Present moment – Page 381

Starting over and over again

September 7, 2011September 7, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

As I said in this morning’s post, mindfulness practice renews itself every day, as we start over again and again, returning to the present moment which is always different, always new. This is because life is continually changing, and what we are presented with today is not the same as yesterday, no matter what our thoughts tell us. So the underlying attitude is key: a gentle, non-judging, attitude towards ourselves and our efforts.

I first heard the phrase “just start over” some 20 years ago from the meditation teacher Sharon Salzburg….who told us about her own struggle with learning to meditate – how she would become lost, distracted, and discouraged and would constantly second-guess herself and her teachers. Gradually she learned to pay no attention to the mental and emotional chatter and to just start over by meditating on her breath as she had been instructed. “Just start over” became her mantra, which she now teaches to her students.

Each time Salzburg repeated this phrase, I was deeply inspired. I realized that she was pointing to a radical attitudinal shift in which you cease to be reactive when you are knocked off your intended path. Instead, when you discover that you have lost your focus, you just begin again without getting caught up in emotional stories about why you can’t achieve your aim or judgments about how unworthy you are or why the change you seek is impossible.

As you know if you’ve ever tried to meditate, the mind is constantly being pulled away from its object of concentration by bodily sensations and mental activity, causing you to lose awareness of the present moment. In this same way, when strong feelings arise during your daily life, you get swept up in the story they create. You lose the awareness that enables you respond skillfully to events and that gives you peace of mind in the face of difficulty….. You have the mistaken notion that you must know why you have a problem and must get rid of it before you can act in a more self-empowering manner. Starting-over practice takes a different approach. It switches your focus away from dwelling on those characteristics that limit you and redirects it toward recognizing your strengths from which you can realize your potential…. In so doing, you free yourself from your judging mind that thinks it can control results and creates the grandiose expectation that you can do more than you can do in the present moment. You become a more effective person by simply learning to use your time and energy to do what you can do right now.

Phillip Moffitt, Starting Over

Not chasing after happiness

September 6, 2011September 5, 2011 Karl Duffy2 Comments

Some more reflections on not going anywhere, from a lovely recent book by Thomas Bien, entitled The Buddha’s Way of Happiness. Letting go of our instinctive need to “fix” ourselves – of the drive to do more and more – is the key to change. Staying put is a secret to getting places.

We get stuck in the drama of our lives. If we are to find happiness we instinctively feel that we have to go through something, endure some difficulty, go on a quest, slay dragons or monsters and ultimately find the gold or the princess in order to find the resolution and the peace which we seek. When we are told that happiness is available right now, we can hardly escape thinking what we have to do, endure and struggle to find it. We almost can’t help it.

Seeing life as “story” gets us caught in the notion that we don’t have happiness. We have to go after happiness somehow.…When we learn that we can be happy right now, just breathing in and out, and seeing a leaf for the miracle it actually is, instead of the idea of “leaf”, we’re almost disappointed. We want it to be a great achievement. If we can’t find a way to see it as an achievement, then we can’t feel special and feed the ego. Instead, in seeing things as they actually are, we step outside the ego.

The World comes to us

September 4, 2011September 4, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Jacques Lusseyran was a French writer and member of the Resistance, who continued to organize groups against the Nazi authorities even after he was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. His work was all the more courageous because he had become totally blind at the age of 8, following an accident at school. He wrote about his early life in the book And There was Light: Autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, Blind Hero of the French Resistance. This extract compliments the quote from Mark Twain this morning. Our discovery of the world begins with our active steps, which sometimes need courage and involve risk. However, we also need to know when to receive, and allow things to happen. The world is an accomplice in this work of growth and continually presents moments when we can grow. Ironically, we frequently resist what happens to us each day, thinking that life is to be found elsewhere.

If I put my hand on the table without pressing it, I knew the table was there but knew nothing about it. To find out, my fingers had to bear down, and the amazing thing is that the pressure was answered by the table at once. Being blind I thought I should have to go out to meet things, but I found that they came to meet me instead. I have never had to go more than halfway, and the universe became the accomplice of all my wishes.

Elephants and fleas

September 1, 2011September 1, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Sometimes when our thoughts are like little fleas that jump off our noses, we just see the little flickers of thought, like ripples, which might have a very liberating quality. For the first time you might feel ” My goodness! There’s so much space, and it’s always been here.” Another time it might feel like that elephant is sitting on you. It’s important to realize that meditation doesn’t prefer the flea to the elephant, or vice versa. It is simply a process of seeing what is, noticing that, accepting that, and then going on with life, which, in terms of the technique, is coming back to the simplicity of nowness, the simplicity of the out-breath. Whether you are completely caught up in discursive thought for the entire sitting period, or whether you feel that enormous sense of space, you can regard either one with gentleness and a sense of being awake and alive to who you are. Either way, you can respect that. So taming teaches that meditation is developing a nonaggressive attitude to whatever occurs in your mind. It teaches that meditation is not considering yourself an obstacle to yourself; in fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Pema Chodron

Some instructions for working with inner fears

August 30, 2011August 29, 2011 Karl Duffy1 Comment

Our lives are not just on the surface; their greater part is concealed from casual observation. If we would like our obscure fears come into the open and dissolve, the conscious mind must be somewhat still, not everlastingly occupied; then, as the fears come to the surface, they must be observed without let or hindrance, for any form of condemnation or justification only strengthens fear. To be free from all fear, we must be awake to its darkening influence,a and only constant watchfulness can reveal its many causes.

Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life