Category: Practice Tips

Jon Kabat Zinn drawing attention to the normal way the mind is, which we come to notice especially when we start meditation practices.

“… the first thing you notice is how impossibly jumpy the mind is… it is very hard to pay attention to any one thing for any period of time because the mind is so agitated that it distracts itself virtually moment by moment. It doesn’t need outside distractions… And this is totally normal. Everybody experiences this as soon as they start paying attention. And then you think ‘Oh my goodness! I could never meditate because my mind is like a train wreck.’ But the fact is everybody’s mind is like that…”

Another description he uses is that the mind is like the ocean. It can be agitated by the waves and the activity on the surface, but deep down below the surface is calm and peaceful. What begins to happen in our mindfulness meditation practice is that we are able to drop below this surface movement and experience brief moments of tranquility. Over time, and with practice, these brief moments of tranquility become more extended.

Each meditation practice is a journey of discovery to understand the basic truth of who we are. In the beginning the most important lesson of meditation is seeing the speed of the mind. But the meditation tradition says that mind doesn’t have to be this way: it just hasn’t been worked with.

What we are talking about is very practical. Mindfulness practice is simple and completely feasible. And because we are working with the mind that experiences life directly, just by doing nothing, we are doing a tremendous amount.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

It is our attitude to practice which sustains us when we get discouraged or when the mind labels it “boring” or “difficult” or “going nowhere”. The best attitude to have is that of “starting over” which takes the focus off a prescribed outcome and places it on returning again and again to the practice.

So just how do you practice starting over? Think of it as shifting your attention away from controlling the outcome and abandoning your usual reactions – criticizing, judging, complaining, and lamenting – to getting off track. You don’t deny your thoughts and feelings, and you don’t try to make them go away. Instead, you acknowledge them without making any judgments about them and with compassion for how difficult this moment is. You then follow the acknowledgment with what I call “and” practice, in which you say to yourself, “Yes, I just got lost, and now I’ll just start over.”

You develop the strength to start over because you’re committed to moving toward your goal, not to being there. This is why I call it an attitudinal shift. Your goals matter because they give direction to your life, but your actual life happens in the endless stream of moments that occur between now and when, if ever, you reach your goal.

Ironically, the practice of starting over is a more effective way to achieve your goal than constantly fixating on it. That’s because most of us are not very good at simply delivering results. For instance, if you are trying to lose weight, curb your temper, or cease being a workaholic, you already know what to do to stop the undesirable behavior, but you don’t. Discouragement from your past and imaginings about how bad the future will be drain your energy and cause you to fail. When you embrace starting over as a practice, you focus instead on what you are doing right now and what you need to do or are failing to do. Thus, if you have agreed to take on yet another work project, you reverse yourself as soon as it dawns on you that it is too much. If you sense that you’re losing your temper, you just stop. No drama; you just get right back on your path and start over.

Philip Moffitt Starting Over

The birds have vanished
into the sky,
and now the last cloud
passes away.

We sit together,
the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

Li Po

When we practice meditation, we express confidence in the simple yet powerful gesture of opening to whatever arises during our meditation session. We may come to our meditation with the hope of reducing our stress or perfecting our technique or maybe even attaining enlightenment. But we very soon discover that the practice requires that we drop such ambition and sit still on the cushion, letting go of our internal dialogue, opening to our world — very simply, very directly.

When we examine this experience of opening, we find that we are expressing a part of ourselves that we may tend to overlook: we are expressing our ability to trust ourselves completely. In order to open — in meditation and in life in general — we must let go of our familiar thoughts and emotions, we must step out from behind the safe curtain of our inner rehearsals and onto the stage of reality, even if it’s for just a brief moment. When we open on the cushion, we renounce our attachment to our emotional security blanket, over and over again. We drop our pretense and our story lines and stand naked in the midst of uncertainty — the very essence of confidence itself.

Maybe we would like to protect ourselves, but instead we have the courage to let go, and such courage naturally blossoms into the confidence to be fully open.

Michael Carroll Bringing Spiritual Confidence to the Workplace