Mindfulness Meditation - Is this right?

mickrourke

Hi,
I have a couple of questions about meditation I would like to ask and this is perfect place to do it.
Bit of background first, I had a severe bout of depression about 5 months ago which I was put on medication for by my doctor. My doctor also told me about this relatively new type of therapy called MBSR, Mindfulness based stress reduction, which was developed by Jon Kabat Zin. Anyway it involves using Mindulness meditation to ease stress in life and the MRI studies that show changes in brain strucure. However the referral would take up to 3 months to go through before i was even seen.I was off work for 6 weeks and i was determined to start something to stop my racing thoughts and thought spirals.
Anyway, I thought I would begin meditation on my own, so I downloaded a couple of guided meditations, some which had binaural beats in them, nature sounds, waves, music whatever, and started listening to them as much as possible, up to two hours a day. I would do this lying down, sitting in a chair, sitting on the ground, wherever.
So i gradually found myself not needing the guided meditations anymore and just meditating on my own. However due to time constraints, I have a 3 year old and a 1 1/2 year old, I work a 5 day week (leave house at 6 and home at 5) and my wife works 3 long days every week which means there are 3 days a week where she is not home till 10 at night, basically I get very little time to myself what with child minding, cleaning up, making dinner and lunches for next day, so when i do get to sit down i am too tired to meditate, or if i do i fall asleep. So what I am doing is meditating on the bus into work and the train back home, and i find I can get in over 30 minutes every day by doing this even though everyone says to meditate you need a quiet space in a lotus position, etc.
I never went on the therapy course because i felt that i had made a lot of progress on my own and wanted to explore this further, but if i felt i need to complete the therapy then i would do it. I also do not really have the money to embark on an expensive therapy course.
So, is this ok to meditate like this or do i need to make time to do it quietly at home. I do feel it is more difficult to do it on the bus and i do end up concentrating on sounds around me, wipers, noise of tracks,hum of the engine, more than my breath, but it is a mindful awareness of the sound - the timbre, pitch, not thinking about it, and then sometimes i will go to my breath and sometimes back to the sound. I think mindfulness for me more as a way of life more than a practice, and it can be done anytime, anywhere which is what i try to do.
I think that maybe mindfulness is all about being in the present, and if the present is the sound of the engine etc, then that is still mindfulness, not just concentrating on the breathing, but what is here and now - sounds all around me, sensations, etc. I mean there are 100's of things going on inside and outside my body at the same time so is it ok to conentrate on these but still I still come out of the meditation relaxed but I am wondering if I am getting the most out of it or am i just doing it wrong by not trying to concentrate on the breathing alone?
I am off my medication about a month now and I still feel much better than i ever did - more aware of whats going on around me, I am able to shut thoughts off in my mind, and get to sleep, I am having a better relationship with the kids, not flying off the handle like I used too, (I did this morning) but thats happening very rarely and it doesn't take me as long to calm down, it changes and does not control me anymore like it used to - it's just a feeling that will pass. I also can relate to people better, not getting wrapped up in myself and very aware of their emotions but also how it effects them - their conversations, actions and i can look at them in a detached way. I hope this makes sense and I am not waffling but I suppose I am wondering, do i need to make time for a proper sit down meditation in a quiet place, just concentrating on breathing and not what is going on around me?
I have also read some basic buddhist teachings and i am finding a lot of it quite logical and wonder why i had never seen things like this before, probably because I was too wrapped up in myself.
Thanks for reading, any thoughts greatfully appreciated.
Mick

dkin

mickrourke wrote: »

but it is a mindful awareness of the sound - the timbre, pitch, not thinking about it, and then sometimes i will go to my breath and sometimes back to the sound.

This to me is the core of meditation, the other is detachment

I think mindfulness for me more as a way of life more than a practice, and it can be done anytime, anywhere which is what i try to do.
I think that maybe mindfulness is all about being in the present, and if the present is the sound of the engine etc, then that is still mindfulness, not just concentrating on the breathing, but what is here and now - sounds all around me, sensations, etc. I mean there are 100's of things going on inside and outside my body at the same time so is it ok to conentrate on these but still I still come out of the meditation relaxed but I am wondering if I am getting the most out of it or am i just doing it wrong by not trying to concentrate on the breathing alone?
Mick

I suppose there are two types of meditation, mindfulness and one pointedness.

Mindfulness is the observation of the mindfield without attachment to it's contents, I practice this regularly in active life on the bus etc as you describe witnessing emotions and thoughts, while simultaneously thinking 'this is not me they are simply floating in the mindfield' but not judging. I have found it highly beneficial.

One pointedness, is what people think of when they imagine somebody sitting in the lotus position. This involves a deep exploration of a particular object, breath, mantra etc in increasingly subtle ways such as timbre which you described above. In my experience it is not possible to reach the deeper layers of one pointedness while sitting on a bus but you might be much more adept than me!! I'd keep doing what you are doing and things will work out naturally don't stress it!

mickrourke

Hi dkin,
Thanks for that response, it's a little bit confusing when you start meditation as a lot of the literature talks about concentrating on the breath in mindfulness as the only way and the more i thought about it ,the concept of mindfulness was wider and encompassed everything we do in the present, not just breathing. I think once I understood this, meditation became easier, not a battle with my mind to concentrate solely on the breath and not to worry when the mind wonders to outside sounds or internal sensations as that is part of it, that is also mindfulness as the sounds and sensations are also in the present. I will try to make time for one pointedness meditation at least once or twice a week on top of my daily normal mindfulness meditation.I don't think I will ever get so adept, that i can block out everything except the breathing, so if I want to reach the deeper levels of meditation i should sit in a quiet location. It's something i really want to keep up and explore, but it's reassuring that i am on the right tracks and thanks again for the reply.

nagirrac

What you describe in the first paragraph is neuroplasticity. It is now well established and used commmonly to treat OCD and other mental challenges. The evidence from fMRI is that mindful concentration results in permanent changes in neural linkages. Thoughts modifying the physical brain. Concentraing on a thought, positive or negative, results in hardwiring your brain and rewiring it is difficult but can be done.

mccoist

great letter
nice to see you gaining success
i recognise your story
i have found buddhist sitting close by me
in limerick
group meditation is worth the effort
take care mccoist

[-0-]

Breathing in, I am aware that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I am aware that I am breathing out.
Breathing in, today is a wonderful day to be alive.
Breathing out, I smile to this day and I am grateful.

mickrourke

Thanks for the responses. i will try to get to a group meditation and use the i am breathing words to help me with fixed object. i should probably try some loving kindness meditation too.
Mick

Blanonymous

I don't think it's helpful to split meditation into 'mindfulness' and 'one-pointedness' because I've found from my experience, after about 3 years of making it up as I go along, only briefly consulting guides on how to meditate properly (and not really following their instructions correctly either), that concentrating solely on the meditation object was a very inefficient way of developing concentration. The real breakthrough for me came about 5 months ago when I started incorporating mindfulness into my meditation on the breath (after I started really paying attention to what the experts were saying out of desperation). Suddenly, like clockwork, the more mindfulness I injected, the more my concentration grew, to the point where I began dropping attention on the breath altogether and focusing solely on mindfulness of the sensations (of concentration) in my head and cultivating mental stillness - a mind "inclined to abandoning", as the Buddha advised. At this point (this was only a few weeks ago) my concentration became really intense and I started to enter jhana... in fact, bizarrely, I went from attaining the first jhana deliberately for the first time, to reaching the fourth the day after, and then all 8 the day after that. And, get this, I can now climb to the eighth jhana within minutes of starting - I even did it once on the bus!

Also the notion of investigating the breath is almost entirely unhelpful, in my opinion. What you really want to do is try to solidify its sensations as cleanly as possible, to actually cultivate a false sense of permanence for the mind to cling to! This illusory sense of stability generates pleasure, and the pleasure creates a sort of positive feedback reinforcement loop (see Leigh Brasington on this) where the mind naturally wants to stay with the breath and concentration becomes effortless.