the midst of them all, centered, mindful, and at ease, and remember to keep the heart tender to meet whatever arises with loving awareness.
