All day mindfulness practice

written by YeShey on Saturday, May 15th, 2010

During steps one and two we do our level best to keep our attention pinned to the object of focus – the breath. The biggest obstacle to achieving this single pointed concentration are the thoughts.   The meditation instructions remind us over and over to not engage in the thoughts. When a thought arises, do not follow its story, just return the focus back to the object (which is the breath while we are practicing steps 1 and 2).

But holy cow, is this ever difficult!

As with any other training practice, the more we do it, the better we get at it.  Whether we are doing meditation practice for 11, 20 or 30 minutes a day, there are still countless hours a day that we are not meditating – but we can still practice and get better and better at the technique.

Take some time to notice how distracted the mind is throughout the day.  Find out for yourself what types of thoughts make up this distraction?  If we observe the category of our thoughts for any length of time we will notice that we perseverate on 3-5 thoughts or general categories over and over and over and over!

So the next logical questions are: Do we need to go over that again? Is it useful to think about this again? Does it help me to think about that again?  Does it hurt me to think about that again and again?

Most likely the answer to these questions are no.  It is not so helpful to think about the same thing again and again and, in the case of negative or self-deprecating thoughts, it even harms me.

This is where we can both practice our technique and change the way we think.   When you notice that, yet again, a not so useful thought is dominating the mind stream, do as you do in mediation practice, just let the thought dissolve and bring your attention to the breath or back to the task at hand and be specific-  if you are doing the dishes bring your attention to the warm soapy water, each dish, placing the dish in the rack, etc. If you are walking in the forest, keep your attention on each time you lift your foot, move it forward and place it on the ground, the sounds around you, the shape of the trees, the openness of the sky.  Or if you are doing the taxes, keep your attention with the numbers, the writing or typing, searching for each receipt with attention and putting each file back when you finish with it.

In short, know what you are doing when you are doing it.  Keep the mind in your control and when you notice it has run off to another subject, just simply bring it back.

Thoughts arise from yourself and also dissolve into yourself.