Sitting is a natural slowing down of this rushing, self-centred, mind-body chattering that we often live. This is a practice of realization, which is what we are, and practice allows us to be who we are. As we practice we discover who and what we are….Being still is not a means to an end; it is not that we should be still and then create something else or change. Being still is being who we are.
Elihu Genmyo Smith, Everything is the Way
Considering that Merton died in 1968, these words have even more weight in the sense that the level of semi-attention and noise back then was tiny in comparison to what we experience now.
Now let us frankly face the fact that our culture is one which is geared in many ways to help us evade any need to face this inner, silent self. We live in a state of constant semiattention to the sound of voices, music, traffic, or the generalized noise of what goes on around us all the time. This keeps us immersed in a flood of racket and words, a diffuse medium in which our consciousness is half-diluted: we are not quite ‘thinking,’ not entirely responding, but we are more or less there. We are not fully present and not entirely absent; not fully withdrawn, yet not completely available. It cannot be said that we are really participating in anything and we may, in fact, be half conscious of our alienation and resentment. Yet we derive a certain comfort from the vague sense that we are ‘part of’ something – although we are not quite able to define what that something is – and probably wouldn’t want to define it even if we could. We just float along in the general noise. Resigned and indifferent, we share semiconsciously in the mindless mind of Muzak and radio commercials which passes for ‘reality.’
Thomas Merton, Essential Writings
Fear is the cheapest room in the house.
I would like to see you living in better conditions.
Hafiz
In human life, if you feel that you have made a mistake, you don’t try to undo the past or the present, but you just accept where you are and work from there. Tremendous openness as to where you are is necessary. This also applies to the practice of meditation, for instance. A person should learn to meditate on the spot, in the given moment, rather than thinking, “. . . When I reach pension age, I’m going to retire and receive a pension, and I’m going to build my house in Hawaii or the middle of India, or maybe the Gobi Desert, and THEN I’m going to enjoy myself. I’ll live a life of solitude and then I’ll really meditate.” Things never happen that way.
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Transcending Madness
With our mobile phones and wireless devices, we are now able to be so connected that we can be in touch with anyone and everyone at any time, and do business anywhere. But have you noticed that, in the process, we run the risk of never being in touch with ourselves? In the overall seduction, we can easily forget that our primary connection to life is through our own interiority – the experiencing of our own body and all our senses, including the mind – which allow us to touch and be touched by the world, and to act appropriately in response to it. And for that, we need moments that are not filled with anything, in which we do not jump to get in one more phone call or send one more email, or plan one more event, or add to our to-do list.
Jon Kabat Zinn
Meditation is about letting the mind be as it is and knowing something about how it is in this moment.
It’s not about getting somewhere else, but about allowing yourself to be where you already are.
Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever you go, there you are
