excerpted passage
It is commonly called “noting”, and has its origins in Sutta 111 of the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (or Majjhima Nikaya [MN], very worthwhile reading), usually referred to as MN 111, called “One by One as They Occurred”, and in MN 10, Satipatthana Sutta (variously translated as “Four Foundations of Mindfulness”, or “Frames of Reference”, etc.), as well as Sutta 22, Mahasatipatthana Sutta (“Greater Discourse on Mindfulness”) of the Long Discourses of the Buddha (or Digha Nikaya [DN]), usually referred to as DN 22. Noting is used primarily in the Mahasi Sayadaw insight tradition from Burma, though related exercises can be found in various Zen traditions, notably Soto Zen and Korean Chan, such as repeatedly asking, “What is this?”
Noting is the exercise that gained for me the most breaks and insights in my early practice, particularly when done on retreats, and because of that my enthusiasm for it is extreme. I still consider it the core foundation of my early to middle practice, the technique that I fell back on when things turned difficult or when I really wanted to push deep into new insight territory.
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The practice is this: make a quiet, mental one-word note of whatever you experience in each moment. Try to stay with the sensations of breathing, which may occur in many places, noting these quickly as “rising” (as many times as the sensations of the breath rising are experienced) and then “falling” in the same way. These are the fundamental insight practice instructions. When the mind wanders, notes might include “thinking”, “feeling”, “pressure”, “tension”, “wandering”, “anticipating”, “seeing”, “hearing”, “cold”, “hot”, “pain”, “pleasure”, etc.
Note these sensations one by one as they occur and then return to the sensations of breathing. When walking, note the feet moving as “lifting” and “placing”, or as “lifting”, “moving”, and “placing” as you perceive each of the many sensations of all those processes, noticing other sensations as they arise and returning simply to the sensations of the feet walking.
The details of this practice can be found in such books as Practical Insight Meditation, by Mahasi Sayadaw, which I highly recommend, available free online in various places and in book form. This is my all-time favorite dharma book. It is short and to the point. Its instructions work and the promised effects are reproducible. The first forty-two pages are total gold. There is no need for me to repeat much of the useful information found there, as it is pithy and now readily available online.
I just did this for a whole bike ride, noting everything that caught my attention. It’s far from “focused” but I remained aware the entire during, while losing track of time and thus impatience. Usually I get lost in thought when I try to be mindful, but I was able to simply label a thought or perception and move on. There are a lot of sensations if you pay attention so it will be challenging but that’s what keeps the mind engaged. You don’t need to be aware of everything at once, just wherever your attention is at a given moment. As well as other benefits, I feel like being aware of how everything is constantly changing helps one perceive life as more novel and thus less boring and miserable.
I’m sure it’s great if you’re not ADHD as well, as that’s the case with the author.
Yeah new age shit gives me the ick and it’s weird seeing how institutionalised it has become. I was actually reading a book titled The Happiness Industry by William Davies while later working in the mental health sector and I had to put it down because I was like “This is right and all very accurate but I need to keep my job and I’m going to lose my frickin mind if I keep reading this critique of the industry that I’m part of”, because it felt a lot like working in a bureaucracy while reading Kafka for leisure or something - I’m not a masochist. But anyway I feel like you might find that book interesting given what you’ve said here. One other book recommendation that you might find interesting is The Places that Scare You by Pema Chodron. I’m a very critical of her particular school of Buddhism and the book itself has some fawning worship of figures which I’d encourage you to skip over without a moment’s hesitation but the actual book itself its a very practical angle on the Buddhist approach to compassion in quite simple and contemporary terms. I don’t really talk about it often because I’m pretty ex-Buddhist but if you’ve seen me posting on this comm about the peer support drop-in spaces that I’ve been running recently, that book is definitely something that I draw upon as an influence for how I do that work.
“I don’t care if your third eye is open if you don’t care about other people.” I may one day check those out. Probably preferable to the boring stuff about neurons and meditation I’m reading.
I love the ideas so it’s sad to me when people don’t like Buddhism, but considering how much class society has corrupted it in practice I understand. Books are nice but I don’t think I could trust any real life religious leaders at this point. I don’t really trust any neurotypical with handling the dharma responsibly as long as we don’t live in socialism. There’s this Tibetan monk I watch on YouTube and it’s fascinating the obvious (to my autistic Marxist brain) critiques he makes of normie spiritual seekers. It seems like they just immediately put their trust in anyone with fancy robes. And of course this critical thinking guy is still saying there is no way to practice nearly as good as with a teacher. Meanwhile his tradition is riddled with contradictions. Sure there’s badass ascetics, but they also had a society of 98% slaves not too long ago. He’s all about lineage holders and maybe there are cool ones, but even he acknowledges that there’s a bunch of rich lamas who take a ton of money to mispractice.
Edit: probably not going to retain the details, but reading your past Buddhism effort posts are pretty interesting