Category: Meditation

Not meditating to get something

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The true contemplative is not one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but is one who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect to anticipate the words that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits …in silence, and, when he is answered it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself, suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God.

Thomas Merton, quoted in Stephen Cope, The Wisdom of Yoga, A Seekers Guide to Extraordinary Living

Letting go of the old moment

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In the Christian calendar,  this day is the last one of the liturgical year. With sunset this evening, Advent begins,  and the start of a new year.

With every breath, the old moment is lost, a new moment arrives. This is something meditators know. We breathe in and we breathe out.  In so doing we abide in the ever-changing moment. We learn to welcome and accept this entire process: we exhale, and we let go of the old moment. It is lost to us. In so doing, we let go of the person we used to be. We inhale and we breathe in the moment that is becoming: we repeat the process. This is meditation. This is renewal. It is also life

Lama Surya Das, Practicing with Loss

Staying with ourselves

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Meditation strengthen our steadfastness to be with ourselves. Whatever arises – pain, boredom, sleepiness, wild thoughts or emotions – we learn to stay with it. We come to see that meditation isn’t about attaining some ideal state. It’s about being able to stay with ourselves, no matter what. Even longterm practitioners sometime find themselves trying to use meditation as a way of escaping difficult emotions. But transformation only comes when we remember to move towards, rather than away from, our emotional distress. …In meditation we learn to stay with the non-conceptual energy of the emotion, experience it fully, then leave it as it is, without adding fuel to the fire.

Pema Chodron, Preface to Commit to Sit

Sunday Quote: Being quiet

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Silence is God’s first language;

Everything else is a poor translation.

In order to hear that language, we must learn to be still.

Thomas Keating, Cistercian Monk and writer on Centering Prayer

Trusting the deeper wisdom

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Whatever form of meditation you practice, it is in essence simply a method for detaching yourself from thinking (which tends to reinforce the egoic process) long enough for you to begin to trust this other, deeper intelligence moving inside you. It provides you with another way to think: from “beyond the mind” — which, incidentally, is what the word metanoia, usually translated as “repentance,” actually means.

 Cynthia Bourgeault,  Mystical Hope

Space that can encompass all

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The basic definition of meditation is “having a steady mind.” In meditation, when your thoughts go up, you don’t go up, and you don’t go down when your thoughts go down. Whether your thoughts are good or bad, exciting or boring, blissful or miserable, you let them be. You don’t accept some and reject others. You have a sense of greater space that encompasses any thought that may arise.

Chögyam Trungpa, Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior