I just want to say a few things about meditation before we begin. Some of you have already been meditating or already have a practice and what I'd like for you to be able to do today is to let yourself be a little more allowing, a little bit more friendly to yourself in your practice and to start to notice some of the things that have gone into your meditation practice. Because when we learn a particular instruction, a particular way of meditating, we often keep doing it, we keep doing those instructions again and again, and we may not see all that clearly that we've actually developed a "meditator" in our practice. That there's actually some sense of a particular style of meditation, particular things that we expect or anticipate to happen in the sittings, even particular judgments or views on experience which go completely unquestioned because they're so much a part of us. So, in order to look at those a bit and to get a sense of what those are, maybe free yourself from some of them that may be a bit rigid, is to meditate as you have been but don't feed that practice. Let it kind of go on its own and start to notice some of the things that are going on in it.
For example, if you've had a practice of being aware of your breath you might notice that there are times when you go to your breath because you're feeling a particular pain or emotional discomfort or certain memories come up and you go to it. Or, you're going to it because an idea comes into your head that you should be with your breath, and so you bring your attention to it. Start to notice a little bit more of what's gone into that practice. Not to drop it at that point, but just to see, "Well this is what's happened; this is how meditation has developed for me." And you don't need to do it in a way where you're always on top of your experience and trying to figure that out, but rather, just let your experience go on and every so often in the sitting you may notice things about your meditation practice. And just keep that in mind, that you're becoming aware of that, and not trying to control it or direct it, but just kind of let things be in the sitting.
For those of you who haven't meditated before, I'm just going to give you what I give as a basic instruction. And the way I look at instructions is that if an instruction gets in the way, just drop it. It's not working. If an instruction is helpful, then just continue with it. Just let yourself stay with it, and if your mind goes to doing something else, that's fine. Part of this is giving up control. So you don't need to be contrlled or directed in this. Instead, the real task is to let yourself surrender to the process that you engage when you're in meditation.
So the basic instruction I give to people is to be aware of the contact or your hands touching your legs, or your feet touching the cushion, or your rear touching the cushion. Just the external contact or your body sitting. And the reason for that is that it's always there when you sit. Your attention can go to it without searching for it. When you put your attention on your foot touching the mat, it's still there. It doesn't change. It doesn't shift. And so it's really much easier as an object for your mind to concentrate on. When it comes to thoughts, feelings you have, don't try to suppress them or push them aside. Instead, just let them be there. Your attention will move. So sometimes your attention will be aware of sounds. You'll be aware of your body. You may be aware of your breath. Let yourself be flexible. And, let your attention be a little freer than you have in the past. So this is a different beginning, a different orientation than instructions which say "just be aware of your breath," or "just be aware of your body," or "just be aware of a mantra." Instead, it's more about letting your attention go from thing to thing and noticing how you focus on certain things, how you do become aware of things. If you start to get drowsy and tired, let yourself feel that. Don't try to wake yourself up. You can let yourself slouch. You can let yourself go towards sleep. If you find yourself impatient or restless, don't try to calm yourself or stop it. Let yourself feel what it's like to be restless and a little bit agitated, whatever you may feel in the sitting. So you start to welcome these things into your meditation sitting instead of pushing them out of your sitting. And, in the long run that'll make it so that you'll be able to handle them and deal with them all through your meditation practice and not try to find ways to stop them or get rid of them.
So, unless there are any questions, we'll start a sitting, and we'll sit for 30 minutes.