Tag: Be fully present

Working with our “stuff” today

Karl Duffy1 Comment
airport-queues
Can we see our ‘stuff’ just for what it is, rather than making it into a big ‘me’ and ‘my problem’ – the things I’ve got to work out, resolve, fix, get beyond, get rid of; thinking about what I’m lacking or what I’ve got obstructing me.  All this stuff!  It’s really just the play of the mind… has causes and conditions for its existence. It’s the stuff of the world. And, it’s the stuff that we learn from, actually.  If we don’t acknowledge suffering, if we aren’t aware of suffering,then where do we find the energy to understand it and go beyond it? In other words, whatever we’ve got to work with, it’s the stuff of awakening – if we can find the right relationship to it.
Ajahn Jitindriya, The Stuff of Awakening

Listening to all the senses…

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Meditation is really about paying attention, and the only way in which we can pay attention is through our senses, all of them, including the mind. Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience. Of course, our experience is vast, and includes our own body, our mind, our heart, and the entire world.

Jon Kabat Zinn

Fully involved

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HappyChild

This quote comes from a different tradition than the meditation quote earlier, but is essentially saying the same thing. It is from Charlotte Selver, an extraordinary woman and one of the greatest influences on body-orientated psychotherapy today.  She lived a long life – was teaching still at age 101 – and  emphasized that we should being fully present in each moment, seeing it as completely new, being open to all the riches it could contain. This requires a full commitment, not standing on the fence, not watching the moments with tired eyes. She taught this by teaching movement in the body, being fully in touch which its action:

It is not first this, then this, then that – the whole person comes into motion.
There is nowhere where it stays as is, when I begin to allow movement.  

When you have to laugh, there’s nowhere where you don’t laugh.   Or you are only partly involved with laughing?
Nowhere, when you are crying, where it isn’t crying in you.  
Does that make sense?  
In other words, to give myself to something means not to go point by point.


Charlotte Selver

The Body doesn’t lie

Karl Duffy5 Comments
breathe13
Practising meditation morning and evening is very important to help us to understand how our mind works. We are then able to recognise that we need to be present. Can we pay attention to the feeling, come back to the feeling – how you feel in the body when you are standing, talking to someone, or sitting, or walking? This is mindfulness, awareness, attention – bringing awareness back to the present. The body doesn’t lie; it never lies. The body always tells you the truth about where you are. But if you listen to your mind, that is where you go wrong. The body is the best tool you can have because it is always there with you, each moment you come back to the body to see where you are, how you feel. That is your support to stay present, to be able to receive life without trying to control it. And if we forget, instead of getting upset or being critical toward ourselves, we just feel grateful to remember. This is very important: ‘Thank you for remembering. I can start again….’ This is the beauty of the practice, of the teaching. We can start again. We can drop the past and start afresh.
Ajahn Upekkha, Being Present

Mistaking our thoughts for our self

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“This is boring” or “This is not working”, or “I can’t do this”. These are judgments.

Actually they are just thoughts.

It is important to recognize them as judgmental thinking and remind yourself that our practice involves suspending judgment and just watching whatever comes up, without pursuing them or acting in any way

Jon Kabat Zinn

When we live fully

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heathers

You should train yourself thus:

In the seen, there is only the seen,
in the heard, there is only the heard,
in the sensed, there is only the sensed,
in the cognized, there is only the cognized.
Thus you should see that
indeed there is no thing here;

…as you see that there is no thing there,
you will see that
you are therefore located neither in the world of this,
nor in the world of that,
nor in any place betwixt the two.
This alone is the end of suffering.

The Buddha, The Udana, 1.10