Lexicon
Twelve words that are used precisely on this site and loosely everywhere else.
- Anchor
- The one thing attention is asked to return to when it wanders.
- Body scan
- Moving attention systematically through the body, region by region, at a steady pace.
- Breath count
- Using numbers to give a restless mind something small to hold.
- Dullness
- The foggy, sinking state that is not sleep but is not attention either.
- Equanimity
- Steadiness that does not depend on things going well.
- Metta
- The practice of wishing well, offered deliberately and without conditions.
- Noting
- Giving what has distracted you a one-word label, then returning.
- Open awareness
- Attention without a chosen object, resting on whatever arrives.
- Pausing bell
- A bell struck at intervals to mark time without interrupting the practice.
- Restlessness
- The agitated quality that makes sitting still feel unacceptable.
- Seated posture
- Any arrangement that keeps the belly uncompressed and the spine upright without effort.
- Wandering mind
- Attention leaving the chosen object without permission; not a defect, but the raw material.