Tag: Be fully present

Allowing and letting go

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We’ve never really accepted boredom as a conscious state. As soon as it comes into the mind we start looking for something interesting, something pleasant. But in meditation we’re allowing boredom to be. We’re allowing ourselves to be fully consciously bored, fully depressed, fed up, jealous, angry, disgusted. All the nasty unpleasant experiences of life that we have repressed out of consciousness and never really looked at, never really accepted, we begin to accept into conscious-ness not as personality problems any more, but just out of compassion. Out of kindness and wisdom we allow things to take their natural course to cessation, rather that just keep them going round in the same old cycles of habit. When we get used to looking through a dirty window everything seems grey, grimy and ugly. Meditation is a way of cleaning the window, purifying the mind, allowing things to come up into consciousness and letting them go.

Ajahn Sumedho,

Taking our place

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Each of us has a place in this world. Taking that place, I have come to feel, is our real job as human beings. We are not generic people, we are individuals, and when we appreciate that fact completely and allow ourselves to embrace it and grow into it fully, we see that our unique place in this world is the one thing that gives us a sense of ultimate fulfillment.

To take our place is to mature, and to grow into what we are. Mostly we take maturity for granted, as if it were something that comes quite naturally and completely as our bodies grow and our minds and hearts fill up with life experience. In fact, however, few of us are truly mature individuals; few of us really occupy our places. We are merely living out a dream of maturity, a set of received notions and images that passes for adulthood. What does it really mean to grow up? How do we do the work that will nurture a truly mature heart from which can flow healing words and deeds? Each of our lives depends on our undertaking the exploration that these questions urge us toward. And the mystery is that the whole world depends on each of us to take this human journey.

Norman Fischer, Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up

Not running after techniques

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‘I have been four months with you, and you have still not given me a method or technique.’ 

‘A method?’ said the Master. ‘What on earth would you want a method for?’

‘To attain inner freedom.’

The Master roared with laughter. ‘You need great skill indeed to set yourself free by means of the trap called a method.’

Anthony de Mello,  Awakening: Conversations with the Master

Sunday Quote: Where to put our attention

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Don’t look for meaning in the words.

Listen to the silences.

Samuel Beckett

Looking for the good

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This poem from Hafiz,  on drawing warmth from the sun,  makes even more sense in the light of the unseasonal weather in this part of the world and the very wet June which was seen in Ireland and England. Often in our lives we have to deliberately pay attention to the good things that happen, because our brain has a negativity bias and more easily stores the bad events of each day. As psychologist Robert Emmons and his colleagues at the University of California have shown, cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” has been linked to better health, less anxiety and is beneficial to subjective emotional well-being.  They found that people who consciously noted the good things in each day were more optimistic and felt happier than a control group. Consciously being aware helps us to notice what is good in our lives rather than always noticing and complaining about what is wrong and allows us to wake up to the gifts around us each day. Hafiz knew this and encourages us to squeezing the drops of light and warmth from even the brief appearances of the sun in our lives:

I know the voice of depression still calls to you.
I know those habits that can ruin your life still send their invitations .
But you are with the Friend now and look so much stronger.
You can stay that way and even bloom!
Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter.
Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear, from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.
Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days like a broken man Behind a camel.
You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
What actions of yours bring freedom and Love.


O keep squeezing drops of the Sun

From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter
And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.


Now, sweet one, Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!

Hafiz, Cast All Your Votes for Dancing

Another simple explanation

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This practice is just about the mind and its feelings. It is not something that you have to run after or struggle for. Breathing continues while working. Nature takes care of the natural processes – all we have to do is try to be aware. Just to keep trying, going inwards to see clearly. Meditation is like this.

Ajahn Chah, Collected Teaching, The Peace Beyond