Category: Meditation

Seeing into the heart of things

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I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin, French artist

To work with fear – notice, don’t analyse, don’t run

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When we notice that the conditions of the mind and the body are just the way conditions are, it’s a simple recognition. It’s not an analysis and it is not anything special. It’s just a bare recognition, a direct knowing of whatever passes away. Knowing in this way demands a certain amount of patience; otherwise as soon as any fear, anger or unpleasantness arises, we will run away from it. So meditation is also the ability to endure, and bear with, the unpleasant. We don’t seek it out; we are not ascetics, looking for painful things to endure so that we can prove ourselves. We are simply recognizing the way it is right now. Meditation is established on that which is ordinary, not on that which is extraordinary.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Mind and the Way.

We are not our thoughts

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We are not our thoughts. Thoughts come and thoughts go.

Unaccompanied thoughts pass quickly.

Thoughts that are thought about become desires.

Desires that are thought about become passions.

Margaret Mary Funk, Thoughts Matter

Watching and observing

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Mindfulness is not thinking about things. (It is not “meditating on” some topic, as people often say.) It is a non-discursive observation of our life in all its aspects. In those moments when thinking predominates, mindfulness is the clear and silent awareness that we are thinking. I found it helpful and relaxing when someone said, “For the purpose of meditation, nothing is particularly worth thinking about.” Thoughts can come and go as they wish, and the meditator does not need to become involved with them. We are not interested in engaging in the content of our thoughts; mindfulness of thinking is simply recognizing we are thinking.

Gil Fronsdal

Watch the mind

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Practice is separate from any posture. It is a matter of directly looking at the mind. This is wisdom….. You must examine yourself. Know who you are. Know your body and mind by simply watching. In sitting, in sleeping, in eating, know your limits. Use wisdom. The practice is not to try to achieve anything. Just be mindful of what is. The whole of meditation is looking directly at the mind.

So, be patient.  Live simply and be natural. Watch the mind. This is our practice.

Ajahn Chah

Simple daily practices 1: Relax the body

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There are many simple practices that support the transformation of the mind. These are easy to do at any time throughout the day and prevent us from getting caught in patterns of preoccupation. One practice is to relax the body, particularly the eyes and face, whenever we can remember. When the face is more open and the eyes are soft, the mind tends to connect with the present moment with increasing ease. We have found that this particular practice supports the letting go of powerful and unconscious habits of mind. We can disentangle ourselves more rapidly from those thoughts, feelings and sensations that consistently propel us into the next moment. we can settle into the here and now without always attaching to some agenda of what should or shouldn’t be happening.

Michael Liebenson Grady