The high-performance mind

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1. hoshFeb 2013
   As @yor said, Mindfulness in Plain English is good. You can find a copy free at: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html

   I never heard of Unlearning Meditation but I do know that there were a lot of things I thought I knew about meditation and it was ... not exactly like that. Anne Wise's book, High Performance Mind gets into some of the technical details. I like Daniel Ingram's book, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha but a lot of people don't. It's not exactly a beginner's book, but it's something to keep in mind if you ever start getting some weird experiences that you have difficulty framing.

   I say vipassana to mean the specific practice of experiencing reality, every little bit. It's not the only modality, and you'll find this particular practice in other traditions (and I mean, in Western traditions as well. There's not much you can tack on to "experience reality").

   I have also been (slowly) translating the Tao Te Ching from the perspective that it is a book to guide you in your practice, not necessarily a book stating a philosophy. For example, the famous "The journey of a thousand miles begin with the first step" when put into this context actually means, let go of the thought/emotion/sensation at the beginning rather than when it becomes a full-blown train wreck that you have to ride out.

   I'm a bit stuck with the translation because I'm hitting the parts that resemble more of a trip with psychedelics, and the audience was originally intended for people who may not have those experiences. Having said that, I noticed that Brian Browne Walker's translation is in that particular spirit.

   Sometimes, just sitting there and getting in touch with reality is difficult. So there are other practices that can lead up to doing this. If you are still interested in this, but find Mindfulness in Plain English intimidating, I suggest Dan Millman's The Way of the Peaceful Warrior and followup with his Everyday Enlightenment.

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2. hoshFeb 2013
   I wrote a bit about it here: http://www.quora.com/Meditation/Whats-a-nice-little-cheat-sh...

   Unfortunately, I don't know the traditional lore that lets someone assess and customize a concentration object for someone else. So what I wrote there comes from my understanding of NLP, specifically, the sensory modality. It is incomplete.

   I will say though, find something that feels more or less right and then stick with it (at least for the beginning). Just like there is never a perfect time to meditate, and there is never a perfect posture, or a perfect cushion, there isn't a perfect concentration object. You might be dithering because of the anxiety that comes up when you subconsciously realize, you really are going to go looking into yourself. Though, from what you are saying, you've probably already experienced that.

   I also suggest trying to set aside time every day for this. If you can anchor it to around the same time of day (such as, "before dinner", "before bed") it would help. A streak calendar app also helps. The commitment is to do a minimum amount, say even 5 minutes a day, and allow a "bonus time" on the weekends. Of course, if you feel comfortable sitting longer, by all means :-)

   I don't like to meditate after eating more because of the full stomach. I suppose I should try that "fullness" sensation as a concentration object sometime.

   As for drowsiness, a tip I picked up from Anne Wise's book, High Performance Mind: you can fill a glass of water and hold it. That tends to keep people awake. You can also try standing meditation, as that is more energetic than sitting.

   If you are closing your eyes while sitting and find yourself drowsy, keep your eyes open. My Ch'en buddies tell me it is tradition to keep the eyes open. It's possible to do this without blinking. The first couple times, your eyes might start watering as the body adjusts to not blinking; then it comes back into homeostasis.

   Postures ... they do matter, in the sense that you want to be able to fall asleep in them. If you can, try it with the spine vertical. If you are using a chair, sit at the edge of the chair, feet flat to the ground.

   Incense helps in a lot of ways. It also acts as an environmental cue. So is having a dedicated space for the meditation.

   As for the chaos of stimulation. This one is tricky. Yes, you can get into a trance by turning down the amount of stimulation. However, the practice of vipassana is being OK with things that come in and out of your space. A stimulus stimulates you because your awareness attaches to it, and comes off of the concentration object. What you do is stay with the concentration object while allowing whatever it is to pass freely through you. You want to stay awake, though in the deeper states, things start resembling lucid dreaming. Falling asleep is the opposite of mindfulness, that is, mindlessness.

   There are sometimes when I simply sit there for a good half hour, my thoughts thrashing about. And then the second session following up on it, I hit the emptiness (for however long before I attach to something again), though my eyes are open, my spine straight and unsupported.

   It's worth practicing being mindful even at greater stimulation since the skill translates to being mindful while off the cushion. To put it in a different way, you slip into flow state when you choose to, whatever activity you are doing. That's helpful for things like cooking. It is liberating when someone is yelling at you at work for whatever reason, and you're not pushed off your center; you might even help your coworker relax and deal with whatever issue that triggered the yelling in the first place.

   Hope this helps.

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3. qaexlDec 2008
   The buddahnet.net looks like it has some pretty good information.

   For a different take, check out Anne Wise's "High Performance Mind" http://www.amazon.com/High-Performance-Mind-Anna-Wise/dp/087...

   The former focuses on a form of meditation called mindfulness. It lets you be more present without the distractions of the monkey mind. It means that when you start coding, you don't easily follow the distractions that keep you from coding.

   The latter focuses on the different states of mind, running the gamut from wakefulness all the way to deep sleep. You learn how to access each of those states at-will. There is a bigger emphasis on guided meditation (as opposed to mindfulness) and includes techniques on dealing with what comes up from the subconscious. The book includes both theory and practices, and is definitely hackable.

   Both approaches complement each other, though both will require practice. If one doesn't work initially, I recommend trying the other. The resulting skill is worth the effort.

   Whether you are practicing mindfulness or using guided meditation, I recommend timeboxing your meditation, either by getting a kitchen timer or using incense. Without timeboxing, it is unlikely you will be able to relax deeply enough -- some part of you will keep thinking there is something else to do. If you've never done this before, I'd start with 5 mins a day, work your way up to 10, then 30 mins. 5 mins of mindfulness practice is a very long time for someone conditioned to 30 second attention spans. The key is daily practice.

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4. PaulHouleJul 2023
   In this book

   https://www.amazon.com/High-Performance-Mind-Anna-Wise/dp/08...

   and elsewhere I've seen "theta state meditations" that start with calming down and then, for instance, imagining that you are doing a lot of motion in a complex 3-d space like going down a shaft, slide 40 feet to the left, go up some stairs, turn around and run forward 100 feet, fly up into the air, ... Then when you stop you go into a daydreamy state.

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5. qaexlApr 2009
   Let me mention some more specifics.

   There are skills you can use to help trigger this that goes beyond the specific suggestions in that linked article. Specifically, you train yourself to increase the amount of alpha-band and theta-band activity in your brain. Theta-band is where you start getting creative; alpha-band allows your working consciousness (the one you use to read these words) to visualize/verbalize it in a form that you can understand and remember. The book I sourced this from and use is Anne Wise's High Performance Mind. Note that I didn't really see any double-blind papers cited in there. I can only offer anecdoptal evidence that the techniques in there works for me. YMMV.

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