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Jeff Explains the Essence and Practice of Mindfulness Meditation

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    >> This is a great way to get
    into the second practice set --
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    we're going to do which is
    mindfulness, the practice of mindfulness
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    which is really the practice of being more
    aware of what's going on in our experience.
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    Mindfulness is the kind of fashionable word
    for it right now but call it awareness,
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    call it objectivity, call it -- it's
    there in every tradition and every --
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    lots of human beings and cultures
    talk about it in their own ways.
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    It's just being aware of what's
    going on in your experience.
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    And it turns out that there's
    layers and layers of stuff going on
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    and that we're often ping-ponging
    around automatically with stuff.
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    So patterns are being activated,
    and we don't really realize it.
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    We're kind of walking around in a bad
    mood, or we're walking around [inaudible]
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    on something, going around and around.
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    And when we're inside these loops,
    these loops of behaving and acting
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    and responding, what does it feel like?
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    It can feel like fate.
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    It feels like we're always going to be here.
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    We've always been here.
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    It feels -- it's so sticky, it's
    hard to kind of get out of it.
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    And there is truth -- the reason it's
    sticky is because you're deepening a pattern
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    or a groove that you go in a lot.
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    You're like training your body and mind
    to continue on in that kind of a pattern.
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    So that's the sobering part.
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    Mindfulness practice is really a beautiful
    practice for kind of working with that,
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    understanding, and noticing how that works.
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    That is the work of a practice so that's it.
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    The work of a practice is you have an idea that
    you want us [inaudible] and meditate and focus
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    on your breath but you have a life
    and your being triggered in your life
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    and you have shit that's going on
    and stuff that's happening at work
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    and in your relationship and in your family
    and you're thinking and worrying about it
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    because you're trying to sort
    it out and that's totally fine.
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    So the first thing is to say this is
    completely natural that I have this pattern
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    that I'm inside, that this is just how it goes.
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    So you first except that
    you're having that experience
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    so that the concentration we have working
    with that is just to go back to the breath
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    and let it -- and do your best
    to let it be in the background.
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    Eventually you get pulled up with
    it again but you notice it happens.
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    You go back to the breath.
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    Eventually the breath starts
    to become richer and fuller.
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    The real estate of the breath gets larger
    than the real estate of that sticky pattern.
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    And you can sort of shift ratios that way.
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    But the mindfulness way of
    working about it is to say okay.
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    Well, actually I'm going
    to look at this pattern.
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    I'm going to actually go into it.
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    Instead of just being automatically inside
    it, I'm going to start to explore it.
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    So I'm going to -- when I'm in this thing
    -- and you can explore it different ways.
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    You can -- one of the most constructive ways
    is just to kind of see what it's made of.
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    Like generally you'll find it's made of body
    sensation, so emotional feelings and tugs
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    like anger in the jaw or like
    heartache through the chest
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    or vibrating agitation or whatever it is.
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    Like the body sensations are
    really providing the juice of a lot
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    of our emotion and thinking patterns.
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    So you can just stay with
    the feelings in the body.
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    And we'll kind of do one like that
    in a moment, a practice like that.
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    You can also work with the head
    part of it, the thinking part.
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    You can go in and go okay.
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    Can I actually just notice what
    images are coming up right now?
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    Instead of just being in the images, can I
    kind of have this objective witnessing thing?
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    Can I disembed from this trance
    and just notice the images,
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    the face of your disappointed
    mother or whatever it is?
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    Or can you notice the talk?
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    So that's another component.
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    The voice in your head, the narrative you're
    telling yourself, the criticism, the --
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    you know the voice of the other person, whatever
    it is just -- and you kind of tried to --
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    it's this weird move of just like the act of
    noticing it means you're no longer inside it.
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    So this is the single most
    important thing a human being needs
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    to know in their life, I think.
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    You know, probably there
    will be a few so it's not
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    that the single most important
    but it's an important one.
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    That is that you -- you're not
    fated to repeat these patterns.
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    If you can notice the thing is happening, the
    active noticing it means you're not inside it.
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    You're now outside it because the crazy
    punch line in the contemplative world,
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    in the Buddhist world, in the Hindu
    world, in the Taoist world, and even in --
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    talked about in different ways in the
    Abrahamic traditions, the crazy punch line is
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    that you aren't -- like that's part of you.
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    That's the process of your personality
    but the act of being aware it self,
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    the knower is the same knower in everybody else.
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    It's empty.
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    It has no material.
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    The act of knowing is this act --
    it's this expression of your freedom.
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    So it's different than -- knowing
    is different than thinking.
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    This is what people don't really realize.
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    It's like you're thinking about something.
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    Thinking is tractable.
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    It's images.
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    It's talk.
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    It's a little bit of tension in the face.
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    It's all this stuff.
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    The knowing is just the knowing but we think
    knowing and thinking are the same things.
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    But a mindfulness practice basically lets you
    disembed from the thinking so you can know it.
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    So the knower is here and then
    that thinking is happening here.
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    Does that make sense?
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    Okay. Because it's kind of a weird thing
    to get around but that is the experience.
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    The experience is that you can pop out and
    start to observe the thing from outside.
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    And then guess what?
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    It turns out that process
    just keeps going on and on
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    and on because the place you're noticing
    from, which at first seems like oh, yeah,
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    I'm noticing it as this empty
    knower then gets slowly coagulated
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    into being another thinking process.
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    And then you've got to pop out of that.
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    So you've got to -- and then
    you've got to pop out of that.
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    And there's always another layer to pop out of.
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    It just is like turtles all
    the way down basically.
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    But that's okay because it's like it's about
    getting free incrementally or continually moving
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    into a more spacious perspective
    and then getting caught up again
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    and then more spacious perspective but over time
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    that perspective becomes the
    place you take a stand in.
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    So I'm going to make that
    more tangible for you guys.
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    Let's actually try that as a practice now.
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    In a very uncomplicated way, it's just being
    aware of what's going on in your experience.
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    And as we start to look, it starts out kind
    of crude like we can't really detect it.
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    It's sort of murky but the longer and more
    patiently we are -- that we spend investigating,
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    the more subtler qualities
    begin to get teased out.
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    So there is this detection and this quality
    that emerges, this quality of clarity,
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    and it's like we start to become more
    and more transparent to ourselves.
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    And you can think of it as -- it's like
    the conscious mind is starting to seep
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    down into the unconscious or the subconscious,
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    these sort of subterranean levels were all
    the turbines are and all the machinery.
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    It's like it can start to get down in there
    and like, you know, walk around on the floor
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    of the factory and, you know,
    take a look around.
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    So hopefully that metaphor won't be -- it will
    be helpful and not disturbing so let's try it.
Title:
Jeff Explains the Essence and Practice of Mindfulness Meditation
Description:

Jeff explains the essence and practice of mindfulness meditation (Vipassana) and how it differs from a concentration based practice (Samatha). This clip is from Jeff's new online course The Elements of Meditation in which he teaches 4 distinct styles of meditation, helping you to build a solid foundation and framework for your practice and discover what style works best for you. To learn more click here: http://bit.ly/2xWQSmJ

More on Jeff here: http://jeffwarren.org/

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Video Language:
English
Duration:
06:42

English subtitles

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