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I had far more enjoyment with this meditation style. It was hugely relaxing!
I found a meditation on YouTube that would work for this week's theme, free - I used this one:
https://youtu.be/wGFog-OuFDM?feature=shared
The idea of this one was to listen to the chime of a bell, just one chime, and listen as the sound continued, fading, to be replaced by the next one. The idea of Western concentration pulled into a wider field of mental capacity by the silence after each chime, when you would concentrate on everything else you heard: the sounds of the house (or wherever you are, so few places are silent), would take over. You would be giving them your attention too. But the concentration in the silnce becomes different, wider and more all encompassing. Its like two different discplines in one meditation. The initial laser-like concentration on the sound, followed by the wider more open concentration on the following silence (or minimal sounds from around you).
Dixey explained this idea over the chapter as the two different concepts of concentration in Pali - there is Vitaka and Vicara. He uses some examples to describe these:
...so it's a bit like you take a piece of chocolate and put it in your mouth, and the initial reaction is "Oh, it's chocolate!". That's vitaka. Vicara is then to taste the chocolate, to enjoy the experience. The chocolate is in your mouth, you've turned toward it, you are concentrated - but now you savour the chocolate. The second phase is the extended experience - it isn't immediate. Vitaka is lifting the cup of coffee to your lips. Vicara is savouring the aroma and feeling that caffeinated tingle as we take out first sips. This is where so many of us go in the wrong direction. Having focussed on an object of attention, we no longer stay with that object. We replace it with an idea of the object. So instead of savouring the object, we fix the object. We gulp our coffee, we scoff our food, almost without tasting it. We get an out of focus feeling...it begins to blur as our adverted attention becomes exhausted and we begin to slip into a distracting commentary or reaction to it. If we're stuck in vitaka, without the engaged attention of vicara, we lose contact with the original sensation altogether. (pp.24-25, paperback edition, New World Library 2023)
As one of the world's foremost overhinkers and rumainators (!) I found this explanation and description of how the meditation to the sound of the fading bell chime works so useful. My thoughts go everywhere, I find it very hard to stay with something, especially if I have lots of things to do or think about. I get stuck in procrastination as a way to ease the stress, or I do things in a very surface way, to get them ticked off my list - annoying my inner perfectionist no end with my 'it'll do, just finish it' mentality I can get into. So the chime of the bell - absorbing (vitaka), and then the rest of the experience - its fading and dying, followed by the rest of the sounds of life (vicara) a great way of reintegrating my jumpy anxious mind. I really looked forward to these small sessions.
There was something so beautiful and calming about the sound of this sonorous deep bell - I would unintentionally hold my breath through the first chime, mentally watching it stretch out and fade so slowly, to be suddenly taken over by the next chime, startling me with its wholeness once again. After each fading time the the next chime would be a little late, later, later, till the times when I listened to the silence after the sound had decayed, were as important as the sound coming back. Each time the sound came I would be absorbed by it, in it almost, it felt like it resonated through me. This effect was present for me whether I listened in a room on the sofa, or in my book room at a desk with headphones on.
It was a gorgeous, beautiful sound to catch on to and travel with. It seemed to be perfect for me - crowding out all other thoughts. It was a potent concentration that loosened its hold as I went on, so that I felt the spaciousness of the silence between the tones as much as the bell itself; until I was sad when it ended. It felt very fast, though the length of the mediation was longer than the 3 minutes stipulated by Dixey - it was 5 mins 24 seconds. Every time I did it it felt faster. I think I could probably do this meditation for longer, far longer. (There are longer ones up on YouTube, also free, so this is doable.)
I think sound meditation may be a kind that can work well for me. Years ago, I used to try and sit zazen, where you just are and everything goes on around you, you don't judge or label, you try and give everything that you see, hear, and feel equal and same attention: just quietly observing and being with everything. I found that so hard! I judged everything! This noise was good, that bad, oh no, I need a migraine pill etc. The bell chime for some reason, enabled me to be more unjudging with the sounds that followed - I was just hearing them and not reacting (unless it was something to react to: like the timer going off to get dinner out of the oven, for example!).
This way of meditating has real possibilities for me, I'm glad to have discovered it.
...now on to Week 3!
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