The Six Senses are:

1. Seeing

2. Hearing

3. Smelling

4. Tasting

5. Touching

6. Thinking

by Kenneth Folk

As long as meditation is defined as sitting silent and alone, it’s not going to catch on. We are human primates. We are social in our very bones. Isolation is punishment. Silence is dull.

Here is another definition: meditation is the bringing of attention to experience, and training in meditation is training in attention. By this definition, neither isolation nor silence are required; we can train together, and that is good, because together is what we were born for.

Social meditation brings the benefits of traditional silent meditation while simultaneously cultivating intimacy and strengthening bonds between humans. Social meditation is engaging in a way that only social activities can be. And social meditation provides a built-in feedback loop; when two or more people are taking turns reporting their experience in real time, there is little time for mind wandering. Meditators stay on task, thereby increasing the efficiency of training.

Every silent meditator knows that for every hour of practice some considerable amount of time is lost to mind wandering. It may happen that in one hour of silent practice, only a cumulative five or ten minutes are spent with the attention continuously on the objects of meditation. The bulk of the period is spent ruminating, worrying, planning, reflecting, fantasizing, drifting, or sleeping.

With social meditation, ten minutes of practice equals ten minutes of time on task. The feedback loop of reporting aloud while taking turns ensures efficiency. Accountability to another human being generates motivation.

by Vince Fakhoury Horn

Although the Buddhist tradition contains a vast quantity of examples of interpersonal meditation practice, most don't understand themselves as such. What I mean by that, is that the Buddhist texts I'm familiar with don't have this self-reflexive mental model they employ, whereby they differentiate between individual & social forms of practice. Certainly, there are examples of both kinds of meditation happening in the Buddhist tradition–both of the wandering monk meditating by themselves–the archetypal example is the Buddha himself–and of the communal monastery of monks, gathered together, living closely in a community of practice.

Both poles, from individual-to-social, have always been represented in the Buddhist tradition, but what's new in the wake of the Western Enlightenment is that we have new conceptual & linguistic tools needed to point out this distinction and leverage it further. Many also have the benefit, living in the internet age, of understanding ourselves as being co-constructed by the networks we participate in, rather than being isolated individuals.

One of my earliest exposures to a form of meditation which explicitly understood itself as social, was Gregory Kramer's Insight Dialogue. Here's the original Buddhist Geeks Dialogue I had with Gregory, about Insight Dialogue, recorded in 2007.

A few years later, one of my close teachers, Kenneth Folk, began to go through a creative phase of developing teachings around what he called Social Meditation. He also coined the term Social Noting to describe the techniques that were inspired by the original Mahasi Noting Method, aka "mental noting." The following talk is one of my earliest public takes on the background, structure, benefits, and evolution of Social Meditation, which details the story behind how I learned these techniques from Kenneth, facilitated them, and then eventually began to construct new techniques.

I see much of my work as building on this fundamental idea, put forth by Kenneth Folk, that "we are social in our very bones." Putting it in more provocative terms I'd say that we need to Stop Practicing Anti-Social Meditation and recognize the inherent relationality of life itself!

Social Noting & Social Meditation

When Kenneth Folk began to teach Social Meditation, he did so through teaching the traditional meditation techniques he had learned from the Mahasi Sayadaw lineage of Mynamar, in a new way. In his original article on Social Meditation, Kenneth writes:

"In its simplest form, social meditation is Mahasi Sayadaw-style choiceless vipassana done aloud while taking turns."

In the traditional Mahasi Sayadaw approach to teaching noting meditation the student receives verbal instructions on how to do the technique from the teacher. They are then asked to go off and do the practice on their own for some period of time. At some point, they return to the teacher and share a verbal report of what they've experienced doing the technique. Based on this verbal report, the teacher gives further instructions, to help refine & improve their students technique. This is the basic learning loop that's created in the traditional Mahasi approach.

What Kenneth did, that was pedagogically different, was instead of giving abstract verbal instructions, he invited private students–on Skype–to take turns noting their experience aloud with him. This "ping pong noting," or what I would also refer to as "2 player meditation," enables learning to occur more effectively than in the traditional approach in at least 3 ways:

1. Demonstrating & Modeling - It enables the teacher/facilitator to demonstrate the technique, rather than merely describing the instructions in 3rd person, objective terms. This inter-personal demonstration serves as a direct modeling of the technique, giving students an immediate 1st-hand sense of what doing the practice looks like from someone who is, ideally, much more experienced with the technique.

2. Sharing & Feedback - It gives the student an opportunity to share observations and ask questions related to their 1st hand experience of the practice. This model of teaching also enables the teacher/facilitator to offer instant feedback on the student's technique, highlighting what they did well, and offering suggested changes for next time.

3. Cycling & Iterating - This model enables multiple learning cycles, or iterations, in a single instructional session. I've found that doing a new social meditation practice for as little as 5 minutes is effective in being able to learn. This is due to the peer-pressure function keeping everyone on track with the technique. Enabling multiple learning cycles in a single session speeds up the learning process, by shortening the length of time between each cycle or iteration. It's not just about how much we practice, but about how rapidly we can accelerate the learning process.

Opening Up The Noticing Spectrum

Most modern meditation methods, including the Mahasi Noting Technique, are done silently. This pedagogical shift, to noting aloud, really opened up the spectrum, to 2 new possibilities, both of which Kenneth encouraged people to try. One is noting out loud by yourself, and the other is noting aloud with others–i.e. social noting.

Taking this into account we could say that social noting describes both:

1) The translation of traditional meditation techniques from the Mahasi Sayadaw lineage to an out-loud social practice context–See: Freestyle Noting.

& also

2) The development of new forms of out-loud noting-style practices–ex. Binary Noting, Single Parameter Noting, Essence Noting, There is Noting, Noting is Like This, & Just Noting, Just Sitting.

Part of what has developed in our approach to Social Meditation is the emergence of a few different families of practice. I would propose that Social Noting can best be understood as a family of techniques, or comprehensive approach, to Social Meditation. You could think of all of the techniques that fall into this family of practices, as part of The Noting Family. You can tell that something is part of the Noting family when it has the term "Noting" in the title of the practice.

The 1st Category: Body Sensations

by Vince Fakhoury Horn

Connected Practices:

The 4th Category: Thoughts

by Vince Fakhoury Horn

Connected Practice:

by Kenneth Folk

Lowest on the ladder of abstraction is raw experience. At this level, sensations can be clearly felt, but it would not be possible to assign a name to them. While it is possible to meditate (train in attention) at this level, it is difficult to remain on task as higher order processes have not yet come online.

Moving slightly higher on the ladder, it becomes possible to assign names to experiences. The sensation of itching can be labeled “itching,” and the activity of seeing can be noted as “seeing.” It is at this level that noting meditation becomes possible. Whatever disadvantages may accrue from rising up to this level of abstraction are outweighed by the feedback loop made possible by the labeling. Social meditation becomes possible here; with the advent of labeling comes the ability to communicate one’s experience to another. Language opens a window into the intimate experience of another human being.

Higher still on the ladder of abstraction it becomes possible to combine simple phenomena into compounds. Mind states, for example, are compound phenomena; discomfort, agitation, anxiety, and anger are similar phenomena distinguishable by the constellations of sensations that comprise each state. Fundamentally, mind states are patterns of physical sensations; the name we give to each discreet state is itself an abstraction.

Continuing up the ladder, thoughts can be objectified and labeled. When this is done continuously, simple thoughts don’t spin out into full-blown narratives.

At even higher levels of abstraction, complete narratives become available. Work at this level, while valuable, e.g., psychotherapy, is not meditation, and therefore beyond the scope of this essay. Much of the work of meditation involves learning to work at lower levels of abstraction, countering the natural tendency of modern humans to become lost in narrative while losing touch with the simpler phenomena of body sensations and mind states.

The 2nd Category: Charge

By Vince Fakhoury Horn

Connected Practice:

More Detail

Connected Practices

Core Instructions:

Core Instructions:

Core Instructions:

The Four Immeasurables, also known as the Four Brahmaviharas (Pali), the Four Divine Abodes, the Four Sublime States, or the Four Infinite Minds is a foundational Indic Buddhist model, which describes four Buddhist forms of Love, each of which is immeasurable & boundless in their transcendently inclusive scope. These four, along with their (Pali/Sanskrit), and other common English translations are listed here:

• Loving-Kindness - metta/maitrī - also translated into the english as "Loving Awareness," "Friendliness," "Good Will," "Benevolence," or "Big Heart."

• Compassion - Karuṇā - also translated into the english as "Mercy," "Self-Compassion," or "Great Compassion"

• Emapthetic Joy - Muditā - also translated into the English as "Sympathetic Joy," "Vicarious Joy," or "Great Joy."

• Equanimity - Upekkhā/Upekṣā - also translated into the English as "Resilience," "Balance," "Okness," or "Big Mind"

Two Traditional Orders

The order in which these four immeasurables are taught differ in two of the major schools of Buddhism. In the early Buddhist approach, also known as The 1st Turning, the four immeasurables begin with Loving-Kindness and culminate with Equanimity. In the Mahayana Buddhist approach–which arose several hundred years after the historical Buddha was alive, and known as The 2nd Turning, the four begin with Equanimity, culminating in Empathetic Joy. Both orders are shared below.

The 3rd Category: Mind States

Connected Practices:

Core Instructions:

Basic Noting Practices:

English v1.6

English v1.7

Core Instructions:

Core Instructions:

Additional Notes:

Here is an example:

Jane: Itching

John: Thinking

Jane: Tightness

John: Hearing

(Continuing to alternate)

Seeing

Curiosity

Alertness

Dullness

Happiness

Aversion

Fear

Coolness

Itching

There is no right or wrong answer; whatever arises in experience is called out (noted). This exercise, in which two meditators take turns noting their experience aloud is called ping-pong noting, pop-noting, or social noting. Social noting can also be done round robin style, in a circle, (or virtually online.)