Y2Q9) Distraction

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    • #2937
      Rik vanKeulen
      Keymaster

      Why does the untrained mind run after distractions during meditation?

    • #2956

      Out of habit I guess 🤔
      When moral conduct and the other perfections are not so developed or strong one experience this more I think. When meditating on the breath for example combined with the 8 Mayayana precepts one is experience less distractions.

    • #2995
      Rik vanKeulen
      Keymaster

      Trying to answer my own questions 😉
      One reason is definitely habit: although we often don’t realise it, we have continuous chatter in our minds. It would rather be a surprise that it would suddenly stop in meditation. We think we have control over our minds, but the notion of control comes from the idea that we have a self, which is actual not existing. Rather we are a collection of psycho-physical causes and effects, with no controller and with at the most some power of intention. If we have perfumed the alaya well in the past, we might have some more control at this moment.
      Further on, we have a strong tendency to worry about the future, at least to continuously try to forecast what could happen and how one could react. That could be an effect of evolution: evolution is about surviving and not about finding happiness.
      There is also the discontent we feel with the present. Where does this come from? Perhaps we have been endlessly trying to find happiness by grasping at external objects. Buddhism tells us there is no happiness in external objects, and Yogachara even tells us that those objects are created by the mind itself. We have found that the pleasure for objects of desire is very short-lived, and with our monkey minds we often don’t even notice the fleeting pleasure (e.g. when drinking a cup of coffee, we are thinking about the next thing we want to do – a habit that we call distraction in meditation). We have not trained ourselves to live in the moment, and perhaps we are not yet convinced that there is only real happiness to be found in abiding in the here and now. We have built the habit of continuously looking for the next thing which could give us pleasure. In other words, discontentment and distractions in the mind has become our ‘lifestyle’ and we are surprised that our minds are obsessed with distraction during meditation.

    • #2999
      Ruth Cook
      Participant

      Yes, running after distractions is that habit that we may have acquired over the decades, more or less …

      Analysing the last few moments, hours, days, weeks, months, years… can result in answers that we believe has helped us on our journeys.

      Has it become a natural way of being, that can be transformed with effort, consistency of practice, trust, faith and a methodology that has been proven to be effective with the drive and motivation of self compassion along with an altruistic purpose and intention?

      Then again, without distractions, how can we nurture and develop our meditation practice?

      Why have we been drawn towards distractions in the first place? Is the mind drawn to distractions? Or have we given too much attention to being drawn towards the distractions?

      Oh dear… many more questions than answers

      Thank you _/\_

    • #3001
      Rik vanKeulen
      Keymaster

      Here we can remember our study of mental factors.
      We can’t say we need distractions to develop our meditation practice. Distraction is about forgetfulness while meditation is about the opposite: mindfulness. They cannot be in our minds at the same time. It is dedicated practice and familiarity. Remember the definition of mindfulness: non-forgetfulness of a familiar object.
      We think about pizza and feel the desire rising: our mental factor of intention moves towards the object. But when it happens, we forget two things: 1) the pizza in our mind is not a real pizza, just an image (meaning generality); 2) there is no happiness in ‘real’ pizzas, it is the mind attributing happiness to it. Eating 10 pizzas does not give 10x more happiness: it bring stomach and worse. It is our intention reaction towards the mental factor of feeling: pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. Feeling which seems to come from the side of the object, but it is actual the ripening of previous action (mental imprints/karma).

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