Category: Meditation

How to meditate: very simple instructions

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

When a thought arises that’s strong enough to take your attention away from the breath, simply note it as not breath. Whether it’s the most beautiful thought in the world or the most terrible, one you would never disclose to another soul, in this meditation, it’s simply not breath. You don’t have to judge yourself. You don’t have to get lost in making up a story about what triggered the thought or its possible consequences. All you have to do is recognize that it is not a thought. Some of your thoughts may be tender and caring, some may be boring and banal; all that matters is that they are not the breath. See them, recognize them, very gently let them go, and bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath.

Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

An escape hatch from our fears

Karl Duffy1 Comment

This word ‘meditation’ can mean all kinds of things. It’s a word that includes any kind of mental practices, good or bad. But when I use this word, what I’m mainly using it for is that sense of centring, that sense of establishing, resting in the centre. The only way that one can really do that is not to try and think about it and analyse it; you have to trust in just a simple act of attention, of awareness. It’s so simple and so direct that our complicated minds get very confused. “What’s he talking about? I’ve never seen any still point. I’ve never found a still point in me. When I sit and meditate, there’s nothing still about it.” But there’s an awareness of that. Even if you think you’ve never had a still point or you’re a confused, messed-up character that really can’t meditate, trust in the awareness of that very perception. This is something you can really trust. So in pointing to this centre point, to this still point, to the here-and-now, I’m pointing to the way of transcendence or the escape from it.  Not escape by running away out of fear, but the escape hatch that allows us to get perspective on the mess, on the confusion, on the complicated self that we have created and identify with.

Ajahn Sumedho, Identity

No longer living on the surface

Karl Duffy1 Comment

In personal practice we have a precise and potent way to understand the most important thing in our life, which is our mind and heart. We sit there day by day and watch something very private and intimate take place — the unfolding of our wisdom and compassion. Nobody else is watching.  We know there’s nothing more important we could do, and yet we don’t write home about it. We don’t need to boast. We can simply enjoy a quiet sense of contentment, knowing that we have set aside the time to do something incredibly kind for ourselves. Without meditation as the bedrock of our sanity, how do we avoid being overreactive, coerced by quick solutions to our problems? These quick solutions come in the form of anger and frustration that the world doesn’t act the way we want, simply because we ourselves lack patience. Our mind becomes irritated, consumed with trying to align the outside world with our desires. If we could simply develop a level of peace in ourselves, our relationship to the world would be that much more harmonious. 

As we deepen our mind through personal practice, we are able to dissolve our boundaries and rest in … the nature of how things actually abide. This personal time in which we experience the mind as fluid, unstuck, and without boundaries begins to affect our view of the world as a fixed and immovable place. We are no longer skimming life or our perceptions. We have broken through.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Genuine happiness comes from gently working with the mind

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

If we could put as much effort into cleaning up our minds as we do sweeping our houses, washing our clothes and doing the dishes, we would likely be at ease. But when we talk about cleaning like this, people don’t know what we are getting at…I’ve come to think it’s because people don’t seek their own dwelling place. We scrub and sweep elsewhere. We don’t make our minds clean, so there is always confusion. We are always looking outside.

…These days there is only force and hurry. Mangoes are never sweet now. They are forced. Before they are ripe they picked and artificially ripened. This is done because people want to get them in a hurry. So when you eat them you find they are sour. To get something good, you have to allow it be sour first, according to its own natural way. But we pick them early and then complain that they are sour. For the most part things are imitations. We grasp the things that are false and uncertain as real…If the mind does not see and realize, there is no path to clarity. 

Ajahn Chah, Being Dharma

When meditation is like watching television

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

You have to learn the correct spirit of sitting. If you make a lot of effort when you sit, you become tense and that creates pain all over your body. Sitting should be pleasant. When you turn on the television in your living room, you can sit for hours without suffering. Yet when you sit for meditation, you suffer. Why? Because you struggle. You want to succeed in your meditation and so you fight. When you are watching television you don’t fight. You have to learn to sit without fighting . If you know how to sit like that, sitting is very pleasant. When Nelson Mandela visited France he was asked what he like to do the most. He said that because he was always busy, what he liked to do the most was just to sit and do nothing. Because to sit and do nothing is a pleasure – you restore yourself. The problem is not to sit or not to sit, but how to sit.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Be Beautiful, Be Yourself, Shambala Sun

The two aspects of meditation

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The answer to ‘Why meditate?’ is as obvious as ‘Why be happy?’ It’s based on a natural interest in one’s welfare. Most of us at some time or another look to get an overview of our lives, or of our mental/emotional states, in order to find either a direction forward or a stable place within ourselves. Meditation exercises help us to do just this, through the development of steady introspective attention, otherwise known as ‘mindfulness and clear comprehension’ . ‘Mindfulness’ is a steady attention to a particular experience, while ‘clear comprehension’ is the comprehension that can occur when this attention is steady. Clear comprehension fully attunes to the specific but changing character of a sensation, feeling, mood or thought. Taken together then, mindfulness and clear comprehension offer a way of maintaining a direct view of one’s inner life a moment at a time. It offers us a way to get to know ourselves directly and in-depth.

Ajahn Sucitto