How to Change Your Life with Mindful Awareness ~Shinzen Young

Recently I've been coming to think of practice in terms of.

Uh.

The distinction between formal practice.

And what I call life practice or practice in life.

So.

Each.

Formal practice what characterizes formal practices that period of formal practice lasts at least 10 minutes. So there's certain duration aspect and all your attention is going into maintaining the technique that makes it formal practice.

There are 2 basic kinds of formal practice practice in stillness where you're not moving much.

And practice in motion where you are moving you could be walking. It would be exercising and so forth.

So.

I would encourage a person who wants to be successful with this path.

To do a little bit a minimum of formal practice in stillness and former practice in motion each day? What's a minimum 10 minutes. Now that's minimum you might not that might sound like not very much, but

You'd be surprised how much resistance of person might have to do in that it's not a time thing.

Anybody has

10 minutes here 10 minutes, there to do formal practice is not a time thing, then what is it well.

You might say that.

The.

Ordinary coping mechanism.

The normal coping mechanism that People have for dealing with life could be characterized as tighten up and turn away.

Um.

The new copy mechanism of this practice is the diametric opposite of that it's open up and turned towards.

Now you can think of the old coping mechanism.

As sort of being like.

Uh.

How you been getting air?

It's sort of works OK.

But not really so if you.

Start to challenge that coping mechanism.

By forcing yourself to have periods of open up and turned towards.

At some point, it might seem.

To your conditioning that you're like?

Being asphyxiated.

You gotta get a breath the breath of air in this case, the breath of air is a hit of unconsciousness, the the practice is it's like.

Oxygen is being taken away OK your former source of nutrition is being taken away. You're starving to death flailing and the only way to get nurtured or to get oxygen is to start to go completely unconscious again for long periods of time and formal practice won't allow you to go completely unconscious for long periods of time.

So it seems like you're starving to death or you're being asphyxiate did an that resistance then comes up and it's not a time thing it's this other mechanism.

So what to do in that case well recycle the reaction get interested in deconstructing the resistance.

So, in terms of formal practice 10 minutes.

Yep, stillness 10 minutes of motion, most days.

Practice in life.

I've been dividing into what I call micro hits and then background practice so micro head is short.

And it's happening during ordinary life.

And you could at the end of the day. You can say exactly how many of them you did. How long they lasted and when they took place.

And that's a way of tracking the extent to which you are stopping on a dime starting on a dime.

So.

Stop on a dime means that you suspend your investment.

With the content of in and out.

You suspend your investment with the pull of past and future.

Um.

And you a stab Lish an investment 30 seconds here 3 minutes there.

With maintaining a technique.

What technique could be any tech?

So you you what's it. Take me name a technique?

Here it OK here in was the first one.

Get rest.

Your *** is not going to be much here in I'm doing the technique OK after a while there might be some hear it. But I was just showing I could start out and I we go a little broader see how gone Feelin gone.

Feel rest feel rest see rest.

See out gone Seattle gone field in gone.

See rest Seaflow C4 OK.

No hesitation.

No well, I'm going to sit here and count my breath for 10 minutes and then I'm going to be settled enough to know what's going on?

Now that is not starting on a dime 10 minutes.

Even 10 seconds.

10 seconds is too long.

It's be.

Between the stimulus.

And the response there is a gap and it's not long couple seconds maybe.

And after that, the terrorists are in the cockpit on English emotional hijack Amygdala Big della hijack so we need to train ourselves to stop on a dime start on that stop on a dime doesn't necessarily mean that you stop moving around. It means that you instantly instantaneously suspend involvement with the content.

Of in and out.

And you are involved with the technique, but it doesn't have to be long be while you're.

Walking around even talking to People and so forth so that's the micro hit can be any technique you want.

The.

The the places where you attend to do micro hits during the day are dead times when you're waiting in line or you're in a meeting an?

Get this vacuous conversations going on that you don't really eat all your CPU look like you're paying attention. So it's sort of like the dead times the dead times become the Magic times. You're waiting for your system to reboot OK. I had this idea wants to create a Dharma virus that.

It would cause cause people's computers to suspend operation and children had done 30 seconds until they have it on a Mac. It's called the beach ball of death.

The beach ball of death, having a hard time net for me is mine. Yeah, right so that's these are those those sort of dead times, then then there's

The Times just before and just after what you think is going to be a stressful event.

You can have a stress rehearsal dress rehearsal is stressful it's light.

I have one student that.

Basically, his entire life is telephone calls.

And it's

And most of the calls are.

Telling.

Very passionate and powerful People. No.

And so these are sometimes difficult calls to make.

So he's he can use focus in at autumn focus in 30 seconds OK.

You just prepares himself.

Watch is the resistance, you know it's.

Oh my God, I'm calling so and so and I'm telling them.

News they don't want to hear and then he could just make the call and if there's any after whatever another 30 seconds clears it ready to move on.

So before and after stressful things micro heads. Now the beauty of the concept of Micro hit is you can check in on your own practice.

In a very tangible way there's no BS OK because.

How many did you do?

When did you do them Watt was the technique for? How long did they last?

That will tell you how many times during the day you are.

Ah.

You are.

Severing.

The Trammels.

Of time.

Um.

OK then.

What do I mean by background practice or having a background technique going well?

Lot of People report something like this, it's like well, I don't go completely unconscious, but I'm not.

Put in a lot of intention in having a technique going.

But it's sort of going in the background, while I'm going about life activities.

Um.

And some People are able to have that going much of the day. It's not sharp. It's not there's no mental labels or anything. Or maybe not. Much of that, but it's sort of going in the background as opposed to.

Just the way I used to be where I would just completely be lossed and unconscious and driven and so forth so.

That kind of thing may or may not come naturally to you if it does it's just something to know about it's a component of practice?

If it doesn't come naturally for you. That's OK, but the one thing. Everyone can do because it's so well defined and so crisp is the micro heads like I say OK if you're serious about this practice, you're going to have.

A half dozen or so micro heads every day and the.

The.

Less you feel like stopping on a dime.

The more powerful doing so is going to be when you least want to stop on a dime. When you're most caught up in the bondage of past and future inside and outside.

Is when it's going to be most powerful to stop on a dime?

You can use spoken labels to ensure quality.

Because it's not going to be quantity right. It's going to be short if your life situation allows for it.

For me.

Often these stop on a dime feels like I'm gonna die.

It feels like.

I'm being marched off to the firing squad or something.

And that's good that means I'm doing it right.

That means I really am going toe to toe with the forces.

Of the something this of self in world.

So.

That gives you potentially 4 elements.

Formal practice practice in life formal practice. You have stillness motion practice in life. You have micro hits background practice.

And with regards to the formal practice for practicing stillness to accelerators trigger practice and duration training.

For practice emotion, the challenge sequence it's all described in.

Great detail in the reading we sent you.

If you line up these elements if you at least occasionally do the accelerators push the envelope of the length of a sit at least occasionally.

Under the parameters described.

Uh.

But I usually explore.

Systematically triggering hot and cold buttons.

Uh.

Try to do not just practice in stillness and not just walking meditation, but

You know can I do focus in while I'm washing the dishes?

OK, how deep can I get with focus in while I'm washing the dishes?

Focus out on the way to Work etc, etc. So you give yourself the motion challenge sequence at least occasionally so those would be.

The Ducks that you would want to line up for day-to-day practice.

If you line up those Ducks.

For day-to-day practice.

What else is left well?

At least once a year do.

But the equivalent of one week retreat that's absolute minimum.

When I see the equivalent. Not everyone in the world can get away for 7 days or 10 days to do a residential retreat. In fact, most People can't. But there are ways of doing the equivalent for one thing. The whole practice program, which we created, which almost anyone can do as long as you speak English.

And you have.

Can get cheap long distance or you have Internet with Skype?

Then you can have a retreat practice you just have to.

Sort of amortize it over the years spread it out, but 4 hour or 8 hour program. If you did enough several of those many of those over a year. That sort of will serve as your retreat practice during retreats as you see you build up a certain momentum.

Then you go back to your daily regimen and instead of that being a peak experience. In it may go down a bit, but it becomes a stable plateau. You now grow gradually with your daily elements and then do your next retreat as you look over the big picture of the years and decades of practice what you'll see is as a general trend. The retreats takes you to a new level, the daily practice backs it up with more.

Modest growth,

And so you have this sort of stepwise growth curve.

And if you look at the overall envelope of the curve.

At some point, it becomes evident that it is in fact exponential.

Um.

When when does the break point in this exponential curve come the breakpoint means when it goes from looking modest and linear 2. Oh my God. This is really taking off. That's the point at which the derivative starts to going infinite, but break break point occurs.

When?

You start to get.

But they are immediate taste of purification.

As soon as you bring equanimity to an experience.

You don't have to wait.

You just bring the equanimity to it, and you sense that.

Sources of unhappiness are breaking up you can actually taste it happening.

I can't put it into words OK, so he should deresse I made up a word. A word in Sanskrit. This word should exist in Sanford.

Should be means verification or uh? Some Instax there's a taste?

Oh, it and it's impossible to put into words. But once the spiritual pallet matures, so that you can taste it. That's the breakpoint because now you're dealing with operant conditioning skinnerian conditioning, so positive feedback loop that's just classic math the.

The taste of purification.

It can't be put into words, but as I say.

Its acquisition marks the transition to a mature spiritual palette.

Oh.

Their tastes, the kids just don't understand.

Why would anyone drink coffee most kids can't understand spicy foods either I think it's like what? Why do adults but this in their mouth? It's bitter it hurts you know there's not a taste call spice?

You know what spices.

Spices pure pain.

It's it's the raw it's the raw nerves.

It's the actual same nerves that give you a pain signal are what are stimulated by capsaicin?

In fact that's a way of inducing lab pain, but anyway, that's so the.

Uh.

Why would anybody like something?

That hurts in their mouth? Why would anybody like anything that's bitter.

Most kids cannot understand why adults?

Eat this kind of stuff.

But the pallet changes.

So there's a taste that comes about when a person experiences.

Pleasure or pain with equanimity and and the taste is identical doesn't matter whether it's with physical pain, emotional pain, physical pleasure or emotional pleasure.

There's us annoying that because of the way I'm greeting this in this moment.

The poison and pain from previous moments is being wiped away and every moment of the future will be marginally.

Less suffering and more fulfilling it's A kind of knowing of that when that reward flavored the taste of purification.

Which is just the taste of equanimity or the effect of equanimity? When that comes on that's when the growth curve goes like this because now?

Now the preoccupation with.

Feeling good.

Is starting to go away? Here you've got another kind of feel good? That's

That's not.

The old kind of feel good OK. It's just it's own thing and it's available on demand, so either you feel good intrinsically or you don't feel good and you have equanimity and you feel good. So now you just just takes off. That's when the goes like that, so if you can get this elements in place.

Uh then.

Uh.

You'll be in good shape.

The day-to-day rhythm.

Formal practice practice in life stillness motion.

Micro hits background practice accelerators at least occasionally.

You have that day today.

You have retreats if you're fortunate enough to do residential retreats great.

But some intensive form of practice that's more than just up along set.

What else do you need well at least occasionally touch base with someone who is competent to guide the big picture of your practice?

That's a very specific job you can you can have many teachers.

Um.

But you need to have at least one person.

That.

Knows how to guide People through the entire range of classical experiences that this practice is meant it.

Can potentially potentially bring about?

So you touch base with that person once twice a year to talk about the big picture of your practice.