Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [164]
What Debra could do is raise “the interest factor” in the meditation, by turning it into an investigation into her boredom and restlessness. She could ask, “Why am I bored? I’m in the perfect place doing the perfect thing; why am I feeling restless? Why am I never satisfied?”
Investigation is known as one of the principal factors of enlightenment—or agents as transformation. Investigation into the roots of our boredom and restlessness can help keep us present, awake, alert, interested, and developing. If your boredom or restlessness immediately translates itself into sleepiness, you might want to engage in self-inquiry about why you are sleepy. What provoked your fatigue? Are you using it perhaps as a way to avoid or deny something that is bothering you?
If that fails, see if some deep breaths can energize your mind and awaken your spirit. Then begin the meditation again. Some teachers frown on physical movement in the meditation period, but instead of nodding off and dozing on the cushion, I think it’s better to stand and continue meditating while standing up, if that’s going to help. Or even leave the room, get some air, splash cold water on your face, and then come back. If you are meditating by yourself, this is not an issue. But if you are sitting with a group, this might be something you want to discuss with the teacher or leader before you start.
THE MULTILEVEL BENEFITS OF CONCENTRATION
Concentration and focus are indispensable in ordinary affairs as well as spiritual pursuits. Talking to Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks said that he felt so harried and frenetic during his successive Oscar-winning years that he made himself sit down alone to write every day “just to find relief from everything and concentrate on one thing in order to calm down and relax my mind.” Champion athletes around the world speak with awe of “the zone,” an almost mystical state of being entirely in the groove: a state of totally alert, perfectly focused balance and at-one-ness, an inexplicable state of total presence and alignment which Arnold Palmer called “right-ness.”
All-star quarterback John Brodie says, “A player’s effectiveness is directly related to his ability to be right there, doing that thing totally, in the moment. When you are in the zone, it is as if you can’t miss.” Yogi Berra, famous for his folk wisdom as well as his big baseball bat, said, “How can you think and hit at the same time?” Nadia Comaneci said that for her to accomplish her feats as the perfect gymnast in the 1976 Olympics, intense concentration was the key.
There is no question that concentration helps make people more powerful, one-pointed on a goal, successful, and productive rather than hesitant, wishy-washy, or distracted. Some people, for example, suffer from attention deficit disorders. Meditation can often help improve attention span without chemical drug treatments or other invasive therapies.
Concentration techniques help us experience more clarity and spaciousness. If we are more concentrated, our energy is grounded and channeled; it can be wielded like a spotlight, a laser beam, or blowtorch instead of splashing out as if from a firehose. Throughout history, intentional mind-training, self-mastery techniques, and skillful methods of inner discipline have been proven to greatly reduce stress and help people better cope with chronic pain and disease as well as compulsions and addictive behavior problems.
Concentration meditation also provides an invaluable calming technique for coping with the emotional ups and downs we experience in the course of everyday life. Let’s say for example that we have just had a very unpleasant and anxiety-provoking