Category: Be fully present

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

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,

Curious at the moment of difficulty

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CuriousCatThe meditation orientation is not about fixing pain or making it better. It’s about looking deeply into the nature of pain — making use of it in certain ways that might allow us to grow. In that growing, things will change, and we have the potential to make choices that will move us toward greater wisdom and compassion, including self-compassion, and thus toward freedom from suffering.

Jon Kabat Zinn, At Home in our Bodies

Slowing down choices

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. You don’t have to be swept away by your feeling. You can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity.

Bhante H Gunaratana

Showing up with others

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If we don’t show up for our own life, we tend to ask other people to fill in the bits we won’t show up for. That makes it hard on them. So love begins with really showing up. And practice helps. It’s a way of not dodging the difficult, painful bits. It’s also not dodging the beauty and the marvel of life, the wonder and our capacity to connect to others. Love starts there. But we make a few really basic errors. We sometimes have the idea that a relationship is like a machine, one we can fix if we put the right oil on it or replace a few sprockets. We also can think that a relationship is a matter of calculating the sums of good and bad, what we’re getting and not getting. If we start looking at other people as a gift, it helps us out of these traps. You notice with a child that you show up without wanting a lot in return. It’s not an exchange: give this, get that. It can be like that in all our relationships, with lovers, teachers, friends, what have you. It’s not a trade. Love means bearing people’s differences without trying to change them—not just bearing, but valuing and appreciating and loving people’s uniqueness. That’s a path all by itself. What if the fact that you’re different from me is a gateway rather than an obstacle?

John Tarrant, Not Knowing Is the Most Intimate