Too many meditators get discouraged at the beginning because their minds won’t settle down. But just as you can’t wait until you’re strong before you start strength training, you can’t wait until your concentration is strong before you start sitting. Only by exercising what little concentration you have will you make it solid and steady.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Building your mental muscles
Each of us is like a mosaic, with lots of lovely tiles, some that are basically neutral, and a few that could use a little – ah – work. It’s important to see the whole mosaic. But because of the brains negativity bias, we tend to fixate on what’s wrong with ourselves instead of what’s right. If you do twenty things in a day and nineteen go fine, what’s the one you think about? Probably the one that didn’t go so well.
Your brain builds new structures based on what you pay attention to. Focusing on the “bad” tiles in the mosaic that is you keeps feeding an underlying sense of being mediocre, flawed or less than others. And it blocks the development of the confidence and self-worth that comes from recognizing the good tiles. These results of the negativity bias are not fair. But they’re a big reason why most of us have feelings of inadequacy or self-doubt.
Rick Hanson, Just One Thing
Wherever we are, from one day to the next, the Earth is moving at the same speed. Yet in the modern world, we’ve convinced ourselves that the world is moving faster, and that speed is the way to make our life work. Under the pressure of schedules and commitments, we think we can accomplish more if we speed through our day. Speed gives life a frantic quality. It is an anxious state of mind that keeps us from settling into whatever we are doing. There is always something more important than what we’re doing now. We’re double-parked outside a store, trying to find what we need, while talking to our mother on the cell-phone. Rather than accomplishing our activity well, we are nullifying it, because we aren’t really there for it. Speed comes from being overly ambitious. We aren’t content with our own mind, so we become aggressive in how we conduct our life. In an effort to match a concept of what success might be, we fill our calendars and spend the whole day holding on to our “to do” list. We chase after appointments, phone calls and meetings with jealousy, competition, fixation and irritation — whatever it takes to get us where we think we need to go. When life still won’t match our concept, we get mad — mad that others are late, or mad that we are early.
The practice of meditation offers us the opportunity to slow down for a short time every day. This is how we can begin to step out of the cycle of speed. In sitting still and focusing our mind, we are declaring daily that this human life is precious. Taking time to appreciate it comes from our own determination and wisdom. Through this discipline, we simplify our life. We regain the space to appreciate it, having lost nothing but speediness. We learn how to float aloft, carried by the winds, appreciating what we see in every direction. We learn to relax.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Slow Down, You Move Too Fast
When a thought arises that’s strong enough to take your attention away from the breath, simply note it as not breath. Whether it’s the most beautiful thought in the world or the most terrible, one you would never disclose to another soul, in this meditation, it’s simply not breath. You don’t have to judge yourself. You don’t have to get lost in making up a story about what triggered the thought or its possible consequences. All you have to do is recognize that it is not a thought. Some of your thoughts may be tender and caring, some may be boring and banal; all that matters is that they are not the breath. See them, recognize them, very gently let them go, and bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath.
Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation
Following on from yesterday, here is a link to the next part of the BBC report which contains some material on brain scans, brain activity and meditation. One of the most exciting recent discoveries in the field of neuroscience is that the brain is quite plastic all through life, and that we can change its activity patterns depending on what we do. So if we practice calmness, the brain changes in response to that, in the same way as it responds to the occasions when we “practice” worrying or being anxious.
The BBC Breakfast Programme is running a series of reports these mornings on Mindfulness meditation and the MBSR course, which are a useful introduction to the whole area. Their researcher, David Sillito, did the 8 weeks MBSR Course and reports on his findings over a number of days. You can follow the first report here:
Mindfulbalance 