Tag: Present moment

Befriending the wandering mind

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

From a different tradition than yesterday – this time from a former Catholic monk and friend of Thomas Merton –   similar instructions on how to work with thoughts in meditation. He recommends a patient, gentle attitude towards ourselves, or toward the inevitable swings in thoughts and moods which we experience, not over-identifying with that which arises and passes away. This gentle, non-judgmental, befriending is the key to ongoing practice.

As we patiently learn to listen to the thoughts that arise, endure,  and pass away within us, we come to a deep experiential knowing of ourselves as we really are. We learn to befriend our own wandering mind, neither abandoning it through daydreaming or sleepiness nor invading it with more thoughts about the thoughts that are already there.  By quietly persevering in sustained nonthinking meditative awareness, we come to a new groundedness within ourselves. The meditative mind that neither thinks,  nor is reducible to any thought. grows stronger, calmer and more stable. In time we learn to listen with God’s ears to our wandering mind while at the same time passing beyond all that our wandering mind can comprehend

A mind that looks and does not think

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One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man

Like a snowball gathering speed

Karl Duffy2 Comments

To start the new year, back to basics….A lovely text on how the mind proliferates on the basis of a simple feeling and makes a whole story out of it. We will probably get a lot of opportunity to practice with this  as we return to work this week and the holiday excitement fades. So this Monday, like every day, we start over again….. becoming more and more aware of this process, and creating a gap.

The outflowing of the mind is what one is witnessing in meditation when the mind surges off into sights and sounds, opinions, thoughts or feelings. It is most important to get acquainted with what that is like for the mind: the attention pouring out into different things. One can see how, first of all, there is just a vague thought of a memory, or a shape that you notice, and it is quite ephemeral; there is nothing very much there, you just remember some event. Then it catches our attention and, as the mind goes into it, suddenly what was just a vague and insubstantial thing comes to life – and our attention has brought it to life. We have breathed life into that thought with the act of attention.

As we give attention to it and it comes to life, then the whole flow of feeling along with that increases and develops – whether the feeling is pleasant or painful or whatever. If there is no mindfulness, then that feeling conditions self-centered desire; if it is a pleasant feeling, a desire for more of it; if it is a painful feeling, a desire to get away from it. Then that desire turns into attachment and the attachment turns into what is called ‘becoming’   – like a wave gathering strength.  Then, as the attachment and the becoming increase, we find ourselves thoroughly caught up with some melodrama and carried away on the whole cycle of birth and death. We are born into a memory, a hope or a worry, born into a piece of music or a feeling; and if we are born into it then we die with it when it comes to an end. Suddenly we find ourselves stranded and lost in another world.

If there is wisdom then we realise – “This is a feeling” –  and we follow it as it goes through its cycle of life. Then, as the feeling fades, there is nothing there creating more momentum around it. The feeling fades like a sound and then there is silence.

Ajahn Amaro, Silent Rain.

Distracting ourselves

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Thomas Merton once said that the biggest spiritual problem of our time is efficiency, work, pragmatism; by the time we keep the plant running there is little time and energy for anything else.  Neil Postman suggests that, as a culture, we are amusing ourselves to death, that is, distracting ourselves into a bland, witless superficiality.  Henri Nouwen has written eloquently on how our greed for experience and the restlessness, hostility, and fantasy it generates, block solitude, hospitality, and prayer in our lives.  They are right.

What each of these authors, and countless others, are saying is that we, for every kind of reason, good and bad, are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion.  It is not that we have anything against God, depth, and spirit, we would like these, it is just that we are habitually too preoccupied to have any of these show up on our radar screens.  We are more busy than bad, more distracted than nonspiritual, and more interested in the movie theater, the sports stadium, and the shopping mall and the fantasy life they produce in us than we are in church.  Pathological busyness, distraction, and restlessness are major blocks today within our spiritual lives.

Ron Rolheiser, The Holy Longing.

Living the moments in front of us

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I am thinking, or trying to think, about all the imponderables for which we have
no answers, yet endless interest all the range of our lives,

and it’s good for the head no doubt
to undertake such meditation; Mystery, after all, is God’s other name, and deserves our  considerations surely.

But, but – excuse me now, please;
it’s morning, heavenly bright,
and my irrepressible heart begs me to hurry on into the next exquisite moment.

Mary Oliver, Trying to Be Thoughtful in the First Brights of Dawn

Why resolutions can often just increase problems

Karl Duffy3 Comments

Carl Rogers suggested that a lot of the distress or anxiety in our lives comes when there is incongruence between the ideal image of the self which we have,  and our actual lived experience. This anxiety is expressed differently in each person, due to the many ways that the self-image is formed. Around New Years Day we are encouraged, even on some well-meaning sites, to form resolutions for the coming year, to look at the many ways in which we need to change. Now,  reflecting on the discipline needed to establish healthy practices in our lives is a good thing, as is being inspired by other people. And there is often a desire in the winter months to reflect on what brought the deepest joy over the past year and  shed dead wood in preparation for new growth  – or symbolically throw old plates out the window, as the Italians do. So working at our edge gently is always necessary in our lives.  However, over the years, I have come to believe that, instead of helping, a lot of these notions –   and the pre-digested strategies offered –  actually feed the problem, by strengthening the thoughts about an ideal self which we wish to have, and our need to fix ourselves to get it. Ironically, continually setting expectations of sudden growth – frequently encouraged in today’s society – can introduce a subtle violence in how we relate to ourselves and prevent us from deeper happiness, because it feeds three tendencies which our minds have. The first is the temptation to believe that there is a magic time in the future – maybe next year – when we are going to get it “all together”, and our lives will be perfect,  once we do such and such a practice or adopt some latest idea. Second, it encourages us to move away from the life which we actually have , and spend our time in thoughts about the life we would like to have. And,  as we notice again and again in practice, the mind prefers to spend more time in thinking about life than in working with what is actually in front of us, right now.  Thirdly, it stimulates the “comparing mind”, which is happy to evoke a better version of ourselves, which seems a good thing but frequently triggers discouragement and fear rather than a real ability to change. Often making expectations for the future is just a way of running away from relating to the life we actually have.  So,  maybe the best “resolution” is to give up on this notion of fixing oneself, and  rather focus on how we can deepen our lived experiences right now, with all their imperfections.  For most of us, that is where we are called to grow, and our slow commitment to more conscious living is better served by that, rather than by seeking magic changes in the coming weeks which will bring us suddenly to perfection.

Give up on yourself. Begin taking action now, while being neurotic or imperfect, or a procrastinator, or unhealthy, or lazy, or any other label by which you inaccurately describe yourself. Go ahead and be the best imperfect person you can be and get started on those things you want to accomplish before you die.

Shoma Morita