The Welcome Feedback for Effective Learning

~ By Ajahn Jayasāro ~

One of the most important supports for effective learning is timely and detailed feedback. One of the reasons that meditation practice can be such an excellent means for studying the nature of our body and mind is that it offers such feedback.

Here, I am not referring to the feedback that a meditator might receive from a meditation teacher. I am talking about the experiences that occur during the meditation session itself.

One of the first lifeskills we learn in meditation is the ability to apply a relaxed effort, neither too tight nor too loose. If we try to force the mind too much, to ‘stare’ willfully at the meditation object, the mind won’t settle. It will become tense and we may start to feel a headache or feelings of constriction in the chest. Those phenomena are the feedback telling us to relax our effort a little. On the other hand, if we are too relaxed, the mind will get lost in memory or imagination, or else become dull and sleepy. These are phenomena telling us to increase effort. If mindfulness is getting stronger, if the hindrances are arising less frequently and are more swiftly and easily abandoned, these are phenomena giving us the welcome feedback that we have established the right balance between effort and relaxation.

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"Food for the Heart", a series of Dhamma teachings handwritten weekly is posted on the Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives page with Ajahn's kind permission.

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For other teachings by Ven. Ajahn Jayasāro, please visit the Panyaprateep Foundation website.