How to Practice

Congratulations to Tuesday’s election winners. For me it was a practice moment: feeling joy and hope, and not turning those into something else with regard to the losers. 

Which is a practice I can’t do without my basic, present moment attention practice. Which always begs the question of how to cultivate that. If mindfulness is present moment attention, courage, and grace, how do we cultivate the first one?

It’s simple (and not easy): we give ourselves time for stillness. To me this is mostly like giving myself a treat every day. Mostly but not every time, because sometimes I struggle. I eye my meditation cushion warily, as if it’s dragging me away from the fun. 

But actually, sitting down anyway is always the right choice for me. Even if I set my timer for just five minutes, I feel relief. Why? I’m not forgoing my practice, for one – commitment kept. I’m continuing to re-wire my brain to stay in the present moment, where the science says happiness lies – and who can’t use a little more happiness right now, even after Tuesday? And, I’m being kind to myself, which makes me kinder to others, including…everyone, which to me is worth all the rest. 

Transcript

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call #509. Let’s just take a moment together to either appreciate or feel however we feel about the election. I’m guessing there’s hope and joy, and also can there be compassion for those who feel differently? 

So we’re looking at the Noble Eightfold Path, and we’re on Step Two, Wise Mindfulness. Step One is Wise Effort, effort that’s not too tight, not too lose, and that’s infused with joy. The “what” of Wise Mindfulness is various things; where I’m landing is present moment attention with courage and grace.

Which leads to the question of how: how to cultivate present moment attention, how to summon the courage, over and over, to be with the difficulties that arise and the moments when we stumble; and how to practice grace.

The nice thing is, there is a “how.” With learning how to practice law, even with research and writing courses and clinics, it’s still a great deal of “learning on the job” and not so much “how to,” in law school at least. It’s nothing like internships for doctors, for example. 

But with present moment attention, the first part of Wise Mindfulness, we have instructions. And while not all mindfulness traditions offer them explicitly – for example, in my experience Zen is somewhat opaque – there are basic instructions, or examples at least, for how to practice.  

The most widely studied and practiced instructions, as far as I’m aware, are the Satipatthana sutta, or the sutta on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. Working with these, we can learn to cultivate present moment attention by paying attention to four things: the body, the tone of each moment, the mind, and the things we encounter that inhibit, support, or offer frameworks for cultivating insight…which is the upshot of Wise Mindfulness, and I’ll say more about that soon. 

Each of the Four Foundations, for me anyway, is a lifelong study and practice. I haven’t mastered, and I know I won’t master in this lifetime, present moment attention. Which is what makes it so interesting, for one thing, and also why it’s so important to be joyful and I’d even say, playful, as we work with each one. Otherwise it’s easy to get discouraged or frustrated, especially with those perfectionistic legal minds we might have.

There’s another reason why it’s important to be playful and joyful as we cultivate present moment attention, and courage and grace: the ancient teaching that “whatever we think and ponder becomes the inclination of the mind.” I see at work all the time. I’m in a grumpy mood and my grumpiness infuses the moment, and the next, and so on, until it’s a grumpy day. Or, I’m feeling gratitude, and gratitude flows into and pervades my next encounter, or my whole day. To say nothing of the life-long habits a steady-ish state of fear or frustration or on the other hand joy, can create.

So as we practice with the Four Foundations – the “how” of cultivating present moment attention – to me, a keystone of the undertaking is to have a light heart – an earnest heart because this cultivation is crucial, for our own wellbeing and I also think, for the world – but still, with a light heart. 

Keeping that in mind, the First Foundation is mindfulness of the body – again, a lifetime of study and practice but very briefly, the practice of using the body as a place to bring and “stay” our attention. Meaning, we choose some part, or function, of the body – the breath as it’s flowing in & out, the ears as they’re hearing, sensations as we scan through the body, other instructions as well – we choose one, and, using it as the “object” of our attention, invite our attention to come there, and stay: stay with the sensation of breathing; stay with sounds as they arise and disappear; stay with bodily sensations as we scan from head to toes or toes to head. 

With the Second Foundation, we invite the attention to how each moment feels. Does it feel pleasant? Does it feel unpleasant? Does it feel like not much at all? This is a different kind of present moment attention because we’re being with how we feel within a narrow but consequential understanding of, “is this moment pleasant, unpleasant, or neither?” 

With the Third Foundation, we invite the attention to the mind – not its contents so much but simply whether thoughts or emotions are present. With the Fourth Foundation, we invite the attention to the qualities that support our practice, those that don’t, and various frameworks for cultivating insight. Which, again, is what arises as we train the attention to come to and stay in the present moment. 

Not so complicated, but not so easy. We live in a distracting world to say the least. And, the mind is inherently distracted. So we train to come to and stay in the present moment, but the attention, or the mind, has other ideas. Which is why we have to make it a point to spend some dedicated time, every day, in stillness, training the attention to come to the present moment and stay – like doing scales on a piano or hitting balls from a pitching machine or writing memo after IRAC memo – a skill which, like playing music or hitting balls or practicing law, can also be lost if we stop practicing. These are instructions for life-long training, life-long learning. 

Initially, the best most of us can do – or at least this was true for me – is to “light” on the place we’ve chosen as our object of attention, like a hummingbird on a flower. It can feel that precarious, too, like any wind – a wind of distraction like a thought or emotion, wind in the environment, like the news, or even regular old wind itself – will knock us off of the present moment and into a story of some kind, some thought pattern, something that argues for the headline in the mind. Over time and with practice, the attention learns to settle and even when distracted, to return to its object, which becomes more and more of a refuge than anything else, like a bear, burrowing into her warm cave for the winter.   

The “how to” of courage and grace are a little different. Next time or two, I’ll share what I know and am still learning, about how to cultivate those qualities, and also a little about the “why” of Wise Mindfulness as well, the insight part. For now, let’s play with the cultivation of present moment attention.