Tag: Meditation

Seeing our attachments

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File:Sand castle, Cannon Beach.jpg

Most practice gets caught in the area of fiddling with our environments or our minds. ” My mind should be quiet”. Our mind doesn’t matter; what matters is non-attachment to the activities of the mind. And our emotions are harmless unless they dominate us – that is, if we are attached to them – then they create dis-harmony for everyone. The first problem in practice is to see that we are attached. As we do consistent, patient practice we begin to know that we are nothing but attachments; they rule our lives. But we never lose an attachment by saying it has to go. Only as we gain true awareness of its true nature does it quietly and imperceptibly wither away; like a sandcastle with waves rolling over, it just smooths out and finally Where is it? What was it? …

Charlotte Joko Beck

photo curt smith

Sunday Quote: Letting go of the constant commentary…

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walking in nature

 A person knows when they have found their calling

when they stop thinking about how to live and begin to live.

Thomas Merton

An ocean of fear

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seas

Fear and anxiety evolved to keep us from physical danger. Our brains use the same mechanisms when it comes to emotional danger also, and depending on the upbringing we have, we can find that we expend a lot of energy each day dealing with fear. This underlying fear is not easy to work with; however, acknowledging it and becoming aware of our instinct to run away or cover it up with distractions, relationships and busyness, is a necessary starting point. We practice looking at what scares us and opening to all that life offers. We develop a greater compassion towards ourselves and our confidence can grow.

If we are honest with ourselves, most of us will have to admit that we live out our lives in an ocean of fear. 

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Stillness through non-interference.

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still water

Ajahn Chah would  explain that the mind’s nature is still, yet it’s flowing. It’s flowing, yet it is still. He would use the word “citta” for the knowing mind, the mind of awareness. The citta itself is totally still. It has no movement; it is not related to all that arises and ceases. It is silent and spacious. Mind objects — sights, sounds, smell, taste, touch, thoughts, and emotions — flow through it. Problems arise because the clarity of the mind gets entangled with sense impressions. By contemplating our own experience, we can make a clear distinction between the mind that knows (citta) and the sense impressions that flow through it. By refusing to get entangled with any sense impressions, we find refuge in that quality of stillness, silence, and spaciousness, which is the mind’s own nature. This policy of  non-interference allows everything and is disturbed by nothing.

Ajahn Amaro, Small Boat

Holding things and oneself lightly

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File:Lauma Grīva (2013 World Championships in Athletics) 01.jpg

The practice of mindfulness has as its overall goal the reduction of suffering and an increase in fullness in the totality of our lives. But in order for us to see the actual benefits now, whether here in Ireland or wherever you are reading this,  we need to practice it with the big and small moments of each day. This profound text indicates one way we do this. Mindfulness has a quality of not wobbling in the face of the different winds that blow us, the difficulties and changes which we face in our day-to-day living. Persistent practice allows us to hold ourselves more lightly, and not be as strongly fused with the story we maintain about how our lives should be or how certain moments in the day should go. One way of saying this is that we are not as attached, or not clinging, to outcomes, or to some fixed aspects of our identity. In this way changes and unexpected turnings do not bring the same dismay as once they did:

How do we arrive at non-agitation through non-clinging?

When the instructed person does not regard form with these words: “This is mine, this I am, this is my self.”

The form of his changes and alters,

but with the change and alteration of form,

sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure and despair do not arise.

The Buddha, S 22.8
photo dmitry rozhkov

If you are attentive

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breakfast333

The present moment is filled with joy and happiness.

If you are attentive, you will see it.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step