Tag: Awareness

Elephants and fleas

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Sometimes when our thoughts are like little fleas that jump off our noses, we just see the little flickers of thought, like ripples, which might have a very liberating quality. For the first time you might feel ” My goodness! There’s so much space, and it’s always been here.”   Another time it might feel like that elephant is sitting on you. It’s important to realize that meditation doesn’t prefer the flea to the elephant, or vice versa. It is simply a process of seeing what is, noticing that, accepting that, and then going on with life, which, in terms of the technique, is coming back to the simplicity of nowness, the simplicity of the out-breath. Whether you are completely caught up in discursive thought for the entire sitting period, or whether you feel that enormous sense of space, you can regard either one with gentleness and a sense of being awake and alive to who you are. Either way, you can respect that. So taming teaches that meditation is developing a nonaggressive attitude to whatever occurs in your mind. It teaches that meditation is not considering yourself an obstacle to yourself; in fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Pema Chodron

No need to go far today

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I often suggest that my students ask themselves the simple question: Do I know how to live? Do I know how to eat?  How much to sleep? How to take care of my body? How to relate to other people?….Life is the real teacher and the curriculum is all set up. The question is: Are there any students?

Larry Rosenberg, Breath by Breath

Under our feet

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At the entrance to some Zen Temples in Japan one finds a sign, saying simply kyakka-sho-ko. One way of translating this is Look under your feet. Like most zen sayings it is open to numerous interpretations, but the one I like to consider is the way that meditation, or entering any sacred space, begins right where we are standing, in the circumstances of our ordinary life. We may not even consider this as being worthy of attention or deserving special notice. We can find our daily life so distracted and drab that we may think that our real life lies elsewhere, or our happiness lies when we get some of the elements that are missing now. How often we do this – undervalue our actual life, or the opportunities presented for love in actual daily tasks, thinking that a more special version of life exists elsewhere. We are not helped by that fact that modern culture encourages dissatisfaction with what we have, always presenting something new and something better. And that this culture is a powerful narcotic. So we can find that we are not interested on what is under our feet, but prefer to look around or elsewhere, to live with our head in the clouds, planning or worrying, waiting…… anywhere other than just in this moment

So this phrase says to me – Look around, notice, appreciate, take care of what you have. This life, this place, this family, this relationship, this time. It reminds me that every moment – even ordinary activities such as eating, walking, shopping or cleaning the house  –  is where I can cultivate my attention. It carries an echo of that famous phrase – when we are eating,  we give our full attention to our eating, while walking we pay full attention to the sensation of walking.  The sacred is found in the ordinary; the ground of our growth is deep within our own being. Mindfulness practice in its simplest, is essentially developing the capacity to sit –  to be with ourselves –  and to be happy there.

Staying present with difficult times

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Each time you stay present with fear and uncertainty, you’re letting go of an habitual way of finding security and comfort. All those brain studies about meditation — where they place people in MRI machines or put electrodes on their heads — show us that each time you dare to remain where you are and do something completely fresh, unconventional, and nonhabitual, you open up new pathways in the brain. You experience that as strength and it builds your capacity to be open the next time around. By contrast, each time you follow your habitual approach, you reinforce the old pathway and make it more likely that you’ll go that way once again next time around.

We get many reruns in life, big reruns and small reruns. If your heart is gripped by jealousy or rage or loneliness or any other manifestation of fear, you don’t have to learn from it all at once. It’s not like if you get it right once, if you overcome your jealousy or anger once, then it’s smooth sailing with that emotional pattern for the rest of your life. There will be reruns. It will keep coming back, following the old grooves in the brain. That means you have lots and lots of chances to rouse yourself and let go. No need to exaggerate an emotional pattern, fixate on it, fuel it with more thoughts, or go into a tailspin. When you feel the shakiness, when the thoughts start to arise, when the tailspin is beginning, another rerun is in progress. You simply rouse yourself and let yourself be there.

Pema Chodron.

Getting a handle on the mind

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To train the mind, first we have to get a handle on it. We are thinking all the time. If we observe that thinking process for a second, we’ll see that it is triggered by the five sense faculties: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. We smell something or we see something, and we’re distracted. It’s hard to train the mind by using just the five sense consciousnesses — just smelling or just tasting, for example. We need to get hold of the discursive mind itself, the consciousness of thoughts, memories, and dreams. It’s being pulled in a lot of different directions, so we need a technique to stabilize it.

Training the mind is dependent upon the body. We reduce the body’s activity to focus the mind, so posture is very important. Then we use the breath, which is stable and consistent, as a focus for our intention. Joining our mind with the breath in meditation is often compared to the horse and the rider. The horse is the breath and the rider is the mind. We want those elements to be in continual contact. We have to be pragmatic about our practice. The mind is powerful. After racing around all day, it’s hard to follow through with the intention, “I’m going to stabilize my mind for one whole hour.” Instead, at the beginning of our session, we take the attitude, “Now I am going to focus.” Focus will bring us to moments of stillness and deepening, which profoundly affect the mind.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Dealing with difficulties as arising and falling away.

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Some people say that suffering is a fixed part of the mind, that it has been there forever. I try to explain that suffering is not intrinsic to the mind. It arises in the present moment. You have a mood of aversion in the mind and you experience suffering now. Think about a lemon. If you leave it alone is it sour? Where is the sourness then? It’s when the lemon contacts the tongue that sourness occurs. If you aren’t experiencing it, it’s as if it isn’t there. When there is contact with the tongue it arises at that moment. And from there arise dislike and afflictions. These afflictions are not intrinsic to the mind, but are momentary arisings.

Ajahn Chah, Being Dharma