Awareness in everyday life

[Anonymous]

Culadasa often brings up the analogy of visual focus/peripheral vision for attention/peripheral awareness by the mind. When the eye is constantly changing its focus, there is no peripheral vision, and similarly, when attention is constantly switching between objects, there is no peripheral awareness. By choosing an object of attention for a meditation session, we can cultivate peripheral awareness.

The problem is, how do you cultivate awareness off of the cushion? In daily life it is often necessary to switch attention between many different objects to function properly. But if the attention is constantly being switched, how can awareness be cultivated?

If anyone could answer this for me or ask Culadasa (I can’t since I don’t live in Arizona), I would greatly appreciate it!

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Hi Paul

Yes, we lose awareness when attention is rapidly moving from object to object. Another way to say this is we lose mindfulness – the optimal balance between attention and awareness. The issue is that conscious awareness (attention and awareness) is like an energy system. If all of our energy is going to attention then we simply don’t have enough energy for awareness. When we multitask our attention is moving from object to object so we simply don’t have enough mental energy to engage awareness as well.

This is where formal practice comes in. As Culadasa explains, one of the central aims of practice is to increase to total power of conscious awareness. We do this by sustaining a focused and detailed attention while maintaining peripheral awareness. As we progress our attention becomes more and more refined, detailed, and powerful as we continue to maintain our strong peripheral awareness. This increases the total power available to conscious awareness – in a sense, by sustaining attention and peripheral awareness we’re forcing the mind to make more energy available.

So, I guess first and foremost keep up your formal practice in order to develop this type of raw mental power so you can successfully move attention and maintain awareness in daily life.

Then I’d say as much as possible make your daily movements of attention as intentional as possible rather than letting attention move spontaneously. But this is a whole other topic. Let me know if the above is helpful and we can keep the dialogue going.

Matthew

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Paul,

It might help to anchor your attention in body sensations or breath sensations as you move through your daily activities. This will give you a resting place for attention, and allow you to also develop mindfulness.

Blake

[Ivan GanzaMember]

Hi Paul,

Let me try and help based on my own experience.

Cultivating awareness off the cushion is precisely the same as cultivating on the cushion. When we loose awareness, having set the intention to notice that, we notice and come back, without judging in any way, and return to what we intended to be doing. If we are on the cushion we return to our object of meditation. If we are off the cushion we return to attending to whatever we were doing–or what our intention was.

That is the high level answer but not necessarily practical in day to day situations.

Let me give you some more concrete examples.

During the day we engage in many different activities. Depending on where you are in training your mind, and the style and type of life you lead, you will very likely be engaging in many sorts of activities during the day. If you life is ‘fast’ paced there will be a great many of those things going on. Less so if you’ve calmed your life down. (As as aside it is good to simplify your life as much as possible in order to better facilitate this type of training).

Cultivate the intention to be aware and mindful during your daily activities. It can be good to set this intention every morning before you begin your day. Next pick one activity that you do every day for which you intend to be totally aware. Good examples are: brushing teeth, going to the toilet, putting on your clothes, getting into and turning on your car, opening a door you open everyday, sitting down in your office chair, turning a familiar street corner, eating lunch, etc…; I have found that tasks and activities we repeat very often are the biggest culprits in loosing awareness. These “automatic” activities are so automatic that we hardly notice them at all.

Therefore we begin by being aware and noticing just one of these every day. Consistently. Once you’ve mastered one of them you can pick something else. You can keep building this up until you are pretty much aware the entire day. Depending on your capabilities you don’t need to pick one but can do more–each of us need to be the judge of that.

Another angle to view this from is utilizing the powerful force of habit in our favor. Once the habit is established in just one case it is very hard to break. It will work automatically for you.

Having practiced in this way I think you will find it is of great benefit during the formal meditation period.

Finally I would suggest to study the “Four Foundations of Mindfulness”. I can suggest the following two books if you are interested:

– Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization
– The Heart of Buddhist Meditation: Satipatthna: A Handbook of Mental Training Based on the Buddha’s Way of Mindfulness by Thera Nyanaponika

I hope this is of benefit to you.

-Ivan/

[Matthew ImmergutMember]

Those are great suggestions Ivan. I will try them. The other thing I’ve done is had a timer set to ring/vibrate. When it does, I stop whatever I’m going – if possible – and bring my attention to the breath. Or, I keep engaging the activity only bringing full attention and awareness to the task. I bought one of those vibrating wrist watches so the beep doesn’t disturb others. I usually set it to buzz every hour.

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone, what you’re saying makes a lot of sense.

Having kept a regular meditation schedule for the past few months, I’ve already noticed my awareness expand in every day life quite significantly. The most significant way has been in the way I respond to people during a conversation. Instead of automatically saying something and regretting it later, I feel like there’s much more awareness in my intention of forming words, how I’m feeling at the moment, and how I want the other person to feel (I don’t want to make them suffer). As a result I’ve gotten in a lot less disputes with people I used to find difficult to deal with.

I’ve also been able to see causes and effects better than before. For example, nearly every time I violate Buddhist vows, I later become aware of how the violation ended up causing me extra suffering, making the vows have meaning to me at a personal level rather than just being rules.

However, there are still many times during the day where I find myself almost entirely unaware, especially doing monotonous things that occur day after day. So that is what I should work on for now. Setting a watch to remind me at regular intervals also sounds like a good idea. Thanks again for the advice.

[Blake BartonKeymaster]

Hi Paul,

Culadasa has another exercise that my help you develop your mindfulness during the day. Each time that you sit down to meditate reflect on the quality of the mindfulness since your last sit. Recognize the times that you were mindful and congratulate yourself for that. Also recognize the times that you were not mindful, without judging yourself. This reflection can really help you to remember to me mindful. Joseph Goldstein said that being mindful is easy; it is the remembering to be mindful that is the hard part.

Blake

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