Category: Be fully present

Trying to make things correspond to our ideas

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When one composes one’s mind and looks inwards, there is a sense of coming to one point. If we are not caught in the thinking process, we can be aware of the here and now, the body, the breath, mental states, moods; we can allow everything to be what it is.  The attitude of many people is that there is always a need to change something. When we practise meditation with this idea of getting something, then even the word ‘meditation’, can bring up the reaction of: ‘There’s something I’ve got to do. If I’m in a bad mood I should get rid of that mood. I’ve got to concentrate my mind.’ If the mind’s scattered and we’re all over the place, ‘I should make it one-pointed; I’ve got to concentrate.’ And so we make meditation into hard work and there is a great deal of failure in it because we’re trying to control everything through these ideas.

[Instead]….Try looking inwards with an attitude of observing whatever is present. Just notice what kind of mood or feeling you are in. So now put yourself in this position of the Buddha – Buddho, the knower—not the judge — and just look.

Ajahn Sumedho, Developing an attitude toward meditation

Learning from the Masters

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But I always think that the best way

to know God

is to love many things

Vincent Van Gogh

photo anilmahajan19

One step at a time

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We waste a lot of time seeking someone to tell us what life will be like once we live it. We drain ourselves of inner fortitude by asking others to map our way. At the end of all this stalling, though, we each have to venture out and simply see what happens. The instructions are in the living,

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

Time out

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There must be a time of day when the man who makes plans forgets his plans, and acts as if he had no plans at all.

There must be a time of day when the man who has to speak falls very silent.

And his mind forms no more propositions, and he asks himself: Did they have a meaning?

There must be a time when the man of prayer goes to pray as if it were the first time in his life he had ever prayed;

when the man of resolutions puts his resolutions aside as if they had all been broken,

and he learns a different wisdom

Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

Relinquishing our demands

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not present

We are often instructed to surrender to the present, but what does it mean really? When we surrender, we are relinquishing our demand that the present be something other than it actually is and we are fostering a willingness to be present with what is. Surrendering to the present entails surrendering to our current limitations, both internal and external.

Philipp Moffitt, Surrendering to the present

A good medallion

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A skillful reflection is: ‘This is the way it is’. Venerable Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, the renowned Thai sage, said, “If there was to be a useful inscription to put on a medallion around your neck it would be ‘This is the way it is’.” This reflection helps us to contemplate: wherever we happen to be, whatever time and place, good or bad, ‘This is the way it is.’ It is a way of bringing an acceptance into our minds, a noting rather than a reaction. The practice of meditation is reflecting on ‘the way it is’ in order to see the fears and desires which we create.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Way it is