In essence, mindfulness is about wakefulness.
Our minds are such that we are often more asleep than awake
to the unique beauty and possibilities of each present moment as it unfolds.
Jon Kabat Zinn
Tag: Nature
Always judging our lives
We tend to run our whole life trying to avoid all that hurts or displeases us, noticing the objects, people, or situations that we think will give us pain or pleasure, avoiding one and pursuing the other. Without exception, we all do this. We remain separate from our life, looking at it, analyzing it, judging it, seeking to answer the questions, ‘What am I going to get out of it? Is it going to give me pleasure or comfort or should I run away from it?” We do this from morning until night.
Charlotte Joko Beck
Ways we try to solidify the self
Trying to solidify the self through accomplishments or material goods is a natural impulse in our uncertain, impermanent world. But it doesn’t help. It doesn’t make life perfect; it doesn’t make us immortal; it doesn’t lead to wisdom. In fact, achieving and gaining can cause new kinds of suffering, our responsibilities and our worries can be compounded.
Andrea Miller, Bird Songs
Keeping our selves fluid and not freezing
There are two conditions that need to be understood in learning about mindfulness. The first is that freezing or congealing around pain or pleasure brings “suffering”. When we have pain or discomfort and we freeze up in that moment, we suffer. When we have pleasure of even the subtlest sort and we grasp onto it, we suffer. We are cut off from the core of our being.
There are two ways to reduce suffering that is connected to pain or discomfort:decrease the discomfort or pain by changing our circumstances (possible only under some circumstances) or reduce the habit of congealing or freezing up around the discomfort (always possible). Similarly, there are two ways to increase our fulfillment in pleasure: increase the pleasure (not always possible and often leads to addictions) or learn to contact even the subtlest pleasure clearly, eliminating the congealing (always possible). Only with the second option do we have the true freedom that does not depend on situations or circumstances.
To reduce or eliminate our freezing, grasping or holding is what I will call “mindfulness skill”. When we have achieved this skill and can use it on a moment to moment basis in our feeling lives, we are free to be persons of complete feeling. Rather than rigidify and fixate on either fears of pain or desires for pleasure, we find ourselves “flowing” through our emotional lives feeling the incredible lightness of our being.
Shinzen Young
On seeing changes in nature
The swallows are flying low over the fields and are more visible in noisy groups now. They prepare to depart, even though the weather is still very mild. I found it an interesting learning experience to watch them – the sensation of joy which I had in their movement in the late afternoon sun was immediately followed by a pang of sadness in the thought that they will soon be gone. How hard it is just to allow things be, as they are, without wanting to hold on or immediately adding on some extra thoughts! It is easy to know intellectually that all things change, often in ways that we cannot predict. However, knowing that deep in my bones and accepting it is not always as simple. In this case, acceptance was not too difficult to achieve – swallows come and go in their own time and there is no way to stop them. So I am grateful for these Autumn changes – becoming more visible each day – as among the most important tools for learning which I have. They gently repeat, over and over again, many of the same truths. They allow me see how change has an effect on my moods and how I like to hold on. They show us how often I relate to things depending on how they make me feel, rather than with complete freedom. I resist change each day but change is inevitable; my happiness is related to the way I choose to respond to it.
Nothing is so fleeting as external form,
which withers and alters
like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn.
Umberto Eco
Not all growth is visible
If we can possibly learn to trust darkness, to understand that life is a pattern of starts and stops, of celebrating the past, of coming to terms with the present and of believing the future to be kind, then we can come to understand that the dark parts are only those closing-down moments, like flowers at night, till the sun shines again……Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that not all growth takes place in the sunlight. Then we come to understand that God is at work in our lives even when we believe that nothing whatsoever is going on.
Joan Chittister, For all that Has Been, Thanks
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