Our way is to practice one step at a time,
one breath at a time,
with no gaining idea
Suzuki Roshi
Month: April 2013
A place of awareness
We know how to become, but we don’t know how to stop.
We are not used to stopping.
Stopping is the practice of learning how to take the points of when you feel the mind moving and proliferating
and coming back to a place of awareness.
Ajahn Passano , On Becoming and Stopping
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Shift focus
To gain composure at stressful moments, we can apply the mindfulness effort of letting go – abruptly shifting our attention from our thoughts to the immediacy of our physical environment. By simply being mindful in this way. we discover a visceral stillness, an “emotional space” of not knowing, like opening a door to an unfamiliar room or leaping from a diving board. When we are mindful in the immediate moment, the chaotic flood of emotions no longer view for our attention like a crowd of load, unruly voices. Instead they settle into a physical feeling, unclear and murky, but no less powerful – a vague softness around the heart or an openess in the throat.
Michael Caroll, At Times of Stress, Cultivate Stillness
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A verb not a noun
Describing mindfulness or awareness leads to the wrong attitude.
Terms like ‘wake up’, ‘awakening’ or ‘pay attention’ are not definitions;
they are suggestions to trust in this moment, to be present, to be here and now.
Ajahn Sumedho, Don’t Take Your LIfe Personally.
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Why we like speed
Speed in work has compensations. Speed gets noticed. Speed is praised by others. Speed is self-important. Speed absolves us. Speed means we don’t really belong to any particular thing or person we are visiting and thus appears to elevate us above the ground of our labors. When it becomes all-consuming, speed is the ultimate defense, the antidote to stopping and really looking. If we really saw what we were doing and who we had become, we feel we might not survive the stopping and the accompanying self-appraisal. So we don’t stop, and the faster we go, the harder it becomes to stop. We keep moving on whenever any form of true commitment seems to surface.
David Whyte
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What gets in the way
Awareness is our true self; it’s who we are. So we don’t have to try to develop awareness; we simply need to notice how we block awareness out with our thoughts, fantasies, opinions and our judgments. We’re either in awareness, which is our natural state, or we’re doing something else.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special
Photo Buddpaul
Mindfulbalance 