As you start the practice, you have a sense of your body and a sense of where you are, and then you begin to notice the breathing. The whole feeling of the breath is very important. The breath should not be forced, obviously; you are breathing naturally. The breath is going in and out, in and out. With each breath you become relaxed.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Today dawned very foggy over Ireland and England, narrowing down things and dulling the senses somewhat. Sometimes, in similar ways, we narrow down our possibilities by not being open to all that is actually going on in our lives, as we think better is to be found elsewhere, or in the future:
We often disapprove of parts of our lives without really examining them – it’s like never going into certain rooms of your house. But meditation allows all the voices and all the images into the room. When we open the invisible doors, we can come to rest in the life we have; we can love it as it is instead of waiting for a shinier version. “Every day is a good day”, goes the Zen koan.
John Tarrant, Enlightenment is Something we do Together
photo aeou
Mindfulness is cultivated by assuming the stance of an impartial witness to your own experience. To do this requires that you become aware of the constant stream of judging and reacting to inner and outer experience and learn to step back from it.
When we begin practicing paying attention to the activity of our own mind, it is common to discover that we are constantly generating judgments about our experience.
Jon Kabat Zinn
The losing of paradise is enacted over and over again by the children of Adam and Eve. We clothe our souls with messages and doctrines, and lose contact with the great life in the naked breast of nature
Rabindranath Tagore
Does the rose have to do something? No, the purpose of a rose is to be a rose. Your purpose is to be yourself. You don’t have to run anywhere to become someone else. You are wonderful just the way you are. This teaching …. allows us to enjoy ourselves, the blue sky, and everything that is refreshing and healing in the present moment. We already have everything we are looking for, everything we want to become. I am happy in the present moment. I do not ask for anything else. I do not expect any additional happiness. Aimlessness is stopping and realizing the happiness that is already available.
Thich Nhat Hahn
Each meditation session is a journey of discovery to understand the basic truth of who we are. In the beginning the most important lesson of meditation is seeing the speed of the mind. But the meditation tradition says that mind doesn’t have to be this way: it just hasn’t been worked with. What we are talking about is very practical. Mindfulness practice is simple and completely feasible. And because we are working with the mind that experiences life directly, just by sitting and doing nothing, we are doing a tremendous amount.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Meditation is really just learning to enjoy your experience, so you don’t have to tense up. Don’t make meditation a project like everything else. The word “natural” is very important. Yesterday I was walking around and it was so beautiful here….We appreciate nature because it’s so uncontrived and unselfconscious. Bring that to mind and know that the body itself has its own intelligence.
Elizabeth Matthis-Namgyel, in Pema Chodron on 4 Keys to Waking Up
