We are so achievement-orientated that we often surge right by the true value of relating to what’s before us, because we think that accomplishing things will complete us, when it is experiencing life that will.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
Tag: Meditation
Our place of peace
The thoughts we have are all just random and yet we take them as me and mine. And either we are fascinated by them and we create a whole story, or we get fed up with them and want to get rid of them. So we’re always in a struggle. But it’s the reaching out with “me” and “mine” which creates the basis for the sticky quality of experience. If it is just seen as another ephemeral mind moment, as a thought arising and passing away, the mind is left unshaken and clear. It doesn’t have that sense of “me” and “mine.” One is not taking it as “me” and “mine”, making that identification. This brings one to a place of letting go, of relinquishment. This is where our place of peace is and the place where our practice must return to.
Ajahn Passano, A Dhamma Compass
Inner movies
Sitting quietly in meditation is the best research lab to observe the minds behaviour when it isn’t being interrupted, called to order. Sitting quietly, we inquire into our experience: can we exit our mental multiplex cinema at will? Or do you find yourself moving from one inner movie to another, to another, a triple feature of memories and fantasies of last year, next year, the ups and downs of love and work and family recast in a seemingly endless tape loop? Is this really freely chosen or a chained-to-the-theater-seat compulsive habit? Meditation practice is based on a simple commitment— the commitment to being fully present in mind and body.
Gaylon Ferguson, Natural Wakefulness
Going slower
We have the impression that the busier we are, the faster we should go and so we rush about. But if we look closely at “speeding to achieve more,” often we achieve less and sometimes things fall by the wayside or apart. We are limited by our physical, mental and emotional energy and there can be space and time constraints. Do we think that we are above these limits and constraints and can run around, accumulating projects and activities regardless? Or do we recognize and appreciate these limits and constraints and instead of fighting or hoping to transcend them, creatively engage with them? The basis for this creative engagement could be this phrase “the busier I am, the slower I should go.”
We can use this phrase in different ways. It could help us look at how we organize ourselves. Do we take on too much? Are we realistic about how much we can accomplish? How do we work? What are our assumptions? But even more so how do we feel or think? Do we need to feel busy to feel alive and worthy? Are we grasping at the feelings of rushing about and excitement? What would it mean to go slower? Would it be so bad? It might help us to prioritize better. What is important or essential now? What is urgent and non-urgent? When we are busy and excited everything seems urgent and essential but we can multi-task only so much before we collapse.
Martine Batchelor, The Busier you are, the Slower you should go
A relationship with the world
Life can only find you if you are paying real attention to something other than your own concerns, if you can hear and see the essence of otherness in the world, if you can treat the world as if it is not just a backdrop to your own journey, if you can have a relationship with the world that isn’t based on triumphing over it or complaining about it
David Whyte, The Three Marriages; Reimagining Work, Self and Relationships
Adding to bare experience
Every moment’s experience of an object will come with a feeling tone, whether or not this feeling is accessed by conscious awareness. In response to a feeling of pleasure or pain, an emotional response or attitude of liking or not liking the object may also arise. Most of us conflate these two experiences much of the time, concluding that a particular object is liked or disliked. However, in fact the object is merely experienced, and the liking or disliking of it is something added by our psychological response to it. This difference is a subtle but important nuance… It is the difference between “I am an unworthy person” and “I am a person who is feeling unworthy just now.”
Andrew Olendzki, Unlimiting Mind
