Begin your mindfulness practice by focusing on the body, as it is an accessible field of awareness that, once mastered, makes it easier to carry mindfulness into all daily activities. This foundational practice can lead to profound consequences and deeper understanding.
Cultivate awareness of ‘feeling tones’ (Vedana), which are the pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral qualities of each moment’s experience. This is crucial because unmindful reactions to these tones condition unwholesome mind states like grasping, aversion, or delusion.
Practice discerning when mind states like lust, anger, or delusion are present and when they are not, as this is a fundamental aspect of wisdom. This helps you understand which mental states cause suffering and which lead to greater happiness and freedom.
When you become aware of unwholesome or unskillful mind patterns, simply acknowledge their presence without judging yourself or thinking you are a bad person. Mindfulness is about awareness, not judgment, which allows for wise choices about cultivating or abandoning states.
Intermittently ask yourself, ‘What’s the attitude in my mind right now?’ to train your attention on the quality of your mental states. This question can reveal subtle underlying wants or aversions, allowing the mind to relax from them.
When noticing thoughts or mind states, especially those that might trigger self-judgment, use the mental note ’this is nature.’ This helps to see mind states as impersonal phenomena rather than personal failings, cutting through self-judgment and the illusion of a fixed self.
In meditation, when your mind wanders and you return to awareness, emphasize ‘awake again’ instead of judging yourself for being lost. This practice counteracts self-criticism, inspires a return to wakefulness, and reinforces the value of being present.
Observe in your own experience how attachment to anything that is impermanent leads to suffering, like ‘rope burned’ from holding onto a changing rope. Understanding this truth for yourself reveals how letting go brings ease and is essential for freedom from suffering.
Actively notice and experience moments when your mind is free of greed, hatred, and delusion. These moments provide a direct taste of liberation, demonstrating that the end of suffering is a felt experience rather than a metaphysical abstraction.
The next time you are caught in a lustful fantasy (for anything), observe the moment it passes away and compare the quality of experience when lost in the fantasy versus when the mind returns to awareness. This exercise provides immediate confirmation of the suffering inherent in grasping and the freedom in its release.
Dedicate a short period to observe quickly passing, mundane thoughts, noticing how often they arise and how, when lost in them, it’s like being in a dream state. This practice reveals the frequency of ordinary thoughts and provides a meaningful, direct experience of the difference between delusion and wakefulness.
Begin formal meditation by practicing mindfulness of breathing, feeling the breath coming in and going out. This simple exercise is a core starting point that helps the mind settle and increases concentration.
When your mind wanders during breath mindfulness, become aware of it and gently bring your attention back to feeling the breath. Repeating this process helps the mind settle, increases concentration, and leads to relaxation.
When practicing breath mindfulness, use the mental note ’there is a body’ to settle into awareness of the whole body posture. This maintains a larger framework, allowing the breath to be felt within it without narrowing focus, which can alleviate anxiety.
When observing your breath, frame it as ’the body breathes in, know you’re breathing in’ rather than ‘when you breathe in.’ This subtle shift helps to remove the ‘self’ from the experience, reducing effort and allowing for a more natural and easeful experience of the breath.
Be mindful of your current body posture, knowing when you are walking, sitting, lying down, or standing. This practice reminds you that meditation can occur in any posture, helping to integrate mindfulness into daily life.
Bring mindfulness to everyday activities such as brushing your teeth, opening doors, going forward or back, bending, and reaching. Because the body is always present, it’s accessible to practice mindfulness in all daily activities.
Actively work on remembering to be mindful throughout your day. The primary challenge of mindfulness is not the act itself, but consistently remembering to apply it.
During walking meditation, focus on feeling the movement of your feet or legs from the inside, rather than observing or tracking it from the outside. Feeling the movement internally makes the practice more effortless and easeful.
As you deepen your walking meditation, aim to feel the specific sensations within the movement, such as lightness, heaviness, vibration, stiffness, or pressure. This allows for a deeper engagement with the body and a more profound understanding of movement.
Use the mental mantra ’each step, each step’ during walking meditation to focus attention on one step at a time. This helps to work within your attention capacity, making the practice more effortless, easeful, and enjoyable.
Experiment with different speeds during walking meditation, starting at a normal pace, gradually slowing down, and even trying very slow, multi-part movements. Exploring various speeds allows you to find what works best for you at different times, as the important part is mindfulness, not speed.
When experiencing pleasant feeling tones, acknowledge them (e.g., ‘pleasant, pleasant’) and fully experience their pleasantness without grasping, clinging, or attachment. This allows you to enjoy pleasant experiences without reconditioning unwholesome mind states like greed or lust.
When experiencing unpleasant feeling tones, acknowledge them (e.g., ‘unpleasant, unpleasant’) and experience them without being upset, conditioning aversion, or wanting to get rid of them. This practice helps prevent the mind from reconditioning unwholesome mind states like hatred or aversion.
Cultivate mindfulness of neutral feeling tones, even when they seem unremarkable. Being mindful of neutral tones helps to prevent spacing out, delusion, or ignorance that can arise when there’s no strong pleasant or unpleasant impact.
When pleasantness or unpleasantness is particularly strong, intentionally focus on and inquire into the actual experience of that feeling tone. This sensitizes you to its meaning and can lead to the realization that awareness simply knows, regardless of the feeling.
Learn about the seven factors of awakening (mindfulness, energy, investigation, rapture, calm, concentration, equanimity), recognize them in yourself, and explore those that are less familiar or need more development. Understanding and cultivating these qualities is crucial as they lead to liberation and enlightenment.
Pay attention to the balance of energy-arousing (investigation, energy, rapture) and energy-tranquilizing (calm, concentration, equanimity) factors of awakening in your mind. Emphasize what is needed to bring them into balance, as mindfulness is the key factor that brings them into equilibrium for effective practice.