Year: 2013

Noticing our discontent

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A good part of our automatic thinking is negative. Discontent comes naturally to us. Kids are discontented with their parents, parents are discontented with their teenagers, we are all discontented with our weight, and the prevalence of aesthetic surgery points to our discontent with the way we look. It is as if the brain is wired for discontent.  With mindfulness we can become aware of this tendency. I remember distinctly the first time I became aware of the habit of negative thinking. I was at a staff meeting in work. All of a sudden, I noticed that I had a negative mental comment about everyone who spoke. Either he was incompetent, or he kept saying the same useless things, or he did not really understand the problem…Then a light bulb went on: Maybe the problems were in my mind rather than out there. Maybe I had a problem accepting things as they are, and people as they are.

Jospeh Emet, Buddha’s Book of Sleep

Insight meditation

Karl Duffy2 Comments

mirrorThe investigation of phenomena involves having enough awareness to be able to observe without judging. This observation isn’t analyzing, or thinking about anything; it is rather a clear, silent seeing of the actual conditions of body and mind. Sometimes just seeing certain habits of body or patterns of mind clearly many make it possible to resolve them. Other times, however, they persist – they may keep coming back again and again. What we are actually seeing then is only the tip of the iceberg of a much more extensive causal process. Our awareness has only developed enough to see part of that much deeper process..Its like sending awareness into some particular specialized area of our experience, investigating it more thoroughly. And if its coming out of the practice of mindfulness, then its examining things that are very relevant to us and that are happening right now.

Ajahn Thiradhammo, Contemplation on the Seven Factors of Awakening

Getting a vantage point

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Looking over the maze

Our world of thoughts and concerns can be like a maze; we don’t realize that all we have to do is “stand on our toes” to get a broader view. From a higher vantage point, our problems may appear very different. We may not be able to change the problem itself, but through mindfulness supported by concentration we may be able to shift our perspective and radically change the way we relate to the situation.

Gil Fronsdal

Tightening towards or receiving experience

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When there’s something in the future that we’ve got to get to, there’s tension. Things start to solidify; flexibility begins to dwindle. When there’s a strong sense of self-consciousness-“I am this, I’m not that; I wasn’t that, I will be this” – then there’s a tightening of one’s energies. When we defend ourselves from people, events, memories, and feelings, when we shut things out there’s tightening and stress. When we try to perform and make ourselves into something, there’s tightening and stress. When we compare and compete, there’s tightening and stress. 

So we begin to contemplate these unwholesome patterns and relinquish them. We can see how our lives work in terms of compartments….We create zones in which anything unwanted or unusual has been weeded out. This in turn creates a very rigid feeling. When something gets slightly out of pattern, we feel confused or upset. This is no way to live…..As long as a line exists, there will be position-taking, nervousness, winning, losing, etc. Since experiences are transitory, there will always be a slight sense either of holding on to or getting rid of the state one has attained, trying to increase it or decrease it. Samadhi [Centering or concentration] occurs when we move over that line. There’s participation in and enjoyment of experience. And as one learns to trust, one receives the blessings of that: what is good, what is conducive to the heart’s welfare, what gives joy. Receiving joy is another way to say enjoyment, and samadhi is the art of refined enjoyment. It is the careful collecting of oneself to the joy of the present moment. Joyfulness means there’s no fear, no tension, no ought to. There isn’t anything we have to do about it. It’s just this.

Ajahn Sucitto, Samadhi is Pure Enjoyment

Moments of doing nothing

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Hands foldedIf we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

Perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with death

Pablo Neruda,

Forgiving life, and ourselves

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london tree

The fundamental prejudice is some form of “This shouldn’t be happening”. This rejection of circumstances can be anything from “He shouldn’t have left me” to “Nobody loves me” to “I’m doomed. Even meditation doesn’t work for me”….. Eventually we just start to accept. Not only do we not dislike our circumstances, we don’t dislike our own states of mind, which is the key thing. We begin to think,  “Fortunately I don’t get it yet”. And if we forgive life for not being what we told it to be, or expected, or wished, or longed for it to be, we forgive ourselves for not being what we might have been also. And then we can be what we are, which is boundless.

John Tarrant, No. Nay. Never.

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