- start with focusing undivided attention on breathing
- to gain basic concentration
- mindfully watch bodily sensations, isolate feelings and mental formations (e.g. numerous thoughts around that feeling)
- when a certain emotion arises, watch the emotion exactly as is
- watch mind and body as separate, but interconnected (one can do nothing without the other).
Practical steps:
- Make every effort to not change sitting position
- Determine how long to sit at the beginning
- Sit motionlessly and close eyes
- After sitting, sharing loving friendliness with everybody
- Take 3 deep breathes
- Breathe normally, focus attention on rims of nostrils. Notice the pauses
- dont verbalize, ignore sounds, smell, memories
- When mind wanders away, bring it back to the breath and anchor it here
- Use counting to bring mind to breath if necessary. Once focused on breath, give up counting
- Watch various sensations all over the body. Don’t create any feeling
- When thought arise notice them too
- Dislike for change, unpleasant experience, greed for pleasant experience, self-hood will be replaced by deeper awareness of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness
- The mind goes to sounds, memories, emotions, perceptions, consciousness, mental formations. We should focus on these states one at a time, and as they fade, return to breath
- Every time the mind returns to the breath, it returns with deeper insight into impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness.
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