1. People say:
“They don’t do this, they don’t do that,
they ought to do this, they ought to do that.”
2. Always “They” and never “I”.
Peter Maurin, Founder, Catholic Worker Movement, They and We
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.
Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
Tomorrow be today.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There are many simple practices that support the transformation of the mind. These are easy to do at any time throughout the day and prevent us from getting caught in patterns of preoccupation. One practice is to relax the body, particularly the eyes and face, whenever we can remember. When the face is more open and the eyes are soft, the mind tends to connect with the present moment with increasing ease. We have found that this particular practice supports the letting go of powerful and unconscious habits of mind. We can disentangle ourselves more rapidly from those thoughts, feelings and sensations that consistently propel us into the next moment. we can settle into the here and now without always attaching to some agenda of what should or shouldn’t be happening.
Michael Liebenson Grady
The issue is not so much the presence or absence of thought activity during meditation. Rather, the issue is the degree to which ones thought activity is driven, unconscious and fixated.
The great majority of human beings are literally addicted to thinking. Even the most wretched substance abuser can go a few hours between “fixes,” but most human beings cannot abide even for a few seconds without some sort of “thought fix.” If there’s nothing significant to think about, we fill the void with fantasy and trivia. Simply stated, meditation breaks the addiction to thinking. One is then in a highly desirable situation. When you want to have a complete experience of hearing and feeling (for example as you listen to music), you can do so without being compulsively pulled into thoughts which are not relevant to the music. When you want to have a complete experience of tasting and feeling, as when enjoying a bite of food, you can likewise do so. On the other hand, when it is appropriate to think, you find that your thinking abilities are vastly improved.
Shinzen Young
Real questioning has no methods, no knowing – just wondering freely, vulnerably, what it is that is actually happening inside and out. Not the word, not the idea of it, not the reaction to it, but the simple fact… Anxiety arises… will one immediately act by “knowing” it from previous times and bracing against it? “Oh, not that again–I hate it–it’s going to get worse, how can I get rid of it.” and so forth. [Or] simply meeting it as for the first time, attending quietly, feeling it, letting it move on its own, revealing itself for what it is without interference by the brain.
Toni Parker, The work of this moment
This beautiful quotation from French Philosopher, Simone Weil, could be describing the practice of mindfulness, with its emphasis on the need to move away from just thinking and opening to a wider attention. By paying atttention, even to the simplest details of each day, we create space for a deeper wisdom to grow.
As long as a person tolerates having his inner self full of his own thoughts, of his personal thoughts, he is entirely submitted – even in his most intimate thoughts – to the constraint of needs and the mechanical play of force. But everything changes when, by virtue of real attention, he empties his soul to let the thoughts of eternal wisdom pass through it. He then carries in himself the very thoughts to which force is submitted.
Simone Weil
Mindfulbalance 