awareness – Kynan Tan Meditation

How do you protect me?

In a moment of reactivity, there’s a part of you that jumps into the driver’s seat. It stresses you out with anxiety, defends you with anger, or entices you to reach for that coping strategy. It’s so sure it has an important job to do, trying so hard to protect you. However, there’s a cost to that strategy.

Most of meditation invites us to see through and deconstruct. Instead we let the part stay solid, and turn towards it with loving attunement — the way you might turn towards someone who’s been carrying something heavy by themselves, weary and alone.

First ground into the weight of the body as a steady anchor that you can return to. Bring the part to mind. See it as a part of you, not the whole of you. Notice its cost. Then, rather than trying to change it, sense how it’s been trying to help.

Ask how it feels. Let it answer — in sensation, in an image, in words. Ask how it protects you. Acknowledge the effort: “I see this is how you protect me.” Then offer your thanks.

Met like this, a part will often soften on its own. As it settles back, you are more than the part — you’re the awareness holding it.

An Ocean of Compassion

Open your awareness as an ocean of compassion.

Vast. Receptive. Able to hold anything that arises.

Bring to mind something that hurts. Let it come close. Notice what surfaces.

Notice too the impulse to move away. To fix the feeling, to cover it over.

Instead, let it rest in the ocean. Let it be held, fully, just as it is. Nothing to change.

To hold any feeling tenderly is an act of compassion.

Sitting Down to Tea with a Part of You

If you could have a cup of tea with one part of you, which one could use the company? Is it the part that gets anxious you’ve forgotten something every time you leave the house? Or perhaps the part of you that is always trying to find the next problem to solve?

All parts of the mind are wholesome, just not all of them are skilful. The inner critic is driving you to achieve your greatest aspirations. The part that is stressed wants to make sure things get taken care of so you don’t let others down.

Realising this, you can offer genuine kindness and appreciation for just how hard this part is working for you — even when it seems to cause difficulty. Embracing it just as it is lets this part feel appreciated. When truly seen, the part relaxes.

The Nine Stages of Calm Abiding

The Elephant Path is an ancient meditation teaching, believed to be a transmission from the Buddha-to-be Maitreya and written out by Asanga in around 500 CE. It describes the Nine Stages of Calm Abiding — a map of how experience shifts as the mind deepens in meditation. In this meditation, we traverse all the stages, using the appropriate antidotes and techniques at each stage to progress to the next. Through this we move from scattered monkey mind all the way to effortlessly stable attention. By practising The Elephant Path, you learn how to navigate the mind and how to cultivate different states of mind. This makes the mind a nice place to be — not only from landing in calm and clarity, but also from the confidence of knowing how to move the mind appropriately to whatever is present at any given moment.

Spaciousness with Stability

The practice of calm abiding culminates in effortlessly stable attention — you sit and focus, returning again and again, until it becomes automatic. There’s also a way to begin with effortlessness. Start by opening to effortless spacious awareness. Release the body and mind. Drop all effort, relax to the max, give up. Rest as the awareness that is already here and knowing. From that place of spacious ease, gently intend to care about the body. Through just the slightest intention, the body appears brightly and vividly in the foreground. Attention is stable without tension nor doing. Let go of everything and rest into the body.

Easing Into Effortless Calm Abiding

The path of calm abiding leads to effortlessly stable attention with equanimity and tranquility. A key to this part of practice is first building up to complete staying and then, when the time is right, easing up in effort. This easing up is a releasing, softening, and relaxing in such a way that the practice starts to flow by itself. Because of all the work done to establish stable attention and bright metacognitive awareness, the mind can, with only the slightest intention, rest into the body. This occurs at stage seven of the elephant path. You will ease up gradually, bit-by-bit, noticing if distractions again interrupt your continuity. When this works, it feels like the less you do the more focused you become, that there is no difference between meditation and non-meditation, and that there is a profound background stillness.

Calm Abiding with Whole Body Breathing

This practice uses the breath in the whole body as a technique to lead to completely staying with the meditation object. In the Stages of Samatha, the transition from Stage 5 to Stage 6 is accomplished through bringing more curiosity (intensifying) until there is an increase in sensory clarity. This then allows for *complete staying* with the meditation object, where there is exclusive attention that no longer scatters or alternates to distractions. Here we use the whole body as the meditation object and then notice the subtle level of sensation, then opening to noticing the breath through the whole body. This leads to a quality of engagement and interest where the body is seen as rich and complex, often becoming a cloud of sensation or waves of energy rather than something solid and fixed. Practising at this level cultivates more calm and clarity than is commonly though possible — the mind becomes both more at ease and brighter than in typical conscious experience.

At Home in the Whole Body (Meditation and Talk)

Guided meditation 30 minutes, talk 4 minutes.

Through meditation practice, we can make the body a comfortable place to be, relating to the body in such a way that the body feels like home, no matter where we are. Even when there is pain, discomfort, or tiredness, the body can be a place to rest and settle. This practice explores using whole body awareness as the meditation object. This whole body awareness includes all of the sensations of the body, as well as tuning into the overall texture or felt sense of the body space that can be rich, complex, murky, and have a more-than-words quality. Use whole body awareness as your practice of calm abiding, or use this as a support to insight, open awareness, or imaginal practice. By opening to the whole body and resting here, you can gradually cultivate a sense of settling, ease, and okness — deeply shifting the state of the body towards rest and nervous system regulation, while also shifting the relationship with the body such that whatever arises can be held in awareness with equanimity.

Balancing Effort

Effort is a key aspect of meditation practice. Too much effort and the practice becomes tight and frustrating; too little effort and practice becomes slack and directionless. Progress, especially in calm abiding (śamatha) practice, is greatly aided by finding the right balance. In the Elephant Path, this is done through phases of intensifying, where more curiosity is brought in and the meditation object is engaged with more and more, then phases where the practice becomes about easing up until a balance is reached. This practice explores alternating between strong effort and ease, gradually settling into an eased up effort that is both calm and clear. The possibility of continued practice is effortless effort — where the mind stays with the meditation object just through the slightest intention and everything arises and ceases brightly and clearly, without any doing or paying attention whatsoever.

Releasing Clinging

When we experience painful sensation, we generally resist it, want it to change, or otherwise have some form of craving and aversion. This is wanting things to be different from how they are, either by trying to get something better, or by trying to get rid of what is present. The way of non-clinging releases this resistance. You can notice the sense of clinging through detecting contraction, stuckness, or resistance in the body, then you can release this by opening, softening, and allowing. Be present with this experience exactly as it is. This will open up a different way of being, with more lightness, openness, and freedom. Note that this is equanimity in regards to the primary experience in the moment, which still allows for taking action as appropriate to the situation.