Let’s go back to our experience-body, focus on it, and let things happen within that focus, without pushing or trying to find anything, or come to a conclusion. In that context, when we come out of wanting anything to happen, there’s some spaciousness – and when a feeling comes up, try to attune to that spaciousness. Develop an attitude and energy of not-feeding, demanding, pushing away, skipping off or proliferation around the feeling. This is nonattachment. By practicing in this way we realize that for these few moments we don’t have to solve the problems of existence, or know who we are, or what we’re going to do.
Ajahn Sucitto, Turning the Wheel of Truth
What we do when we get anxious and insecure is we speed up. We get busy: we get addicted to email, we get addicted to being online, we get addicted to food and drugs, we get addicted to talking to other people–not just to communicate but just to keep busy. Our practices offer a way of saying, Hey, come back over here, reconnect. The only way that you’ll actually wake up and have some freedom is if you have the capacity and courage to stay with the vulnerability and the discomfort. Meditation helps us to pay attention so that we can directly realize and trust the goodness that’s there. We actually begin to recognize that who we are is awareness, who we are is love, and our sense of identity shifts in such a fundamental way that it actually challenges the small-self story.
Mindfulness has the ability to notice something dispassionately and to maintain a state of coolness, of dispassion, by referring to and working with the mind’s responses; this is a highly focused but not fixated state. For example, on hearing a sound we can notice what that sound does to us. When we hear a powerful sound, like a chainsaw or some machine screeching away, we can feel the mind tensing up. But then if we’re mindful, keeping a sense of coolness about that, the mind actually relaxes; we hear the sound simply as a sound, and we don’t get this build-up of stress. So in some ways, although it’s rather undramatic, this is a very valuable practice. Now we’re not saying, “The way to meditate is to go and listen to a chainsaw” or, “Go and sit in front of a spin drier all day long”, but it’s a way of dismantling the compulsiveness – the ways that we get caught with things – not by antagonism, but by just staying objective and dispassionate. With an unpleasant experience, the mind habitually tenses up and to tries to push the feeling away, but with a pleasant sound or taste the mind tends to go towards it and tries to hold on to it and linger in it, or gobble it up. But then, through simply noticing that, we begin to find a sense of calm composure in ourselves so that, no matter what comes into consciousness, we are able to register it for what it is and to maintain the emotional mood of dispassion, of objectivity. We see that whatever we experience comes, and then goes. It has the nature to arise, and then cease.
Mindfulness is the energy that helps us recognize the conditions of happiness that are already present in our lives. You don’t have to wait ten years to experience this happiness. It is present in every moment of your daily life. There are those of us who are alive but don’t know it. But when you breathe in, and you are aware of your in-breath, you touch the miracle of being alive. That is why mindfulness is a source of happiness and joy. Most people are forgetful; they are not really there a lot of the time. Their mind is caught in their worries, their fears, their anger, and their regrets, and they are not mindful of being there. That state of being is called forgetfulness — you are there but you are not there. You are caught in the past or in the future. You are not there in the present moment, living your life deeply. That is forgetfulness. The opposite of forgetfulness is mindfulness. Mindfulness is when you are truly there, mind and body together.
