Tag: Present moment

Recommended Summer Reading 2

Karl Duffy1 Comment

As well as books that apply mindfulness to problems or aspects of our life, it is good to strengthen our practice by reading books that focus on meditation in itself. Good ones are not easy to find, but this one – Turning the Mind into an Ally –  written by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche in 2004 is one of the best that there is.  I have returned to it on numerous occasions over the years, because it is a serious, but accessible work that looks at meditation as an extended exercise  in mind training and gives the tools to do this.

The book “translates”  some traditional teachings from Tibetan Buddhism into a language that is easy to understand in the West. It gets across the heart of  that meditation practice without the cultural baggage which can be so off-putting in similar books. The author is fond of using imagery to convey his point, comparing the mind to a wild horse, which we have to get to know and tame:

The bewildered mind is like a wild horse. It runs away when we try to find it, shies when we try to approach it. If we find a way to ride it, it takes off with the bit in its teeth and finally throws us right into the mud. We think that the only way to steady it is to give it what it wants. We spend so much of our energy trying to satisfy and entertain this wild horse of a mind.

The author goes on to outline – in very clear language –  the basics of mindfulness and sitting meditation to tame this wild horse.  It is here that he is most successful, gently going through the steps from the first, when we place the mind on the breath:

Placing our mind on the breath is the first thing we do in meditation. In the moment of placing our mind, it’s like we’re mounting a horse: we put our foot in the stirrup and pull ourselves up to the saddle. It’s a matter of taking our seat properly. This moment of placement starts when we extract our mind from its engagement with events, problems, thoughts and emotions. We take that wild and busy mind and place it on the breath. Even though we’re placing our consciousness, which isn’t physical, placement feels very physical.  In order for placement to be successful, we have to formally acknowledge that we’re letting go of concepts, thoughts and emotions: “Now I’m placing my mind upon the breath.”

This is an excellent hands-on manual for those who wish to deepen their understanding and practice of meditation as a way of working with the mind.  It is an encouragement to practice and as such is a valuable addition to any library.

Making time for our better health 2: Noticing internal busyness

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[The Princeton] Study (see yesterday’s post) offers an important clue about internal busyness. It’s rooted in an attitude about time. When the pace of work is intensified, as it is in modern industrial and post industrial societies, time is seen as a finite, ever-dwindling commodity. Because time sees scarce, people try to squeeze the maximum amount of productivity out of every minute. They tend to spend less time on things like meditation, contemplation and singing – activities that can’t be made increase the “yield” on the time invested in them. Even we…who supposedly have our eyes on the inner depths of life, often find ourselves living by the basic capitalist assumption that what we do needs to yield a quantifiable result. How many of us got interested in meditation when we read about University of Wisconsin studies that  showed that people who meditate can increase activity in the “happiness” section of the brain?  This assumption – that if we are going to spend time on something, it needs to produce a measurable yield – is one root of internal busyness.

Sally Kemption, Busyness plan

Not trying to get anywhere else

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They harvested the field of barley beside our house yesterday. Planted last autumn,  it has grown strongly even in the present drought. Another cycle of planting, caring and harvesting completed, each in its own rhythm. The energy in the seed comes to fruition in its own time and cannot be rushed.

If you cultivate patience, you almost can’t help cultivating mindfulness, and your meditation practice will become richer and more mature. After all 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

One step at a time

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Keep walking, though there is no place to get to.

Don’t try to see through the distance.

That’s not for human beings.

Move within

but don’t move the way fear makes you move

Rumi

Noticing when we are not present today

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By virtue of being human, each one of us is on intimate terms with not being present. Because of this, our intimacy with this felt absence is a powerful ally. Each time we awaken to no longer being present to ourselves or to another person, it is, paradoxically, a moment of presence. If we are willing to see the whole of our lives as practice, our awareness of the moments when we are not present, coupled with our intention to awaken, brings us into the present. Given our penchant for absence, opportunities for practicing  presence are abundant…… at heart, mindfulness meditation is about care, about a willingness to come up to our discomfort and pain without judgment, striving, manipulation or pretense. this gentle, open, nonjudgmental approach is both merciful and relentless asking of us more than we may ever have expected.

Saki Santorelli, Letting Ourselves Heal

To work with fear – notice, don’t analyse, don’t run

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When we notice that the conditions of the mind and the body are just the way conditions are, it’s a simple recognition. It’s not an analysis and it is not anything special. It’s just a bare recognition, a direct knowing of whatever passes away. Knowing in this way demands a certain amount of patience; otherwise as soon as any fear, anger or unpleasantness arises, we will run away from it. So meditation is also the ability to endure, and bear with, the unpleasant. We don’t seek it out; we are not ascetics, looking for painful things to endure so that we can prove ourselves. We are simply recognizing the way it is right now. Meditation is established on that which is ordinary, not on that which is extraordinary.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Mind and the Way.