Tag: Awareness

Learning from the less pleasant moments

Karl Duffy1 Comment

It is essential to learn to confront the less pleasant aspects of existence. Our job as meditators is to learn to be patient with ourselves, to see ourselves in an unbiased way, complete with all our sorrows and inadequacies. We have to learn to be kind to ourselves. In the long run avoiding unpleasantness is a very unkind thing to do to yourself. Paradoxically, kindness entails confronting unpleasantness when it arises. When you are having a bad time, examine that experience, observe it mindfully, study the phenomenon and learn its mechanics. The way out of a trap is to study the trap itself, and learn how it is built. You do this by taking the thing apart, piece by piece. The trap can’t trap you if it has been taken to pieces. The result is freedom.

Bhante Gunaratna, Mindfulness in Plain English

Letting the day pass through the mind

Karl Duffy1 Comment

We can …. look upon life as something that flows through the mind. Rather than thinking of oneself as a person who is going places, consider these as images going through the mind. Right now we have the image of the meditation hall; this is what we can perceive. The sound of this voice; the feeling of sitting on a cushion; the sense of sight; see that all these things flow through the mind like a current. When Ajahn Sumedho went traveling recently he said he made the determination before he left that he wasn’t going to go around the world, he was just going to let the world go through his mind. Afterwards he said the result was very peaceful: he went everywhere, saw everyone, did everything, but the sense of movement, of a person heading towards somewhere, was absent; there was stillness in its place.

Ajahn Amaro

Lessons in every season

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

Mary Oliver, Starlings in Winter

The two aspects of meditation

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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

Our roots are deep, despite the wind

Karl Duffy8 Comments

The strong winds on Sunday night blew the last leaves from the trees and they stand bare in the garden, clearly seen against the grey sky. Snow fell on the tops of the nearby Jura mountains. I was involved in a retreat over the weekend where we reflected on Kabir’s beautiful words “Throw away all thoughts of imaginary things and stand firm in that which you are“. However, as we all experience from time to time,  that firmness does not always seem so near, and we can be blown by winds of doubt and self-criticism. It feels cold and we think we are alone.  In moments like these we have to be patient. We cannot see the whole picture or understand why things are happening. When moments seem dark we can identify with what is going on in our emotions and get fixed there. We settle quickly into the negative feelings about ourself or our life,  turn in on ourselves and close down. However, the theme of the weekend,  and the weather outside,  remind us to keep our roots deep in the goodness underneath, and not in what passes through the mind.  We do not need to hold on to what is happening. Some kinds of unknowing are right. We trust even if we cannot see.  In waiting,  even in difficult moments,  what is coming to pass is gradually revealed.

I prefer winter …… when you feel the bone structure of the landscape  –  the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.

Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.

Andrew Wyatt,  American Painter

Not following our patterns

Karl Duffy1 Comment

We need the freedom that Mindfulness invites for us – the freedom that we do not have to follow the unconscious patterns of acute reactivity. We need to remember that it is possible to notice deeply what is happening, understand it with some wisdom, treat it with some of the compassion inherent in our humanity, and move into responses and actions that are of benefit – that is, to move toward that which lessens suffering and creates happiness, not just for us as individuals, but us as a collective world.

Our Mindfulness practice, whether it is on the cushion paying attention to the emotions and thoughts that weave between the breath and bodily sensations, or whether it is in the world paying attention to our actions and behaviors which emerge from our emotions and thoughts, is always a reminder that in order to change any unhealthy or harmful patterns –  in order to transform any suffering – we have to first become aware of the patterns themselves. We cannot change anything that we are not aware of.

Can I be mindful and loving of whatever arises.
If I can’t be loving in this moment, can I be kind.
If I can’t be kind, can I be non-judgmental.
If I can’t be non-judgmental, can I not cause harm.
And if I cannot not cause harm, can I cause the least amount of harm possible?

Larry Yang, Now More Than Ever We Need Mindfulness, Huffington Post