I primarily practice and teach meditation with a technique of noting and labeling, which is a method of vipassana, or insight meditation.
This method is the pure observation of momentary experience in order to develop concentration, clarity of sensory experience, and equanimity towards the present moment.
When you are able to develop and sustain concentration, clarity, and equanimity, your meditation really starts to take hold and change your day to day experience of life.
Concentration
Concentration is the ability to chose something to focus on, and focus on it. When you are pulled away, the power of concentration allows you to return over and over effortlessly. In order to build concentration, we chose a focal point – in beginners it’s best to chose a shallow point of focus, which is why many styles of meditation involve focusing keenly on the tip of the nose during breathing. As you become more advanced , concentration can grow to accomodate your whole body, the room you’re sitting in, your street, or even the whole planet. There are progressively deeper states of concentration documented and outlined in the tradition, and referred to as the concentration Jhanas. There are meditators who primarily use concentration or Jhana meditation practice as their primary practice.
Clarity
Clarity refers to our ability to discern with accuracy what is happening in the present moment. Our moment to moment sense experience is typically a bit fuzzy. We interweave various senses as well as old emotions and memories in with most of our present moment experience. Clarity is the ability to clearly see things as they are in this moment. If past stuff appears, clarity is the ability to witness that appearance as it happens, and concentration helps us to not get sucked into it. Being able to clearly see the makeup of our momentary experience has the power to develop great insights into the nature of our day to day existence.
Equanimity
Equanimity is the ability to see things objectively without attachment to experience. This sounds a bit stoic, and not so emotional – but it’s not coming from a place of disconnection. Equanimity is the ability to deeply experience emotion and feeling, and at the same time not allow that feeling to get it’s hooks into you. It’s the ultimate ability to let things roll off. In addition to deep feelings, equanimity helps balance out any momentary experience that might throw you off balance. So for example, if a car alarm goes off in meditation – you might find yourself very annoyed and even angry – the practice would then be to bring equanimity to that feeling of anger until its hooks release. You’ll then find yourself able to be in the presence of even the most obnoxious experience and and feel at peace. This ability is the heart of practice.
Techniques
In the noting and labeling technique, we are simply observing what is happening in each individual moment, and making a notation of it. It’s quite simple, and can be done anywhere! You can practice this technique with eyes open or closed, standing, sitting, or lying down. Because this technique increases concentration, and awareness of your environment, it’s even an technique that can be done while driving or doing other complicated tasks. You can run this technique in a formal practice setting, or you can run this technique in an informal way in the background while doing other things. It’s highly flexible, and highly adaptable to most life situations. Continued practice of these mindfulness techniques will help to bring concentration, clarity, and equanimity to your daily life – and all the way to enlightenment.
Noting
Noting can also be called noticing, which is how I like to explain it. Noticing is the first step before your thinking mind kicks in. You can notice without a mental verbal experience, it’s simple the act of being aware of what your attention is drawn to in a given moment
Labeling
Labeling is solidifying the note with a word. For each technique, the teacher will typically provide the labels that are good to use, but in my experience the actual word doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you’re doing the technique. You can always make up words that work for you. The best guideline for these words is to just keep them short, a syllable or two, as these are the least clunky to use. As your concentration skills advance, you might find that the labeling gets in the way of concentration and encourages the thinking mind. In this case it’s totally fine to drop the mental labels and just continue to employ the noting practice to maintain clarity and concentration.
That’s about it! The system is extremely simple, but vastly useful. It can be applied to a multitude of experiences. Some methods might work better than others, which is fine! The techniques I outline in the following pages are the traditional ways to approach this style of meditation within this framework. They’ve been developed and honed over quite a period of time, and have proven to be the most efficient methods to develop mindfulness.
the Good Heretic 