ascetic_attention

The speaker discusses ascetic practice, which involves deprivation or slight pain. They describe two methods: one involves sharpening fingernails and pressing them into the hand as a reminder, and the other involves squeezing a mala bead or coin to bring attention back to the present moment. These methods aim to bring awareness and relaxation. The speaker also mentions using a meditation bell as a reminder. These practices are simple but effective in refocusing attention. Hi everyone, I thought I'd talk today a little bit about ascetic practice and ascetic practice is anything that involves some form of deprivation or some form of pain, slight pain. I'm just going to describe two methods that I've used and they involve a little bit of pain but the pain is really there as almost more like a reminder. We're not going to talk about self-flagellation or wearing hair shirts or something as extreme as that. The first method is used in Tantra and involves sharpening the fingernails, letting them grow long and then sharpening them and you have an initiation into the usage of that fingernail as a form of reminder. So people have different initiations and they go through the teaching and every time they press that fingernail into the flesh of the hand it is a reminder of something that they've been taught. So this is a very simple way and you can just do it to remind yourself. All you're doing is putting the fingernail into the palm of the hand and it's reminding you of something. It's reminding you of awareness and it is the awareness or the attention bringing maybe yourself back to relaxation, maybe back to healing, maybe just out of the mind fog and all the nonsense that goes on in the mind. And you can do this the way I've done it in the past is with a mala or a coin from your pocket. You've got a coin and you just hold that in the palm of the hand and you sort of squeeze it. So if you're squeezing one of the mala beads, these are the prayer beads, if you're pressing that quite tightly it causes a bit of discomfort and it's that discomfort which is a reminder you've lost the attention. You've lost the attention. Bring the attention back to the breath, back to the awareness and as I say you can do that with the coin as well. So this is a very, very mild form of ascetic practice and it works because what you're trying to do is you're saying this is my attention, this is my awareness, I've wandered off. I've wandered off into thoughts and daydreams and wondering what's going to happen tomorrow or what happened yesterday. It's taking you away from the present and you want to bring yourself back to that attention. There's other ways of doing it. People have a sort of meditation bell where, I've not used that much, I didn't find it particularly effective and the bell goes off in your headphones or your iPod things that you've got and that sound brings you back again to the attention of the present moment. So it's just a way of constantly bringing things back to attention, awareness, the breath, the relaxation that is possible in the present moment. So it's not a particularly advanced practice, it's just something that is simple to do and it allows you to bring your attention back to where it can make some sort of readjustment. Anyway, that's all from me for today. I hope you find it useful. Okay, bye now.