Meditation Instructions

Download PDF Instructions for Receptive Awareness Practice Transcribed and edited from a July 2015 residential retreat with Andrea Fella  Day 1Initial Instructions for Receptive Awareness PracticeRelaxation Wise Effort, Wise Mindfulness and Wise ConcentrationChecking the AttitudeThe Wandering MindWalking MeditationGuided MeditationEvening Reflection: Allowing and Love Day 2Sleepiness, Restlessness and Thinking Guided Meditation: Simple Evening Reflection: Trust Day 3Supports for Continuity: A guided meditationFurther Reflections on ContinuityEvening Reflection: Appreciating the Wholesome Day 4Body and Mind: ConditionalityIntention and Motivation Evening Reflection: Knowing Beautiful Qualities Day 5 Awareness of Awareness (from a guided meditation)Evening Reflection: Accepting what is offered Day 6Recognizing Wisdom at WorkEvening Reflection: Nothing to Do or Undo Day 7 What Kind of Effort is HelpfulEvening Reflection: Simple Awareness Receives Complex Experience Day 8 What is the Nature of Observing Change.= Noticing when change stops=Evening Reflection: No Part Left Out Day 9 Rhythms of PracticeEvolving Trust in Practice Evening Reflection: When we Stop Resisting the Truth the Mind can Relax Day 1  Initial Instructions for Receptive Awareness Practice  I’d like to offer some key points for how to practice here. But first I’d like to say a little bit about  why we practice. We each have our own reasons why we practice. It often has something to do  with wanting to understand why we struggle, why we suffer. This is the purpose of our practice:  to understand and learn about our how our minds participate in the ways that we struggle. We  don’t necessarily try to get rid of things that we don’t like, but as we learn about our how our  minds work, wisdom grows.   Wisdom helps us to understand what’s going on in our minds, and wisdom is actually what does  the work of letting go, and so the purpose of our practice is the learning, the cultivation of  understanding that leads to wisdom. Wisdom is what helps our mind refrain from participating in  its usual habits and patterns, of fear, anxiety, confusion, greed, boredom, and anxiety: the many  different ways we react to experience. Wisdom helps our minds to reorient from automatically  heading in towards reactivity and points us in a completely different direction: a direction based  in love, in compassion, in generosity, in wisdom and balance of mind. So instead of our minds’ acting in the service of creating greed, aversion, and delusion, instead, through the support of  wisdom, our minds begin creating peace, and ease, and compassion. In this style of practice that  I’ll be sharing with you, the emphasis is about getting familiar with our minds: Getting familiar  with the way our minds move into these reactive patterns, and getting familiar with the ways in  which our mind can participate in the creation of ease and peace instead of reactivity. The emphasis of this practice is learning about the mind, because this where the stress happens, this is  where the suffering happens, and this is where the orientation towards happiness and ease  happens.   The first verses of the Dhammapada point to why the emphasis on exploring the mind is so  important:  All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind.   Speak, or act with a corrupted mind, and and suffering follows   as the wagon wheel follows the hoof of the ox.   All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind.   Speak or act with a peaceful mind, and happiness follows   like a never-departing shadow.  As we explore the mind, we will start to recognize our reactive mind states:, ‘Oh, this is greed,  or This is confusion, or This is anger, or This is anxiety.’ Yet, we may not be able to say, ‘That’s  not so helpful, let me stop doing that.‘ So much of our work lies in understanding the reactive  states. Opening to them, witnessing them, watching them and how they work. Through that  practice, wisdom grows, and wisdom begins to change the direction of the mind.  In this practice, we will be opening to all aspects of our physical and mental experience. The primary practice is a receptive awareness, of settling back and opening to what the attention is  already aware of. Rather than choosing where to put the attention, we notice where the attention  already is.   In a practice that uses directed attention, we consciously choose where to place the attention, for  example, to attend to the breath, or hearing, or another specific experience. Receptive attention  is more about settling back, and noticing what attention is already noticing. In both styles of  practice, the factor of attention is working, it’s just a matter of whether we are involved in  actively choosing where that attention is. Exploring receptive attention we learn about our minds,  because as we settle back and receive what attention is already noticing, we can learn something about how the conditioning of mind tends to direct the attention.   We’ll also explore noticing our relationship to experience, what Sayadaw U Tejaniya calls the  attitude of mind..   Relaxation  For our practice it is really helpful to be grounded in relaxation. Relaxation supports opening to  and allowing receptive awareness. Relaxation of body supports relaxation of mind, and the relaxed mind can very naturally receive experience.   It is helpful, particularly in the beginning of the retreat, to start some of your sittings with  conscious relaxation: relaxing the tension in the body, and relaxing tension in the mind. Then  once that relaxation is available, becoming aware of what the mind is already noticing.  As the retreat goes on, rather than necessarily consciously relaxing tension, it might be more  helpful to recognize: There’s tension in the body. The we see what happens as we allow the  awareness, the mindfulness to meet the tension. As the practice settles in, sometimes we find that as we are aware of tension, very naturally, the mind and body will simply relax, and we don’t  have consciously relax.  Wise Effort, Wise Mindfulness and Wise Concentration  I’d like to explore three aspects of practice: Wise Effort, Wise Mindfulness, and Wise  Concentration, and how they work in this practice. If

As a weekly or twice-weekly practice, take some time to reflect on how you have been  practicing in your daily life: What conditions support mindfulness? What conditions or  situations make mindfulness difficult? What did you notice when you were mindful?  How might a Dharma perspective support you at times when practice is more difficult?  Does this inquiry prompt some questions that you might be interested in exploring further  in your daily life?   The reflection itself is a practice. Essentially it is a form of “self reporting”, taking the  time to describe your practice to yourself as you might describe it to a teacher. This kind  of reflection is usually most helpful when we incline our contemplation towards our inner  experience, rather than the content of our experience. It can sometimes be helpful to  frame a report with a brief outline of the content, but keep most of the description of your  experience around how you felt, and worked with the experience. Generally it is not  necessary to bring in details about the content of the experience, about what people said  or did.  For example, a reflection might look something like this:   During the week, I found myself in a situation in which I spoke unskillfully. I was not  mindful at the time. Recalling the situation later, and being mindful during the  recollection, I noticed a feeling of embarrassment. As I stayed with the feeling of  embarrassment, I noticed a feeling of defensiveness, and I realized that defensiveness is  something that I experience quite a bit with this particular person. That sparked some  interest! A couple of questions came up for further exploration:  How might I be able to stay connected with mindfulness when defensiveness  arises?Does a defensive feeling incline me to speak unskillfully, either with this person,  or in general?   Reflective practice can provide support for our daily life practice. Though this kind of  reflection, we begin to find our own questions that encourage investigation and interest in  our experience. In a sense, this practice helps us to become our own teacher.  I would suggest that you take some time to write down a few notes about your  reflections. It doesn’t need to be detailed, or extensive journaling, just enough to jog  your memory about your reflection.