Meditation – Page 913 – Mindfulbalance

Thoughts while working in the garden

July 25, 2012July 23, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

Patience is the ability to watch something until it changes. Ajahn Sucitto

Each day there are plenty of opportunities to practice patience in our lives. However, for both inner and outer reasons, staying still does not come easy for most of us. This is firstly because there is always active in the mind a strong tendency towards becoming, which translates as a desire to move on to the next thing. This can mean that there is always activity going on in thoughts, sometimes useful, sometimes less so, but always leaning forward. Past memories can also rise up and move us, meaning that stuff which happened yesterday or last year can make us feel restless and anxious for resolution now. The energy is always flowing and we tend to get caught up in it. And because the mind is always moving, the body tends to want to move also, and we end up believing that unless we are in some way active we are wasting our life.

It is also true that society today encourages us to see any delay as a waste of time. We have gotten so used to instant results, faster broadband, instant downloads and so on that we are tricked into thinking that this model applies to everything, such as our interior life, or how to respond to setbacks such as illness or job loss, or other transitions in life. However, nature reminds us of a different rhythm, as when we are working in the vegetable garden and observing the tomatoes as they slowly move towards being ripe. Or waiting for the right time to re-seed a lawn, as the weather now is too hot and I will have to wait for a month or two. There is nothing we can do to hurry things up or change the pace at which it is right to go.

If you really aren’t trying to get anywhere else in this moment, patience takes care of itself. It is a remembering that things unfold in their own time. The seasons cannot be hurried. Spring comes, the grass grows by itself. Being in a hurry usually doesn’t help and it can create a great deal of suffering – sometimes in us, sometimes in those who have to be around us. Patience is an ever-present alternative to the mind’s endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and you will find lying beneath it, subtly or not so subtly is anger. It’s the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself) or something for it.

Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever you go, There you are

….and the consequent defensive nature of consuming

July 24, 2012July 23, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

Consumers are often not conscious of being motivated by social status and are far more likely to attribute such motives to others than to themselves. We live with high levels of psychological denial about the connection between our buying habits and the social statements they make. Most Americans would deny that, by their spending, they are seeking status, in the usual meaning of the word — looking to position themselves in a higher economic stratum. They might point out that they don’t want everything in sight, that purchases are often highly selective. Indeed, what stands out most about much of the spate of spending is its defensive character. Parents worry that their children need computers and degrees from good colleges to avoid being left behind in the global economy. Children, concerned about being left out in the here and now, demand shoes, clothes, and video games. … Increasingly overworked, adults need stress-busting weekends, microwaves, restaurants meals, and takeout to keep up with their daily lives. But the cost of each of these conveniences add up.

Juliet Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need

Some thoughts on fear…

July 24, 2012July 23, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Very early we all begin our attempt to protect ourselves against the threatening occurrences that pop up regularly. In the fear caused by them, we begin to contract. And the open, spacious character of our young life feels pushed through a funnel into a bottleneck of fear. Once we begin to use language the rapidity of this contracting increases. And particularly as our intelligence grows, the process becomes really speedy: now we not only try to handle the threat by storing it in every cell of our body, but (using memory) we relate each new threat to all of the previous ones – and so the process compounds itself.

Charlotte Joko Beck

…and letting go of an idea of perfection

July 23, 2012July 21, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

When we seek happiness through accumulation, either outside of ourselves–from other people, relationships, or material goods–or from our own self-development, we are missing the essential point. In either case we are trying to find completion. But according to Buddhism, such a strategy is doomed. Completion comes not from adding another piece to ourselves but from surrendering our ideas of perfection.

Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness

Contentment with oneself…

July 23, 2012July 23, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

When you sit, let things settle and allow all your discordant self with its ungenuineness and unnaturalness to dissolve, out of that rises your real being. You experience an aspect of yourself which is more genuine and more authentic-the “real” you. As you go deeper, you begin to discover and connect with your fundamental goodness. The whole point of meditation is to get used to the that aspect which you have forgotten. In Tibetan “meditation” means “getting used to”. Getting used to what? To your true nature. This is why, you are told to “rest in the nature of mind”. You just quietly sit and let all thoughts and concepts dissolve. It is like when the clouds dissolve or the mist evaporates, to reveal the clear sky and the sun shining down. When everything dissolves like this, you begin to experience your true nature, to “live”. Then you know it, and at that moment, you feel really good. It is unlike any other feeling of well being that you might have experienced. This is a real and genuine goodness, in which you feel a deep sense of peace, contentment and confidence about yourself.

Sogyal Rinpoche, Essential Teachings on Meditation

Noticing our sense of entitlement

July 22, 2012July 20, 2012 Karl Duffy2 Comments

Learning to live from genuine happiness requires first seeing what blocks it. One of the major blocks is our deeply rooted sense of entitlement. In fact, this is a big part of the “problem” of happiness: we firmly believe that we should be happy. We think it’s our right, and consequently, we feel entitled to it, even if we’re not clear what happiness is, except to feel good. This expectation can have many faces. For example, we often feel entitled to good health, expecting that we can and should be able to stay youthful and physically fit. When life comes along to greet us with illness or injury we can easily sink into a stupor of frustration and even despair. Sometimes just getting a cold will trigger our anxieties over losing control and feeling powerless. This sense of entitlement — which basically says that life should go the way we want and expect it to go — even tells us we shouldn’t have to experience discomfort. Then, when we do experience discomfort, we feel that something is wrong; we might get angry and feel it’s unfair, or we may feel sorry for ourselves.