various, using awareness watch
Been trying a variety of technologies, and for a while stepping back to really work on concentration – back to counting breaths. Sometimes a lot of meditation time is lost in thoughts that seem to go on for minutes – so in order to try to curb that I’ve been doing two things – first, using the awareness watch that I made with Jay, which gives a gentle buzz every 2-3 minutes, to bring you back if your focus has been lost. Secondly, more locally, counting all breaths, in sequences of 10, as laid out in ‘Mindfulness in Plain English,’ still one of the best guides to meditation that I know. I figure once I can do a couple sessions without ever losing count, my attention will be sufficient to take off the training wheels. It’s funny how often in different contexts our desire to move forward, our lack of patience, becomes the biggest impediment to our moving forward in the first place.
Have also been getting into some new reading. Two authors specifically – first, Alan Wallace, who wrote ‘The Attention Revolution’ – a guide to the different stages of conscious attention, and secondly, a 700-page tome that I have just begun, called ‘Zen and the Brain’ by James Austin. Both of these guys are neuroscientist Buddhists of one sort or another, really beginning to solidify that previously existing gap between mysticism and scientific theory. I am really appreciating the depth with which James Austin is explaining how meditative practices can enable functional changes in the human brain, and where we have evolved our sense of self. If anyone else is up for reading 700 pages about this stuff, I’d love some book partners!
nagle Says: 
