All too often during our everyday lives, the momentum of doing and getting things done creates an illusion of constancy, a forest rather than many individual trees. Home Retreat in its various ways supports us to look at the trees in order to better appreciate and understand the forest. Another tool that supports our study of the forest is to notice micro moments of direct and clear sati when they arise. For many of us these moments happen spontaneously and not infrequently. Every day there will be moments when we experience a sight, sound, smell, taste, sensation or even a thought in a very rendered and basic way. We see, or taste, or feel or simply notice a thought for being a thought and nothing more or we sense a touch or see only color or form with little or no attachment in the moment. Just the experience. Fortunately and unfortunately these moments are brief which allows us to move on with our task and day. Yet to ignore these moments and not support them with a few added moments of reflection can cause them to lose some of their power and value. I suggest two exercises to help notice these moments. First, when a micro-moment of pure sati arises bring your focus to it, see what happens with this added focus on it, see if you can notice the quality of the sati and then notice what happens next. Is it ‘watching/observing,’ and/or does it quickly become ‘I am watching/observing?’ If it is the latter, notice the posture of ‘I’m watching’ and try not to evaluate or judge and just carry on yet try to remember what just ‘watching’ was like.
The second exercise is to cultivate these types of micro-moments of sati on a fairly regular basis throughout our day. The more frequently we support the arising and noticing of micro-moments of sati, the more we strengthen a variety of mental factors. This in turn enables us to access sati more readily and in ever more basic ways, both spontaneously and
when doing formal practice. Here are two quick tips: First, take some activity that you do mindlessly over and over again throughout the day and give a moment’s quick sati or reflective sampajañña to that activity. For instance, reaching, then
touching, then holding your keys. Are they cold, sharp, heavy, light? Also, notice the intention to pick up the keys and ask yourself, ‘Am I going someplace for wholesome reasons? Is this trip necessary?’ Reaching, then touching, then using pressure to open, pass through and close the door. You may also focus on the urge to urinate/defecate, the intention to do so, the process of getting you to the bathroom, the process of evacuating or urinating. Notice also what the mind is doing, paying attention to cleaning and going on to the next activity. The second tip, and maybe most challenging as well as likely most rewarding to your investigation, is waking up to the automatic behaviors that surround your use of screen time. This is especially true regarding the smartphone. How about bringing attention to every urge to touch your phone, the reaching, the activity, the value of the activity, the putting it away, or simply noticing the urge and observing the urge until it changes.
The more often we string moments of sati-sampajañña together or simply add these types of moments to our day, the more we are effectively de-conditioning our patterns as well as the blindness to our patterns. I often look at this type of practice like a string of pearls. Our lives are the string and the pearls are moments of wisdom. The more moments of wisdom, the more valuable and beautiful the necklace becomes.