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Hi Nick!
I think I can answer most of your questions based on what I remember from TMI.I think labelling gross distractions when you’ve been completely distracted from the meditation object is always a good idea. From Stage 4 onwards gross distractions don’t come up, so when you temporarily slip back down into earlier stages and gross distractions start cropping up again, it’s always good practice to label. I think labelling subtle distractions, when the meditation object is still in the centre of your attention, isn’t necessary; only when a distraction has captured your attention and made you forget the breath. Subtle distractions you should just allow to come and go into background awareness as they please.
It’s a good question about time scales! I think in practice it’s unusual for attention to switch so completely from being 100% on the breath to being 100% lost in a distraction quickly – usually this is something that takes a good few seconds. If you catch it just as your mind is switching, but when your attention still contains the breath, it’s a subtle distraction, but if you forgot your breath and find the experience is one of remembering you were supposed to be meditating, rather than a more subtle shift of attention back to exclusivity on the breath, then it’s a gross distraction. But time scales aren’t as important as the degree of attention to the meditation object – a very emotionally charged thought or something like that could obviously capture your complete attention very immediately.
Asking the question of what you’re thinking sounds like ‘checking in’ – switching to introspective awareness to scan for subtle distractions before they turn into gross distractions, and doing this often enough that it becomes automatic is one of the main practice goals for stage 3. In Stage 4, you want to develop continuous introspective awareness so that subtle distractions can be acknowledged whenever they pop up.
As for the breathing thing, Culadasa recommends not worrying about any changes in your breath that happen, for instance, subtly lengthening the breath to observe it more easily, etc. as long as you didn’t consciously intend to do it. Your unconscious will do that sort of thing when it picks up on your intentions to follow the breath, and it’s not ‘you’ doing it. Just keep your attention on it like normal and don’t worry about it if it starts to change.
Hope that helps! 🙂
Ollie
