The nature of the mind is comparable to the ocean.
The incessant movement of waves on the surface of the ocean prevents us from seeing its depths.
If we dive down there are no more waves;
there is just the immense serenity of the depths….
Pema Wangyal Rinpoche
The next step is to train ourselves in staying mindful and aware of the body throughout the day. As we go through our daily activities, we frequently get lost in thoughts of past and future, not staying grounded in the awareness of our bodies. A simple reminder that we’re lost in thought is the very common feeling of rushing. Rushing is a feeling of toppling forward. Our minds run ahead of us, focusing on where we want to go, instead of settling into our bodies where we are.
Learn to pay attention to this feeling of rushing — which does not particularly have to do with how fast we are going. We can feel rushed while moving slowly, and we can be moving quickly and still be settled in our bodies. Either way, we’re likely not present. If you can, notice what thought or emotion has captured the attention. Then, just for a moment, stop and settle back into the body: feel the foot on the ground, feel the next step.
Joseph Goldstein, A Heart Full of Peace
More unseasonal weather today. With visitors arriving one would prefer things to be different. But then again, one nearly always prefers things to be other than they are, and this attitude can mean that we miss the opportunities in what is actually here:
When we explore this mind-state of dukkha, we find that it is created by a deep aversion to being with How It Is right now. This silent, unconscious war with How It Is unwittingly drives much of our behaviour: 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.
Thoreau, through his quiet investigation of his own mental states in the quiet at Walden Pond discovered this very same phenomenon of underlying unsatisfactoriness. He called it “desperation” – “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation….” Thoreau’s quiet desperation is precisely dukkha. He saw that ordinary mind seems chronically ill at ease with How It Is.
Stephen Cope, The Wisdom of Yoga
A central ingredient in most forms of practice is stillness…. [But…] It takes time to really see that thoughts and emotions are mere movements of the mind. They are, after all, the fabric of who we think we are, and everything we do is an expression of thought and emotion. We take them so seriously. But take a closer look, test this against your own experience, and see for yourself. If we can gain this recognition, we are on our way to freedom, for instead of being sucked into the contents of our mind and acting out everything that arises within it, we will watch those contents melt like snowflakes on a hot rock.
According to the Bon tradition… we have about eighty thousand thoughts a day, which means the mind moves eighty thousand times a day. We can feel the velocity of this movement within the first five minutes of sitting meditation. This discovery then leads to the next: the voluntary and involuntary movements that constitute our life are just the mental extensions of the voluntary and involuntary movements of our mind. We move physically because we move mentally. Our fundamental addiction to movement, therefore, is habituation to the movement of mind. We are addicted to thought.
Andrew Holecek, The Power and the Pain.
My most inspiring thought is that this place, if I am to live well in it,
requires and deserves a lifetime of the most careful attention.
Wendell Berry
Words are the cognitive contraptions we use to work our way through a world of uncertainty. Words can free us: as symbols they are essential to distance us from experience enough to compare and contrast and reveal patterns in a complex universe. Seeing those patterns with ideas framed in our mind also enables us to communicate those insights to others. In these ways words are a wonderful gateway to understanding and sharing.
Yet words can also entrap us. If we do not recognize the limitations of their boundaries, if we see them as real, their top-down influences on our lives can be devastating. We can come to believe that “intelligence” is something we are either born with, or not. We can think that “we” are good and “they” bad. We can even feel that “I” is something so real and important that “you” don’t matter. Letting go of such top-down influences is the art of mindful awareness. The receptivity of presence allows us to unleash the shackles that automatically enslave us.
Daniel J. Siegel. The Mindful Brain
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