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It is commonly called ānotingā, and has its origins in Sutta 111 of the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (or Majjhima Nikaya [MN], very worthwhile reading), usually referred to as MN 111, called āOne by One as They Occurredā, and in MN 10, Satipatthana Sutta (variously translated as āFour Foundations of Mindfulnessā, or āFrames of Referenceā, etc.), as well as Sutta 22, Mahasatipatthana Sutta (āGreater Discourse on Mindfulnessā) of the Long Discourses of the Buddha (or Digha Nikaya [DN]), usually referred to as DN 22. Noting is used primarily in the Mahasi Sayadaw insight tradition from Burma, though related exercises can be found in various Zen traditions, notably Soto Zen and Korean Chan, such as repeatedly asking, āWhat is this?ā
Noting is the exercise that gained for me the most breaks and insights in my early practice, particularly when done on retreats, and because of that my enthusiasm for it is extreme. I still consider it the core foundation of my early to middle practice, the technique that I fell back on when things turned difficult or when I really wanted to push deep into new insight territory.
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The practice is this: make a quiet, mental one-word note of whatever you experience in each moment. Try to stay with the sensations of breathing, which may occur in many places, noting these quickly as ārisingā (as many times as the sensations of the breath rising are experienced) and then āfallingā in the same way. These are the fundamental insight practice instructions. When the mind wanders, notes might include āthinkingā, āfeelingā, āpressureā, ātensionā, āwanderingā, āanticipatingā, āseeingā, āhearingā, ācoldā, āhotā, āpainā, āpleasureā, etc.
Note these sensations one by one as they occur and then return to the sensations of breathing. When walking, note the feet moving as āliftingā and āplacingā, or as āliftingā, āmovingā, and āplacingā as you perceive each of the many sensations of all those processes, noticing other sensations as they arise and returning simply to the sensations of the feet walking.
The details of this practice can be found in such books as Practical Insight Meditation, by Mahasi Sayadaw, which I highly recommend, available free online in various places and in book form. This is my all-time favorite dharma book. It is short and to the point. Its instructions work and the promised effects are reproducible. The first forty-two pages are total gold. There is no need for me to repeat much of the useful information found there, as it is pithy and now readily available online.
I just did this for a whole bike ride, noting everything that caught my attention. Itās far from āfocusedā but I remained aware the entire during, while losing track of time and thus impatience. Usually I get lost in thought when I try to be mindful, but I was able to simply label a thought or perception and move on. There are a lot of sensations if you pay attention so it will be challenging but thatās what keeps the mind engaged. You donāt need to be aware of everything at once, just wherever your attention is at a given moment. As well as other benefits, I feel like being aware of how everything is constantly changing helps one perceive life as more novel and thus less boring and miserable.
Iām sure itās great if youāre not ADHD as well, as thatās the case with the author.
Excellent post
Meditation, in the west, has this very stereotyped view of it being something that you do when you sit cross legged in a place with some candles burning and half-shut eyes with chanting playing in the background and all of that stuff.
Speaking as an ex-Buddhist who white-knuckled their undiagnosed ADHD ass through all sorts of meditation, Iād say that itās particularly hard for ADHDers to do the ātraditionalā sitting meditation, but active meditation has always been much, much more tolerable to my extra-monkey monkey mind.
I remember one time, long after I no longer considered myself Buddhist, for some reason I found myself at a Mahayana Buddhist temple of a fairly different school to what I was used to, although it was familiar enough. We all sat down to eat in the hall and out of respect as I ate I tried to do an active meditation while eating, I guess weād probably call it mindful eating in the west. What was very apparent to me in this process was that I had such a strong urge to rush and, of course, when I noticed my mind rushing forward and carrying my body forward in this rush, I would bring myself back to being very centred on the present and eating slowly while observingāof notingāas described in the post above. But of course I could feel my frustration with myself rising as I kept failing to meet my own expectations, like an angry parent who was just over it with their unruly child lol. So, of course, you note that and re-centre yourself and on you go with it.
Whatās funny is I was sitting across the table from a guy who was big into Buddhism and heavily involved at this temple who I also worked with in the same organisation at the time. Next time I bumped into him at work he remarked to me that he noticed me doing this mindful eating practice at the temple, which inspired him to do it too and he thought I did really well at it. Meanwhile internally at the table an inner war was raging inside of me the whole time as I struggled to achieve any sort of detente with myself that would last for more than a few seconds lol. So I noted that too.
Anyway all of this is to say that if you have ADHD or you find it difficult to settle or focus and to be still physically, donāt sleep on active meditation and maybe seek out a walking meditation group if this resonates with you and you want to try it. Meditation doesnāt have to be a religious practice and once you grasp the basics of how to meditate and how to do active meditation, you can do it almost anywhere.
Mindful eating is weird with ADHD. The cringey (in my contrarian opinion) basic mcmindfulness approach makes it sound like youāre savoring everything perfectly and super satisfied and interested. I do try to avoid eating mindlessly, but even when Iām paying attention I usually eat super fast and instead of noticing all the sensory ārealnessā I tend more towards the insight of āshit this sucks, itās constantly changing and not real and doing nothing for my understimulation and yet my executive dysfunction will keep making me do it fruitlessly.ā
Comrade, have I got stories to tell.
So I wasnāt like a dilettante Buddhist who picked up a couple of Dalai Lama books in an airport one day and decided to call myself a Buddhist or anything. I was definitely part of the Sangha and active in it for some time. So of course you get a lot of instruction on meditation and you do those day+ long things and all of that along the way.
Then later Iām struggling to process all the trauma I had accumulated over my childhood and grappling with my mental health so I start accessing services. This was when Acceptance-Committment Therapy had just come into vogue and it was all the rage. The sheer amount of hamfisted mcmindfulness I had to endure, I swear. (Itās also kinda wild to cast my mind back to this point because I genuinely didnāt know shit about mental health and all the related stuff.)
There was one time when a counsellor tried their hand at it with me and attempted to do a sky/clouds metaphor, which I have never liked tbh because I think we have too many associations with clear, sunny skies as being joyful or happy which I think creates a presumption that it is possible to achieve constant happiness or that this is what should be strived for, which kinda pathologises what has no right being pathologised. Anyway he fumbles the metaphor somehow and doesnāt manage to stick the landing. I am wholly unimpressed. So I use a teacup metaphor, and Iām sure you can already know where itās going, but I gave him both the āno matter how dark the tea is brewedā and the āwhen you pour milk into it, the tea becomes very tumultuousā takes. He was very impressed by what I had said and Iām just sitting there trying not to gesture and say something like āCan we just take a minute to connect the dots here? Maybe your presumption that I needed your edification on, essentially, the Buddhist understanding of mind is might have been a false one.ā
I loathe it lol
For me, genuine meditation has always felt more like a sweatlodge than a sauna but goddamn have people loved to tell me that I should try meditation to help myself feel better. Bruh, I donāt need you to wrap up your preference for how to do relaxation in this weird psuedo-religious, pseudo-secular happiness industry shit and try to push it on me non-consensually. Imagine if you mentioned you were hungry and someone decided then and there to give you instructions on how to eat because they have decided that you needed it. Itās like āI am currently engaging in meditative practises while you condescend to me about how I should try meditation, and you proceed to give me some butchered version of meditation instruction, just so that I donāt say something rashly which I will regret laterā. But you cannot say such things out loud because people will get offended. If I wanted help, Iād ask and f I wanted instruction on meditation, Iād ask someone else lol.
Iām not particularly sectarian and still investigating various schools and such, but screw non-judgment, I hate seeing mainstream and new age bullshit where people just want to be happy all the time. I donāt trust anyone who isnāt a communist or a monk when it comes to this stuff (well, actually not a fan of religious institutions either for the most part). Whenever I hear some self help - if āscience basedā thing talking about certain benefits of meditation I cringe. Fuck blissing out or making illusions more comfy, Iām in this for insight into the true nature of reality. Even advice to lean into the good feelings of meditation by more trusted sources I contradict. I perpetually suffer, and suffering makes a better object of meditation than whatever bs.
That experience sucks. Iām glad I came at this from a philosophically informed place while learning about AuDHD.
Edit: also gotta hate pseudo eastern bs that tries to embolden the self. Like I get people have self esteem issues and people need help with that, but itās silly to aim to think highly of āyourselfā when the goal of these source traditions is to reduce suffering by realizing the illusory nature of that idea. Relatedly āmindfulnessā and āmantrasā as excuses to be selfish and ignore interconnection. No the Buddha was not trying to enhance fucking hedonism. No you shouldnāt ignore your ājudgementā about the immorality of something. We should be striving to be bodhisattvas feeling the suffering of the world. The utter perversion of ruling class dominant ideology cooptation.
Yeah new age shit gives me the ick and itās weird seeing how institutionalised it has become. I was actually reading a book titled The Happiness Industry by William Davies while later working in the mental health sector and I had to put it down because I was like āThis is right and all very accurate but I need to keep my job and Iām going to lose my frickin mind if I keep reading this critique of the industry that Iām part ofā, because it felt a lot like working in a bureaucracy while reading Kafka for leisure or something - Iām not a masochist. But anyway I feel like you might find that book interesting given what youāve said here. One other book recommendation that you might find interesting is The Places that Scare You by Pema Chodron. Iām a very critical of her particular school of Buddhism and the book itself has some fawning worship of figures which Iād encourage you to skip over without a momentās hesitation but the actual book itself its a very practical angle on the Buddhist approach to compassion in quite simple and contemporary terms. I donāt really talk about it often because Iām pretty ex-Buddhist but if youāve seen me posting on this comm about the peer support drop-in spaces that Iāve been running recently, that book is definitely something that I draw upon as an influence for how I do that work.
āI donāt care if your third eye is open if you donāt care about other people.ā I may one day check those out. Probably preferable to the boring stuff about neurons and meditation Iām reading.
I love the ideas so itās sad to me when people donāt like Buddhism, but considering how much class society has corrupted it in practice I understand. Books are nice but I donāt think I could trust any real life religious leaders at this point. I donāt really trust any neurotypical with handling the dharma responsibly as long as we donāt live in socialism. Thereās this Tibetan monk I watch on YouTube and itās fascinating the obvious (to my autistic Marxist brain) critiques he makes of normie spiritual seekers. It seems like they just immediately put their trust in anyone with fancy robes. And of course this critical thinking guy is still saying there is no way to practice nearly as good as with a teacher. Meanwhile his tradition is riddled with contradictions. Sure thereās badass ascetics, but they also had a society of 98% slaves not too long ago. Heās all about lineage holders and maybe there are cool ones, but even he acknowledges that thereās a bunch of rich lamas who take a ton of money to mispractice.
Edit: probably not going to retain the details, but reading your past Buddhism effort posts are pretty interesting
GOOD POST
Extremely good stuff. Wonder if this would work when doing things one has a hard time pushing themselves through due to under stimulation as well, like daily chores
With meditation, the worst thing you can do is try*
*With the exception that if you are experiencing delusions or overwhelming paranoid thoughts or you are hearing very hostile thoughts then itās not the right time to learn meditation and sitting with experiences like these in meditation can risk aggravating them.
Thereās a story about a monk named Cudapanthaka who achieved enlightenment through meditating while doing his chores. I think itās in the Madhyamaka tradition. So, if that story is to be believed, then it meditation during chores would certainly work.
Maybe. Itās hard to be consistent with it but my mind loves to do things in the background and while itās recently been pondering pointlessly at times I have had it frequently coming back to the present moment: proprioception, observing sensations, insight into non-self, impermanence, and unsatisfactoriness. It has been pleasant at times. Lately, Iāve been listening to Buddhist audiobooks to help with initiating mindless tasks. Iāve also found that the insight practice of asking where the self is can help with anxiety and pain.
interesting! i do have adhd and have had a lot of trouble with traditional meditation methods. This sounds like something i could try to incorporate into everyday life
this is more or less the form of mindfulness I learned in DBT that made me change my mind about mindfulness being full of shit.
