Besides the noble art of getting things done,
there is the noble art of leaving things undone.
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
Lin Yutang, Chinese writer, 1895 – 1976
Tag: Mindfulness
The importance of empty days
I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.
May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude
Connecting
If you are connected to the body you are in the present moment. Now, any time we do mindfulness meditation, which is this very simple practice of noticing, we bring our attention to the experience, living that experience, and registering what’s here. If you are with your breathing it’s not only being with your breath — breath in breath out breath in — it is also letting the experience of breathing be registered in that experience. You are taking in the sensations of that experience in a deeper, fuller way. It’s like you are on the beach on a nice sunny day, you’re on the edge of the ocean, and you stand there and take in the breeze, the smell of the ocean, the sight. You really register the experience; you take it in. So, in the same way, you sit with your breath and take in the fullness of the experience of breathing in.
Gil Fronsdal
Breathing and letting go
Just staying with Thich Nhat Hanh to start this day, as his simple words can be one way of working with fearful thoughts as they arise. So if you notice yourself getting anxious, or the mind beginning to rush and lean forward, you might like to try saying these words to yourself, aligning them with the rhythm of your breathing:
I breathe in, I breathe out.
Deeper, gentler.
I become calm, I let go.
I smile, I am free.
photo: jamesjen
The wind blows through
Maybe it is because it is windy here in Ireland, that I post a reflection on the wind to help us deal with moments we are afraid, feeling deficient, or burdened with the need to “become”, to be better, as Sharon Salzberg described this morning :
It is essential to understand that an emotion is merely something that arises, remains and then goes away. A storm comes, it stays a while, and then it moves away. At the critical moment remember you are much more than your emotions. This is a simple thing that everyone knows, but you may need to be reminded of it: you are more than your emotions.
Thich Nhat Hahn, Healing Pain and Dressing Wounds
Not leaning
In our usual mind state, we are continually activating the process that in Buddhist terminology is known as “bhava,” which literally means “becoming.” In this space of becoming, we are subtly leaning forward into the future, trying to have security based on feeling that we can hold on, we can try to keep things from changing. We are continually out of balance in this state – in meditation we might notice that we even try to feel the next breath while the present one is still happening. When we speak about letting go, or unplugging, or renouncing, we are talking about dropping the burden of becoming and just returning our awareness to the natural center of our being, returning to a state of natural peace.
Sharon Salzberg, How Doing Nothing Can Help You Truly Live, Huffington Post
photo arcalino
