Keep getting distracted?
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Everyone gets distracted during meditation — even people who’ve been meditating for years. You’re in good company.
The first stage in creating a beautiful garden is to realize how many weeds there are to be cleared up. If you feel a bit daunted by the sheer volume of trivia that your mind seems capable of creating then it’s good to remember that you need to know it’s there before you can do anything about it. Also bear in mind that dealing with it will bring you happiness.
It’s as if you’ve just inherited a beautiful garden, which is full of weeds. You can’t just pretend that the weeds aren’t there — you have to do something about it. With a real garden you could always just get rid of it or hire someone to look after it. With your mind you don’t have that luxury. Leave it alone and it will just get worse. The best thing to do is get started as soon as possible on clearing those mind-weeds.
If you ever feel frustration with your distractions, then remember that when you realize you’ve been distracted in meditation you have a choice — you can choose to exercise patience and gentleness with yourself. Getting mad or getting despondent will only make things worse.
So chill, and patiently continue working at clearing the weeds from your wild mind.
It can be reassuring as well to know that there are tools that help us reduce the level of distraction we experience. Simply returning our attention to the breath every time we realize the mind has wandered is very effective in the long term. Counting the breaths is another way to bring more stability to the mind in meditation.
Comments
Comment from Rob
Time: October 30, 2007, 5:49 pm
how much of a distraction warrents starting the count over? I’ll have many thoughts pop up of varying degrees of intensity but I don’t necessarily lose track of the count.
Comment from Bodhipaksa
Time: November 1, 2007, 7:00 pm
Hi Rob,
If you are staying with the breath to some extent and maintaining continuity with the counting then you don’t need to start over again.
Your thoughts will slow down in time, but you might find it useful to do what’s called in vipassana “noting.” In noting you make a brief mental, well, note of what’s going on. So if you’re worrying you can say “worrying, worrying” or you can simply note “thinking, thinking.”
Another useful thing is to think “I wonder what I’m going to think about next?” and then watch what happens. Generally you’ll find that you become more attentive to the background mental silence in which your thoughts manifest, and this can encourage yet greater contact with that silence.
All the best,
Bodhipaksa
Write a comment