Search Inside Yourself: Increase Productivity, Creativity and Happiness [ePub edition]. Daniel Goleman

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СКАЧАТЬ we are gently inviting it to stop distracting us, but we generously allow it to decide whether or not it wants to stay. If it decides to leave, that is fine. If it decides to stay, that is fine too. We treat it with kindness and generosity during its entire presence. This is the practice of letting go.

      Finally, if you do not remember a single thing you read in this chapter so far (maybe because you do not care about this book but your wife made you sit down and read it), happily, Jon Kabat-Zinn has a one-phrase summary of this entire chapter:

      Breathing as if your life depends on it.

      If you can only remember a single phrase in this chapter, remember this, and you will understand mindfulness meditation.

      Sitting Time

      Now that you have learned about the theory and practice of mindfulness meditation, let us now spend a few minutes sitting in mindfulness.

      There are a number of ways you can do this. The simplest is just to extend the two-minute mindfulness exercise from the previous chapter. First, sit in a meditation posture that allows you to be alert and relaxed at the same time. Then whenever you are comfortable doing so, you may practice the Easy Way (which is to pay attention to the process of breathing and gently bringing attention back every time it wanders away), or the Easier Way (which is to sit without agenda and simply shift from doing to being). If you like, you may switch between Easy and Easier anytime. Do that for maybe ten minutes, or as long as you would like to. That will be your meditation practice.

      If you prefer something more formal and structured, you can apply the Process Model of Mindfulness Meditation discussed earlier in this chapter. Start by sitting in a meditation posture that allows you to be alert and relaxed at the same time. Once you are comfortable, invite an intention to arise, one that is based on why you are sitting here, which will encourage you to continue your practice. Bring your attention to the process of breathing. If the mind is calm and concentrated, abide in that mind. If the mind gets distracted by a sound, a thought, or an itch, acknowledge the source of the distraction, experience it without judging it, and let it go if it wants to be let go. If you need to move, maintain mindfulness of intention, movement, and sensation. Gently bring your attention back to your breath. If self-criticism or self-judgment arises, invite a thought of self-directed kindness to arise, if it wants to. If not, just let it be; everything is fine. Do this for ten minutes, or as long as you would like to.

      MINDFULNESS MEDITATION

      Let us begin by sitting comfortably. Sit in a position that enables you to be both relaxed and alert at the same time, whatever that means to you. Or, if you prefer, you may sit like a majestic mountain, whatever that means to you.

      Let us now take three slow, deep breaths to inject both energy and relaxation into our practice.

      Now, let us breathe naturally and bring a very gentle attention to your breath. You can either bring attention to the nostrils, the abdomen, or the entire body of breath, whatever that means to you. Become aware of in breath, out breath, and space in between.

      (Short pause)

      If you like, you can think of this exercise as resting the mind on the breath. You can visualize the breath to be a resting place, or a cushion, or a mattress, and let the mind rest on it, very gently. Just be.

      (Long pause)

      If at any time you feel distracted by a sensation, thought, or sound, just acknowledge it, experience it, and very gently let it go. Bring your attention very gently back to the breathing.

      (Long pause)

      If you like, let us end this meditation by inviting joyful inner peace to arise.

      Breathing in, I am calm.

      Breathing out, I smile.

      This present moment,

      Wonderful.

      (Short pause)

      Thank you for your attention.

      Dude, Where Is the Science?

      Meditation has at least one important thing in common with science: its heavy emphasis on the spirit of inquiry. In meditation, there are two aspects to the spirit of inquiry. First, a lot of meditation is about self-discovery. Yes, we start with training of attention, but attention is not the end goal of most meditation traditions; the true end goal is insight. The reason we create a powerful quality of attention is to be able to develop insights into the mind. Having a powerful attention is like having a powerful torchlight—it is fun to have, but its real purpose is to allow us to look inside the dark rooms of the mind and ourselves so that we can, well, search inside ourselves. And because it is ultimately about developing insight, the spirit of inquiry—at least of internal inquiry—has to be an essential component of one’s meditation practice.

      The second aspect of this spirit of inquiry extends beyond the internal and into the external world. Because meditators are so used to inquiry, we have also become very comfortable with science and scientific inquiry into meditation itself. This is true even for classically trained practitioners within ancient meditative traditions, such as Buddhism. To many of my friends, the most stunning example of this comfort with science was when the Dalai Lama said, “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”³

      With this in mind, let us take a quick glance at some of the peer-reviewed scientific literature surrounding meditation.

      One of the most telling of all research studies on meditation was conducted by two pioneers in the field of contemplative neuroscience, Richard Davidson and Jon Kabat-Zinn.⁴ The study was eye-opening for many reasons. It was the first major study conducted in a business setting, with employees of a biotechnology company as subjects. This makes it highly relevant for somebody like me who operates in the corporate world. The study showed that after just eight weeks of mindfulness training, the anxiety level of the subjects was measurably lower, which is nice but not surprising, since the name of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s training program is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.

      More surprisingly, when the electrical activity of the subjects’ brains was measured, those in the meditation group showed significantly increased activity in the parts of their brains associated with positive emotions. The most fascinating finding had to do with their immune function. Near the end of the study, subjects were given flu shots, and those in the meditation group developed more antibodies to the influenza vaccine. In other words, after just eight weeks of mindfulness meditation, subjects were measurably happier (as measured in their brains) and showed a marked increase in developing immunity. Remember that this study was not conducted on bald guys wearing robes living in a monastery, but on ordinary people with real lives and real high-stress jobs in corporate America.

      A later study conducted by Heleen Slagter, Antoine Lutz, Richard Davidson, et al., focused on attention.⁵ Specifically, it explored meditation in relation to an interesting phenomenon known as “attentional-blink” deficit. There is a very simple way to explain attentional blink. Let’s say you are shown a series of characters (either numbers or letters of the alphabet) on a computer screen one at a time, in quick succession (with about fifty milliseconds of delay between letters, which is half of one-tenth of a second). Let’s say the entire series is made up of letters, except for two numbers. For example, let’s say the series is P, U, H, 3, W, N, 9, T, Y. There are two numbers within the series of letters. Your task is to identify the two numbers.

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