focus vs mindfulness

[fleetw00f]

I've been practicing regularly for about 6 weeks now.  At what point do I stop using a focus?  Or do I never not use a focus? in which case wouldn't it really be focus meditation instead of mindfulness meditation?

[Jennifer Dungan]

The "focus" can also be called a meditation object or anchor.  It is helpful to practice with an object to anchor your meditation whether you are working with mindfulness or with pure concentration (which would be another word for what you are calling "focus meditation").  In mindfulness practice, it is possible to let go of the object and just be aware (sometimes called choiceless awareness).  As you are in the very beginning of experience, it would probably be a good idea to practice with an object for some time to come.  With concentration practice, there is always an object as far as I understand it.  Perhaps someone with more experience than I can correct that latter statement if I am wrong.

Hope this is helpful and best wishes with your meditation.

-Jennifer

[Drew Oman]

I thought Jennifer did such a good job that there was no need to add anything, but as a result of an experience at the New Year's retreat in Texas with Shaila, something else occurs that I thought I'd share.  It was a vipassana retreat, but Shaila had us working intensively with concentration practice (I think this is what the original questioner meant when s/he mentioned working with a 'focus').  Among other things, Shaila had us attend to our breath even while walking.  Also, she said something in a Q+A session about paying very close attention to the moment-to-moment changing sensations, even on one in-breath.  Attempting to combine these two bits of advice, in the context of a retreat when my mind was much calmer than usual, allowed a really interesting experience to arise.  As I was "focusing" intently on the breath, and walking, I got a sense of how quickly the mind-moments flicker--arising and passing away constantly.  It seemed that even though my *intention* was to focus, choiceless awareness was happening too.   Everything seemed different--sometimes the fallen leaves on the ground just looked like patterns of different colors and shapes.  The experience brought with it a tremendous sense of spaciousness and peace.  It was unlike anything I'd ever experienced.  All of which is to say that perhaps, as we strengthen our concentration with our *intention* to focus--to bring the mind back to the breath again and again--awareness doesn't cease (or not until absorption in jhana maybe--don't know).  So it seems more a matter of *intention* perhaps, rather than the actual content of the meditation.  I also find that this intense focus can be tiring, so sometimes I will "relax" into more of a choiceless awareness intention, and return to the more intensive focus on the breath when my energy returns.

[Kim Allen]

It's important to stay connected with the basic task of meditation. Meditation is mind training. We teach the mind to hold an object, or said in an alternate way, we learn to direct our attention intentionally. This alone is a huge contrast from the mind's usual mode of running freely. How long have we let our mind follow any old inclination? Decades, probably. So any type of meditation is a radical change.

It is natural at the beginning to perceive little difference between concentration practice, mindfulness practice, choiceless awareness, and other modes. Beginners (including me when I started) often ask for a clarification of these various terms. My advice is, don't worry about it too much.    At some point, different modes of meditation naturally begin to differentiate, as you get to know your mind better. Until then, it's murky. No big deal.

As Jennifer noted, it would be good to stay with an object. Try the breath, for instance, and treat it as a changing object. It comes in, it goes out. It includes many bodily sensations. Can you hold the breath in your attention for an entire in-breath, an entire in-and-out breath? How about three breaths in a row? This is the basic mind training. This is directing your attention, instead of letting your mind run wild.

[Margaret Gainer]

I've learned to use the breath as a reliable anchor during meditation periods, even after many years.  What usually happens for me at the beginning of a meditation is that attention is wide and busy, jumping around.  I watch that briefly, then narrow attention to the body and its present sensations, and then narrow more closely still to just the breath.  Staying with the breath, or returning again and again to the breath if attention wanders does bring stability, a sense of being able to direct the mind.  After some minutes of close attention to breathing, with calm stability now in place, I  can allow the attention to widen again to include perhaps sounds, more body sensations, the arising of thoughts, feelings.  If the mind continues to be mindful and calm, I watch these experiences arise and pass away.  But if I lose stability and, for instance, zone out, or fall into physical restlessness, or fall prey to mind stories such as memories, planning, worry, daydreams, then it is useful to narrow focus again for a time, back to just breath.  This cycle might happen once, or several times during a 45 minute meditation.  Guiding the mind between concentration and open awareness brings a sense of balance into my usual meditation practice.

[James Kempf]

One of the many discoveries the Buddha talked about in his discourses was that consciousness always has an object, in contrast to the Vedantic practices of his time where consciousness without an object was postulated. The object can be extremely subtle, as in, for example, the memory of a thought. The object will be some aspect of nama/rupa, that is the aspects of mind other than consciousness (feelings, perceptions, and intentions - nama) or some aspect of the physical body (rupa). My experience of the difference between concentration and insight practice is that in concentration practice, the object does not change, and mindfulness functions to return concentration to the object when it strays, whereas in insight practice, mindfulness functions to keep concentration on whatever object currently presents itself as the most compelling, something which is also called choiceless awareness because there is no attempt to focus on a specific object. Thus, both types of practice require mindfulness and concentration but they are used differently depending on the focus. Which one to use depends on what the meditator's intention is. A certain level of concentration is required for good insight practice (some teachers say even to access concentration just prior to jhana) so most insight retreats typically feature a guided meditation near the beginning of the retreat designed to encourage concentration. Later, the guided meditation instruction encourages opening up mindfulness to "track" the arising and passing away of objects. With strong enough concentration and mindfulness, choiceless awareness of arising and passing away can lead to deep insight into one's own suffering and that of others, and into one of the three marks of existence, impermanence.

[Kim Allen]

I think there are actually three broad types of meditation. There is mindfulness practice, which sees arising states without becoming entangled in them. It may include noting/naming, some degree of investigation, or shade more toward "choiceless awareness." These are all aspects of this first type. The mind becomes flexible and light. It attains concentration on changing objects.

Second, there is concentration practice, which takes a fixed object through an intention to do that. The object is chosen in advance, and the changing aspects of it, or related phenomena, are ignored. The mind becomes calm and stable, highly focused and pure. It becomes highly mindful of the chosen object.

These two practices enhance each other, as other people here have noted. They play off and balance each other to create a mind that is supple and sharp, still and flexible, centered on itself and poised for insight. Neither of the first two practices actually frees the mind.

Then the third practice becomes relevant: Insight practice. This is like mindfulness practice, but includes the intentional lens of the three characteristics (anicca, dukkha, anatta). The lens is continually applied to every arisen mindstate. In this way, the mind can become liberated. (If the first two practices reach full fruition, presumably the third then leads to the mind adverting to Nibbana).

I see the three practices as roughly parallel to Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration, and Right View. They have distinct feelings in my mind during meditation.