We do not need some ideal or romantic fairy tale of what would be best for us.
What we need most is what is already given to us: the actuality of things as they are in the only moment we will ever have – this one.
Jon Kabat Zinn, Mindfulness for Beginners.
A new MBSR group started last evening. However, new or experienced, young or old, the practice is the same: intentionally seeing what is present each moment before our eyes, tuning in to the richness of what is already there, switching off the leaning in our being and in our doing.
Non-doing has nothing to do with being indolent or passive. Quite the contrary. It takes great courage and energy to cultivate non-doing, both in stillness and in activity. Nor is it easy to make a special time for non-doing and to keep at it in the face of everything in our lives which needs to be done.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
1. Consider that in order to build character the practice of patience is essential.
2. See that the best way to practice patience requires an enemy.
3. Understand that in this way enemies are very valuable for the opportunities they provide.
4. Decide that instead of getting angry with those who block your wishes, you will inwardly respond with gratitude.
By seeing things this way you will change your attitude toward adversity. This is very difficult but very rewarding. For only when faced with the work of adversity can we discover real inner strength.
The Dalai Lama, How to be Compassionate, A Handbook for Creating Inner Peace and a Happier World
Each of us has our own silent War With Reality. This silent, unconscious war with How It Is unwittingly drives much of our behavior: We reach for the pleasant. We hate the unpleasant. We try to arrange the world so that we have only pleasant mind-states, and not unpleasant ones. We try to get rid of this pervasive state of unsatisfactoriness in whatever way we can — by changing things “out there.” By changing the world. And whatever our particular War With Reality is, the result is always a pervasive sense of the unsatisfactoriness of the moment.
Stephen Cope, The Wisdom of Yoga
Regard meditation as recognizing the way things are. To start a meditation is always to recognize where you are right here and now, so that, if your mind is scrambled at the end of the day, then just recognize scrambling. Acknowledge the feeling and the aversion to it – the wanting it to be otherwise. This is the right way of meditating. If after a hectic day, you try and stop all your mental reactions when you go home, it will lead to failure, and then you will feel that you cannot meditate. So instead, you have to start using the situation as it is. You have to learn to objectify the feeling of being scrambled or the idea that you can’t meditate. You have to just recognize that these feelings and ideas are objects of your mind and that you are a witness to them. If you feel a mess and confused, then practice fully accepting that.
Ajahn Sumedho, The Mind and the Way
Meditation is not just a simple technique for stabilizing the mind; it is also the discovery of how to engage fully, even while sitting still. In the modern culture of speed we seem to not do anything fully. We are half watching television and half using the computer; we are driving while talking on the phone; we have a hard time having even one conversation; when we sit down to eat we are reading a newspaper and watching television and even when we are watching television we are flipping through the channels. This quality of life gives us a superficial feeling: we never experience anything fully. We engage in these activities in order to live a full life, but being speedy and distracted, we have never discovered what full means
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Running with the Mind of Meditation
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