Guide: Television
Watching television provides a very unique and instructive method for shifting your perspective around, because in essence, a television is another world, with other people, sounds, qualities, and space.
The Concept
General Exercises
- Perform any of the Rooms and Boundaries exercises, treating the television itself as a window into another room.
- Many of the People exercises can be applied to the people on television, although many of them won't apply in the same way.
Mindful Television
Just as you can be (and should be!) Mindful when with other People, you can apply that same Skill to your experience watching Television. For this Skill there's no need to put any additional layer of meditative effort into it more than just watching Television with Attention. Regardless of what you're watching, consider each of the following:
- Are you distracted by anything else right now? What is it, and why are you being pulled in that direction? Can you feel a tugging that pulls you away from what's on TV?
- Can you rest at peace with the show you're watching, without any need to wonder what's going on, what's coming up, etc.?
- You might review some of the Sounds Skills, and see how to apply them here. This will depend greatly on what you're watching, as some shows you might not want to do these.
- Pay attention to certain sounds on the show. Especially things like certain vocal inflections from a given character that comes up often during dialogue.
- Pay attention to one moment of the show at a time. Allow every sound and sight to hit you, without any attempt to understand or absorb that one moment. Naturally, another moment, and another will continue to arise, and each time let just one moment exist at a time. After all, that's all that does ever exist at any time.
- Another completely different angle is to mindfully watch TV while also mindfully paying attention to the whole room. After all, what's going on the screen and speakers is co-equal in consciousness with anything else taking place in the room.