Month: February 2011

Walking through life with ease and without fears

Karl Duffy1 Comment

In our daily life, our steps are burdened with anxieties and fears.  Life itself seems to be a continuous chain of insecure feelings, and so our steps lose their natural easiness. [However] Our earth is truly beautiful.  There is so much graceful, natural scenery along paths and roads around the earth!  Do you know how many forest paths there are, paved with colorful leaves, offering cool and shade?  They are all available to us, yet we cannot enjoy them because our hearts are not trouble-free, and our steps are not at ease.

When you practice walking meditation, you go for a stroll.  You have no purpose or direction in space or time.  The purpose of walking meditation is walking itself.  Going is important, not arriving.  Walking meditation is not a means to an end; it is an end.  Each step is life; each step is peace and joy.  That is why we don’t have to hurry.  That is why we slow down.  We seem to move forward, but we don’t go anywhere; we are not drawn by a goal.  Thus we smile while we are walking.

Walking meditation is learning to walk again with ease.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Looking in the wrong place for happiness

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There are many wrong tracks in society, but they are all basically the same: They all take us outside of ourselves to satisfy our inner needs.  Whether they take us toward material goods or towards social relationships and emotional codependence, they all ignore the mind’s own potential to provide us with happiness and peace

Dzigar Kongtrul, It’s Up to You

Celebrating life and birthdays

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Celebrated a birthday today, and the passing of another year. When I lived in Rome I quickly lost any shyness around these occasions as they were considered moments of joy to be shared with all and an excuse for a cake and a celebration! So that is how I marked it, with gratitude for life and all the moments that it contains. And receiving messages and kindnesses from people, some of whom I was amazed even knew the day that it was,  also reminded me of the goodness of people and the joy there is in receiving.

I have learnt a lot this past year. In my work, and in my own life,  I have seen colleagues move far away,  I have been with people struggling with illness and death, walked with individuals as they tried to reconcile the demands of personal growth with their commitments and I have personally realized a lot about the nature of true friendship and support. At times, these experiences have made me really wonder whether there is any point in continuing to give, in remaining open; the temptation has been to shut down, to insulate the heart. I have asked whether it is worth the risk to continue to reach out to others. And yet, all these ups and downs have made me recognize more and more that life  is an extended practice of becoming the best I can be.  I see that it is a bit like meditation practice – I do not have to be perfect- all I have to do is just turn up. I just need to be there even if I think I do not have the right words and be close to what others and what life offers.

Even as an adult, with the years passing, I have had many moments when I felt lost. Life is such a long journey, and I have seen often this past year that we all have difficulty knowing who we really are or where we really need to go, or even where we come from. There is no GPS for this life,  no pre-determined  maps, no magical tarot cards which give us the final, clear answers to its mysteries.  We can only do our best. Sometimes, and for some people, that is not enough. But what we are working on is not perfection, but a slow and steady path which leads us to a greater acceptance of where our life is. It is about increasingly befriending who we are, moment by moment, year by year.

What does it take to use the life we already have in order to make us wiser rather than more stuck? What is the source of wisdom at a personal, individual level? The answer to these questions seems to have to do with bringing everything that we encounter to the path. Everything naturally had a ground, path, and fruition. This is like saying that everything has a beginning, middle, and end. But it is also said that the path itself is both the ground and the fruition. The path is the goal.

This path has one very distinct characteristic: it is not prefabricated. It doesn’t already exist. The path that we’re talking about is the moment-by-moment evolution of our experience, the moment-by-moment evolution of the world of phenomena, the moment-by-moment evolution of our thoughts and emotions. The path is uncharted. It comes into existence moment-by-moment and at the same time drops away behind us.

When we realize that the path is the goal, there’s a sense of workability. Everything that occurs in our confused mind we can regard as the path. Everything is workable.

Pema Chodron

Book Review: Real Happiness

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This is a really excellent book and highly recommended. Sharon Salzberg,  one of the leading Buddhist teachers in the United States and co-founder of the Insight Meditation Centre in Barre, Massachusetts, has written here one of the best introductions to meditation as well as an easy-to-grasp introduction to the whole science behind mediation and wellbeing.   Despite the fact that there are quite a few books out there on meditation, it is hard to find one that will help those starting off establish a practice in a way that is clear, well-written and experiential. Well, finally, here is such a book. It is written as a 28-Day Programme – or rather “experiment” –  for readers to try to see if they notice the beneficial effects in their lives. It includes a CD with guided meditations.

The book explains the science behind meditation and happiness, leads the reader through meditation practices for each day and then goes deeper into some of the assumptions which operate in our lives and which may get in the way of a full and compassionate life. We are led to bring these assumptions into awareness so as to loosen their grip on us:  Meditation teaches us to focus and to pay clear attention to our experiences and responses as they arise, and to observe them without judging them. That allows us to detect harmful habits of mind that were previously invisible to us. For example, we may sometimes base our actions on unexamined ideas (“I don’t deserve love, you just can’t reason with people, I’m not capable of dealing with tough situations”) that keep us stuck in unproductive patterns. Once we notice these reflexive responses and how they undermine our ability to pay attention to the present moment, then we can make better, more informed choices. And we can respond to others more compassionately and authentically, in a more creative way. (Page 10f)

This is why we practice meditation – so that we can treat ourselves more compassionately; improve our relationships with friends, family and community, live lives of greater connection and even in the face of challenges, stay in touch with what we really care about so that we can act in ways that are consistent with our values. One of the things I have always found so interesting about the meditation practice is that the arena can seem so small – just you in a room – but the life lessons, the realizations and understandings that arise  from it can be pretty big.

Living in a distracted age

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Philosopher Alain de Botton on the effects of the relentless barrage of information which our minds are subject to in today’s world and how we need to re-learn and practice the ability to switch off:

One of the more embarrassing and self-indulgent challenges of our time is the task of relearning how to concentrate. The past decade has seen an unparalleled assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on anything. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible…..The need to diet, which we know so well in relation to food, and which runs so contrary to our natural impulses, should be brought to bear on what we now have to relearn in relation to knowledge, people, and ideas. Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.

Do not look for answers

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Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

Rilke