We experience our lives through our bodies, whether we are aware of it or not. Yet we are usually so mesmerized by our ideas about the world that we miss out on much of our direct sensory experience. Even when we are aware of feeling a strong breeze, the sound of rain on the roof, a fragrance in the air, we rarely remain with the experience long enough to inhabit it fully. In most moments, an overlay of inner dialogue comments on what is happening and plans what we might do next.…The basic meditation instructions …. were to be mindful of the changing stream of sensations without trying to hold on to them, change them, or resist them….Being mindful of sensations does not mean standing apart and observing like a distant witness. Rather, we directly experience what is happening in our bodies.
Tara Brach, Come to your Senses
Being silent doesn’t require being in a quiet place and it doesn’t mean not saying words. It means “receiving in a balanced, non-combative way what is happening”. With or without words, the hope of my heart is that it will be able to relax and acknowledge the truth of my situation with compassion.
Meditation comes alive through a growing capacity to release our habitual entanglement in the stories and plans, conflicts and worries that make up the small sense of self, and to rest in awareness. In meditation we do this simply by acknowledging the moment-to-moment changing conditions—the pleasure and pain, the praise and blame, the litany of ideas and expectations that arise. Without identifying with them, we can rest in the awareness itself, beyond conditions, and experience what my teacher Ajahn Chah called jai pongsai, our natural lightness of heart.
Mindfulbalance 