Month: November 2010

Touch the sky

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Only from the heart

Can you touch the sky

Rumi

We see life from how we label our experience

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Have you ever noticed that
when you get on the highway at rush hour
that it is everyone else who is the traffic,
never you?

Ajahn Armaro.

Being watchful of who comes in

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Our mind is like a house, and our mindfulness is like the tenant of that house. Because we don’t want any intruders or unwelcome guests, we lock all the doors and windows of our house. Now no one can get in unless we let them in. No one can enter unannounced. That’s the function of mindfulness—to be watchful of what’s trying to enter our mind.

If an angry thought tries to enter our mind, it can’t come in until we open the door. Our purpose is not to shut everything out; it’s to remain conscious of our environment and what’s happening in it. Then we can deal with it appropriately. We can open the door to our angry thought, listen to it, and then ask it to leave. We recognize it as a thought and don’t mistake it for who we are. That’s the point. It shifts the experience. Instead of thinking, “I’m really angry right now,” we think, “Oh, look, an angry thought has entered my mind.” It’s easy to let go of a thought that’s a guest in your mind; it’s harder when you take on the identity of the guest.

Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Rebel Buddha

Waking to every moment

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The journey toward health…

is nothing less than an invitation to wake up to the fullness of our lives.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Watching the leaves float by

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Our thoughts are always happening. Much like leaves floating down a stream…If you are standing by a river and a leaf floats by, you have your choice of following the leaf with your eye or keeping your attention fixed in front of you. The leaf floats out of your line of vision. Another leaf enters…and floats by. But as we stand on the bank of the river and the leaves float by, there is no confusion as to whether or not we are the leaves. Similarly, it turns out that there is a place in our minds from which we can watch our own mental images go by. We aren’t our thoughts any more than we are the leaves.

Ram Dass and Paul Gorman

The breath as anchor

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Traditionally in mindfulness meditation you use your breath initially as the object of concentration to collect and unify the mind. You typically stay with the experience of the breath as it touches the body in a single spot, such as the tip of the nose or the rise and fall of the chest, or the feeling of the breath in the whole body. When your mind starts wandering, the breath becomes your anchor to which you return in order to stabilize and focus your attention.

Phillip Moffitt