Jeff Explains the Essence and Practice of Mindfulness Meditation

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/

>> This is a great way to get
into the second practice set --

we're going to do which is
mindfulness, the practice of mindfulness

which is really the practice of being more
aware of what's going on in our experience.

Mindfulness is the kind of fashionable word
for it right now but call it awareness,

call it objectivity, call it -- it's
there in every tradition and every --

lots of human beings and cultures
talk about it in their own ways.

It's just being aware of what's
going on in your experience.

And it turns out that there's
layers and layers of stuff going on

and that we're often ping-ponging
around automatically with stuff.

So patterns are being activated,
and we don't really realize it.

We're kind of walking around in a bad
mood, or we're walking around [inaudible]

on something, going around and around.

And when we're inside these loops,
these loops of behaving and acting

and responding, what does it feel like?

It can feel like fate.

It feels like we're always going to be here.

We've always been here.

It feels -- it's so sticky, it's
hard to kind of get out of it.

And there is truth -- the reason it's
sticky is because you're deepening a pattern

or a groove that you go in a lot.

You're like training your body and mind
to continue on in that kind of a pattern.

So that's the sobering part.

Mindfulness practice is really a beautiful
practice for kind of working with that,

understanding, and noticing how that works.

That is the work of a practice so that's it.

The work of a practice is you have an idea that
you want us [inaudible] and meditate and focus

on your breath but you have a life
and your being triggered in your life

and you have shit that's going on
and stuff that's happening at work

and in your relationship and in your family
and you're thinking and worrying about it

because you're trying to sort
it out and that's totally fine.

So the first thing is to say this is
completely natural that I have this pattern

that I'm inside, that this is just how it goes.

So you first except that
you're having that experience

so that the concentration we have working
with that is just to go back to the breath

and let it -- and do your best
to let it be in the background.

Eventually you get pulled up with
it again but you notice it happens.

You go back to the breath.

Eventually the breath starts
to become richer and fuller.

The real estate of the breath gets larger
than the real estate of that sticky pattern.

And you can sort of shift ratios that way.

But the mindfulness way of
working about it is to say okay.

Well, actually I'm going
to look at this pattern.

I'm going to actually go into it.

Instead of just being automatically inside
it, I'm going to start to explore it.

So I'm going to -- when I'm in this thing
-- and you can explore it different ways.

You can -- one of the most constructive ways
is just to kind of see what it's made of.

Like generally you'll find it's made of body
sensation, so emotional feelings and tugs

like anger in the jaw or like
heartache through the chest

or vibrating agitation or whatever it is.

Like the body sensations are
really providing the juice of a lot

of our emotion and thinking patterns.

So you can just stay with
the feelings in the body.

And we'll kind of do one like that
in a moment, a practice like that.

You can also work with the head
part of it, the thinking part.

You can go in and go okay.

Can I actually just notice what
images are coming up right now?

Instead of just being in the images, can I
kind of have this objective witnessing thing?

Can I disembed from this trance
and just notice the images,

the face of your disappointed
mother or whatever it is?

Or can you notice the talk?

So that's another component.

The voice in your head, the narrative you're
telling yourself, the criticism, the --

you know the voice of the other person, whatever
it is just -- and you kind of tried to --

it's this weird move of just like the act of
noticing it means you're no longer inside it.

So this is the single most
important thing a human being needs

to know in their life, I think.

You know, probably there
will be a few so it's not

that the single most important
but it's an important one.

That is that you -- you're not
fated to repeat these patterns.

If you can notice the thing is happening, the
active noticing it means you're not inside it.

You're now outside it because the crazy
punch line in the contemplative world,

in the Buddhist world, in the Hindu
world, in the Taoist world, and even in --

talked about in different ways in the
Abrahamic traditions, the crazy punch line is

that you aren't -- like that's part of you.

That's the process of your personality
but the act of being aware it self,

the knower is the same knower in everybody else.

It's empty.

It has no material.

The act of knowing is this act --
it's this expression of your freedom.

So it's different than -- knowing
is different than thinking.

This is what people don't really realize.

It's like you're thinking about something.

Thinking is tractable.

It's images.

It's talk.

It's a little bit of tension in the face.

It's all this stuff.

The knowing is just the knowing but we think
knowing and thinking are the same things.

But a mindfulness practice basically lets you
disembed from the thinking so you can know it.

So the knower is here and then
that thinking is happening here.

Does that make sense?

Okay. Because it's kind of a weird thing
to get around but that is the experience.

The experience is that you can pop out and
start to observe the thing from outside.

And then guess what?

It turns out that process
just keeps going on and on

and on because the place you're noticing
from, which at first seems like oh, yeah,

I'm noticing it as this empty
knower then gets slowly coagulated

into being another thinking process.

And then you've got to pop out of that.

So you've got to -- and then
you've got to pop out of that.

And there's always another layer to pop out of.

It just is like turtles all
the way down basically.

But that's okay because it's like it's about
getting free incrementally or continually moving

into a more spacious perspective
and then getting caught up again

and then more spacious perspective but over time

that perspective becomes the
place you take a stand in.

So I'm going to make that
more tangible for you guys.

Let's actually try that as a practice now.

In a very uncomplicated way, it's just being
aware of what's going on in your experience.

And as we start to look, it starts out kind
of crude like we can't really detect it.

It's sort of murky but the longer and more
patiently we are -- that we spend investigating,

the more subtler qualities
begin to get teased out.

So there is this detection and this quality
that emerges, this quality of clarity,

and it's like we start to become more
and more transparent to ourselves.

And you can think of it as -- it's like
the conscious mind is starting to seep

down into the unconscious or the subconscious,

these sort of subterranean levels were all
the turbines are and all the machinery.

It's like it can start to get down in there
and like, you know, walk around on the floor

of the factory and, you know,
take a look around.

So hopefully that metaphor won't be -- it will
be helpful and not disturbing so let's try it.