“There is only one way you will ever know if meditation is worth the effort. Learn to do it right, and do it. See for yourself.”
from http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_english_3.php
Message I sent out this week to those who attended on Wednesday:
“Meditation is not easy. It takes time and it takes energy. It also takes grit, determination and discipline. It requires a host of personal qualities which we normally regard as unpleasant and which we like to avoid whenever possible. We can sum it all up in the American word ‘gumption’. Meditation takes ‘gumption’. It is certainly a great deal easier just to kick back and watch television. So why bother? Why waste all that time and energy when you could be out enjoying yourself? Why bother? Simple. Because you are human.”
“You can’t make radical changes in the pattern of your life until you begin to see yourself exactly as you are now. As soon as you do that, changes flow naturally. You don’t have to force or struggle or obey rules dictated to you by some authority. You just change. It is automatic. But arriving at the initial insight is quite a task. You’ve got to see who you are and how you are, without illusion, judgement or resistance of any kind.”
The house was quiet. The room was dark. I was tucked into bed, snug and warm. Time for sleep.
Out of nowhere, a panic gripped my heart, squeezing the breath out of my lungs and the heat out of my body.
“This is interesting,” was my first reaction.
“Hey, somewhere, the Radical Acceptance training has taken hold! Jay!” was my next.
And then I allowed the sensations of the panic to play out.
The trance of unworthiness reaction would have been: “Oh, no. Now I’m panicking. I should be sleeping. I’m so pathetic.” And in this particular scenario, they weren’t there at all.
I’m not even sure what I was panicking about. That doesn’t matter. The point is that I’ve been practising: regular meditation; continually reminding myself that “it’s okay”; periodically trying the RAIN exercise through reading Tara Brach and listening to Rob Nairn. And the cumulative effect is that I was able to taste the play of an unpleasant emotion as it was happening without condemning myself for it.
And that is really refreshing.
Mindfulness is like kissing boo boos. When a child skins their knee or stubs their toe and their parent kisses the place that hurts, the child feels better. Kissing boo boos works. Mindfulness works the same way.
When a child experiences a minor bump and feels pain, the pain consumes them. Their…
“Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and wrong. Sometime in your life, you will have been all of these.”
― Gautama Buddha
(via buddha-path)
“Because we are told that God is found both in the silence as well as in our hearts, when we block our painful feelings, we have set up a difficult situation for ourselves. In order to get to our hearts, we must begin to deal with our pain and all its resulting addictions. When we live in our minds, we have created yet another impediment to our connection with God.
The problem of the “busy mind” seems to be largely a product of our Western culture. Not all peoples everywhere live so much in their heads.”
(Source: inspirationalcollages)
Yoga Journal provided one of their issues for free on the internet, in support of Earth Day. I had a quick read-through, and this one article on “Yoga at Work” really hit home for me, as a reiteration of something I heard at the “Heart of Practise/Heart in Practise” workshop with Donal Creedon over the Easter weekend. Donal spoke of meditation as Right Action in itself, and that we should do what we know is good and let go of the results.
In the Yoga Journal article, they lay out five principles from the Bagavad Ghita:
1). DO WORK THAT SUITS YOUR NATURE
2). PRACTICE SKILL IN ACTION
This boils down to bringing mindful awareness into all our activities. The activity itself is not so important, rather it is how we approach it.
3). SURRENDER THE OUTCOME
I can control what I do, not how other people react to it.
“… it doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t get bummed when things go wrong… Of course you get bummed; you’re not a robot. But when you remember that your contract with life doesn’t specify that you’ll always get what you want, you’ll find that even in the midst of mourning a lost or trying to repair the damage from a mistake, you won’t feel like a victim.”
4). DO YOUR WORK AS SERVICE
Generate relative bodhichitta while performing tasks. May this benefit all sentient beings!
“She serves by doing the work with as much presence and integrity as possible.”
But: remember to “consider yourself in the equation.” There’s no point in doing something if you are not being kind to yourself too.
5). MAKE YOUR WORK AN OFFERING
“… essentially … bringing an attitude of devotion to your actions.” I read this as almost the same as #4: May this benefit all sentient beings!
Wat is Afrikaans vir “compassion”?
What is the Afrikaans word for “compassion”?
I’ve looked in the dictionary, and there is word called “ermbarming.” But it is an ugly-sounding word and I had never heard it before. There is a version of the word in the title for “The Good Samaritan” which is “barmhartig” but my sister reckons that is translated to “merciful” not “compassionate”.
And I reflect that part of the problem is we are trying to translate a translation of a translation.
Sanskrit - Tibetan - English - Afrikaans.
How much is getting lost along the way?
“I always feel like the Tibetans know a deep and very funny joke, and they are about to burst out laughing, when I look at their faces on the shrine.”
“Nope,” my sister tells me, “that’s just your mind. Many people tell me they look stern and angry.”
A penny drops. This is what the phrase “mirror-like wisdom” means! That I can look at Karmapa’s face and see a reflection of my own mind. He is truly wise.
And apparently I have a funny mind.
I take a little bit of pride in that. Hee hee hee.
