The Phenomenology of Awakening: Training Attention

Recap: Nature of Awareness

Awakening: Reversing the direction of attention

The great Zen Master Dogen wrote in the Fukanzazengi:

“You should therefore cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest.”

Prerequisites for Awakening: Training Attention

One key practice for awakening is training the direction of your attention so that it can focus on one thing at a time. Our minds are usually distracted and we typically have trouble focusing on one thought stream at a time. The following exercises will allow one to focus their mind on one object at a time. In these exercises we focus our attention on one sense object at a time. For simplicity, in this exercise we focus on sound but this can be done with any sense object.

The point of all of these exercises is to understand that to investigate the nature of reality we need to have a mind that is not distracted by thoughts. A stable mind is a prerequisite to understand how the mind constructs our reality.

Default Mode Network (Monkey Mind)

As we begin our meditation practice, we quickly realize that when we sit to meditate our minds seem to be out of control. Our minds are very jumpy with a constant thought stream and we are constantly distracted by an uninterrupted stream of seemingly endless thoughts. Neuroscientists call this the Default Mode Network, or DMN for short. In Eastern traditions, this is called the monkey mind. The first step is to give the monkey mind something to do.

Please refer to my previous blog post (https://www.awakeningofimpermanence.com/blog/defaultmodenetwork) that describes the default mode network and strategies to tame the default mode network (https://www.awakeningofimpermanence.com/blog/tamingdmn).

Exercises for Training the Mind

Checklist before starting meditation

Intent to practice: Intention to meditate
Sharing the benefits: Resolve to share the benefits of your practice with your fellow beings. Typically we want benefits for ourselves, and sharing the benefits with our fellow beings allows us to step out from our self-centered world view.
Posture: A relaxed posture is beneficial to good practice.
Breath: Deep long breaths have a beneficial effect on the default mode network.
Field of Care: Think of a family member/pet or deity to create a protective field of care.
Relax: Relax body and mind. Relax some more.

a) Step 1- Relaxing the mind

The first step in this process is to relax the mind. Relaxation allows one to notice the working of the mind instead of getting caught up in the mind stream.

b) Step 2- Training the Arrow of Attention

In these exercises you focus your attention on listening to one sound stream at a time in the beginning followed by more complicated sound streams. The idea behind these exercises is to keep your attention on the object, in this case sound. Through this practice as we get more familiar with focusing our mind on one object, the mind automatically gets concentrated. This concentration lends stability to the mind when it investigates the nature of our consciousness.

Beginning Exercises:

Non-Dual Meditation Exercises

Next steps:

As you get facile with holding your attention on an object, you then increase the amount of time focusing on a particular sound or sense object.
Typically you hold attention on objects for 30 minutes to 1 hour.
As you progress in this path it will be easier to have insight to the workings of the mind.