"Wherever You Go There You Are" by Jon Kabat-Zinn
My key takeaways: Make a commitment to cultivating mindfulness and living in the present moment as your way of being (vs. autopilot living occupied with thoughts of past or future). Pay attention to the present moment without judgment. Dwell in stillness and attend to the moment-to-moment unfolding of the present, adding nothing, subtracting nothing.
Ask yourself in this moment “Am I awake? Where is my mind right now?” Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing. But when we start to focus on what our mind is up to, for instance, it is not unusual to quickly go unconscious again, to fall back into an automatic-pilot mode of unawareness. These lapses in awareness are frequently caused by an eddy of dissatisfaction with what we are seeing or feeling in that moment, out of which springs a desire for something to be different, for things to change.
Remember when you see the stars that you are looking back in time millions of years. The past is present now and here.
Present moment – let go of all doing, shifting into the being mode, in which you simply dwell in stillness and mindfulness, attending to the moment-to-moment unfolding of the present, adding nothing, subtracting nothing, affirming that “This is it.”
The only way you can do anything of value is to have the effort come out of non-doing and to let go of caring whether it will be of use or not. Thoreau – pointing out the deep importance of contemplation and of non-attachment to any result other than the sheer enjoyment of being.
Non-doing doesn’t have to be threatening to people who feel they always have to get things done. They might find they get even more “done” and done better, by practicing non-doing. Non-doing simply means letting things be and allowing them to unfold in their own way. Enormous effort can be involved, but it is a graceful, knowledgeable, effortless effort, a “doerless doing”, cultivated over a lifetime.
Meditation is synonymous with the practice of non-doing. We aren’t practicing making things perfect or trying to do things perfectly. Rather, we practice grasping and realizing (making real for ourselves) the fact that things already are perfect, perfectly what they are. This has everything to do with holding the present moment in its fullness without imposing anything extra on it, perceiving its purity and the freshness of its potential to give rise to the next moment. Then, knowing what is what, seeing as clearly as possible, and conscious of not knowing more than we actually do, we act, make a move, take a stand, take a change.
Defining ethics (being true to yourself & to others): You do it for inner reasons, not because someone is keeping score, or because you might be punished if you break the roles and get caught. You are marching to the beat of your own drummer. It is an inner hearing you are attending to, just as it is an inner soil that is being tilled for the cultivation of mindfulness.
Patience is an ever-present alternative to the mind’s endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and what you will find lying beneath it, is anger. It’s the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself) or something for it. This doesn’t mean you can’t hurry when you have to. It is possible even to hurry patiently, mindfully, moving fast because you have chosen to.
Dalai Lama not being angry at the Chinese government for years of genocide toward Tibetans – “They have taken everything from us; should I let them take my mind as well?” This attitude is itself a remarkable display of peace… the inner peace of knowing what is most fundamental, and the outer peace of embodying that wisdom in carriage and action. Peace, and a willingness to be patient in the face of such enormous provocation and suffering, can only come about through the inner cultivation of compassion, a compassion that is not limited to friends, but is felt equally for those who, out of ignorance and often seen as evil, may cause you and those you love to suffer.
“Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself? – LAO-TZU, Tao-Te-Ching
Try: Looking into impatience and anger when they arise. See if you can adopt a different perspective, one which sees things as unfolding in their own time. This is especially useful when you are feeling under pressure and blocked or stymied into something you want or need to do. Hard as it may seem, try not to push the river in that moment but listen carefully to it instead. What does it tell you? What is it telling you to do? If nothing, then just breathe, let things be as they are, let go into patience, continue listening. If the river tells you something, then do it, but do it mindfully. Then pause, wait patiently, listen again.
<When meditating, when the mind wanders>, try to sit patently with the breath and with a keen awareness of what is unfolding in each moment, allowing it to unfold as it will, without imposing anything on it…just watching, just breathing… embodying stillness, becoming patience.
Non-judging. When you dwell in stillness, the judging mind can come through like a foghorn. What we are interested in in meditation is direct contact with the experience itself – whether it is of an inbreath, an outbreath, a sensation or feeling, a sound, an impulse, a thought a perception, or a judgement. And we remain attentive to the possibility of getting caught up in judging the judging itself, or in labeling some judgments good and other bad.
You have to be strong enough to be weak. If you are a strong-willed and accomplished person, you may often give the impression that you are invulnerable to feeling inadequate or insecure or hurt. This can be very isolating and ultimately cause you and others great pain. Other people will be all too happy to take in that impression and to collude in propagating it by projecting a Rock of Gibraltar persona onto you, which doesn’t allow you to have any real feelings. In fact, you can all too easily get out of touch with your own true feelings behind the intoxicating shield of image and aura. Thinking of yourself as getting stronger through the meditation practice can create a similar dilemma. You can start believing and acting out he part of the supremely invulnerable, correct meditator – one who has everything under control and is wise enough to deal with everything without being caught up in reactive emotions. In the process, you can cleverly arrest your own development without even knowing it. So when you notice yourself building up an image of invincibility, or strength, or special knowledge, or wisdom based on your meditative experience, thinking perhaps that you’re getting somewhere in your practice, and you start talking a lot about meditation in a way that is self-promotional and inflationary, it’s a good idea to bring mindfulness to that mind-set and ask yourself whether you are running from your vulnerability, or perhaps from grief you may be carrying or from fear of some sort. If you are truly strong, there is little need to emphasize it to yourself or to others. Best to direct your attention where you fear most to look. You can do this by allowing yourself to feel, even to cry, to not have to have opinions about everything, to not appear invincible or unfeeling to others, but instead to be in touch with and appropriately open about your feelings.
Voluntary simplicity: Within the organized chaos and complexity of family life and work, with all their demands and responsibilities and unsurpassed gifts, there is ample opportunity for choosing simplicity in small ways. Slowing everything down is a big part of this. I.e. telling my mind and body to stay put with my daughter rather than answering the phone, choosing not to acquire new things on impulses, or automatically answering the siren call of magazines or TV or movies. Others are maybe just to sit for an evening and do nothing, or to read a book, or go for a walk alone or with a child/spouse, to look at the moon, feel the air on my face under the trees, or go to sleep early. Practice saying “no” to keep life simple.
Our vision has to do with our values and with our personal blueprint for what is most important in life. If you believe in love, do you manifest it or just talk a lot? If you believe in compassion, in non-harming, in kindness, in wisdom, in generosity, in calmness, in solitude, in non-doing, in being even-handed and clear, do you manifest these qualities in your daily life? This is the level of intentionality, which is required to keep your meditation practice vital, so that it doesn’t succumb to becoming purely a mechanical exercise, driven only by the forces of habit or belief. Asking yourself why you meditate. Don’t believe your first answers. Continue asking yourself. Also inquire about your values, about what you honor most in life. Make a list of what is really important to you. Ask yourself: What is my vision, my map for where I am and where I am going? Does this vision reflect my true values and intentions? Am I remembering to embody those values? Do I practice my intentions? How am I NOW in my job, in my family, in my relationships, with myself? How do I want to be? How might I live my vision, my values?
Meditation is more rightly a “way” than a technique. It is a way of being, a way of living, a way of listening, a way of walking along the path of life and being in harmony with things as they are. This means in part acknowledging that sometimes, often at very crucial times, you really have no idea where you are going or even where the path lies. It often happens that we can become trapped into believing too strongly that we do know here we are going, especially if we are driven by self-serving ambition and we want certain things very badly. There is a blindness that comes from self-furthering agendas that leaves us thinking we know, when we actually don’t know as much as we think.
Try: seeing your own life this very day as a journey and as an adventure. Where are you going? What are you seeking? Where are you now? What stage of the journey have you come to? If your life were a book, what would you call it today? What would you entitle the chapter you are in right now? Are you stuck here in certain ways? Can you be fully open to all of the energies at your disposal at this point? Note that this journey is uniquely yours, no one else’s so the path has to be your own. Are you prepared to honor your uniqueness in this way? Can you see a commitment to the meditation practice as an intimate part of this way of being? Can you commit to lighting your path with mindfulness and awareness? Can you see ways in which you could easily get stuck, or have in the past?
Sitting meditation: It is best to keep things simple and start with your breathing, feeling it as it moves in and out. Ultimately, you can expand your awareness to observe all the comings and goings, the gyrations and machination of your own thoughts and feelings, perceptions and impulses, body and mind. But it may take some time for concentration and mindfulness to become strong enough to hold such a wide range of objects in awareness without getting lost in them or attached to particular ones or simply overwhelmed. For most of us, it takes years and depends a good deal on your motivation and the intensity of your practice. So, at the beginning, you might want to stay with the breath or use it as an anchor to bring you back when you are carried away. Try it for a few years and see what happens. “Sit down and watch the moments unfold, with no agenda other than to be fully present. Use the breath as an anchor to tether you attention to the present moment.
Start by centering yourself in your posture and in your breathing. Then from your heart or belly invite feelings or images of kindness and love to radiate until they fill your whole being. Allow yourself to be cradled by your own awareness as if you were as deserving of loving kindness as any child. Let yourself bask in this energy of loving-kindness, breathing it in and breathing it out as if it were a lifeline. Then, having established a radiant center in your being, you can let loving kindness radiate outwardly and direct it wherever you like.
Make sure that you are not trying to help anybody else or the planet. Rather you are simply holding them in awareness, honoring them, wishing them well, and opening to their pain with kindness and compassion and acceptance.
“My religion is kindness” – Dalai Lama
Changing the filter, wiping noses, going to meetings, picking up around the house, washing dishes, - don’t let yourself think these are distracting you from your more serious pursuits. Such a round of chores is not a set of difficulties we hope to escape form so that we may do our “practice” which will put us on a “path” – it is our path.
Harmony. Nature is showing me how things actually are in one small sphere, reminding me how little we humans know, and how little we appreciate harmony or even see it. Nature’s harmony is around us and within us at all times. Perceiving it is an occasion for great happiness; but it is often only appreciated in retrospect or in its absence. If all is going well in the body, it tends to go unnoticed. Abilities such as walking, seeing, thinking, and peeing take care of themselves, and so blend into the landscape of automaticity and unawareness. Only pain or fear or loss wakes us and brings things into focus. But by then the harmony is harder to see, and we find ourselves caught up in turbulence. Try: Drawing back the veil of unawareness to perceive harmony in this moment. Can you see it in clouds, in sky, in people, in the weather, in food, in your body, in this breath? Look, and look again, right here, right now!
<Making the time to meditate: you need to decide the night before the time(s) you will meditate the next day>. This is the flavor of true intentionality and inner discipline. Do it simply because you committed to yourself to do it, and you do it at the appointed time, whether part of the mind feels like it or not. You do it simply because you are committed to yourself to do it. After a while, the discipline becomes a part of you. It’s simply the new way you choose to live.
You can always use the very moment of waking from sleep, as a moment of mindfulness, the very first of the new day. Before you even move, try getting in touch with the fact that your breath is moving. Feel your body lying in bed. Ask yourself, am I awake now? Do I know that the gift of a new day is being given to me? Will I be awake for it? What will happen today? Can I see today as an adventure? Can I see right now as filled with possibilities?
Try: To use ordinary, repetitive occasions in your own house as invitations to practice mindfulness. Notice the inner feelings which push you toward the telephone on the first ring. Why does your response time have to be so fast that it pulls you out of the life you were living in the preceding moment? Can these transitions become more graceful? When you are in the shower, are you really in the shower? Do you feel the water on your skin, or are you someplace else? Eating – are you tasting your food?
What is it on this planet that needs doing that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it? Keep asking that question. In this way, working for humanity as an employee of the universe at large, you get to modify and contribute to your locale by who you are, how you are and what you do. But it’s no longer personal. It’s just part of the totality of the universe expressing itself.
Mindfulness practice is the ongoing discovery of interconnectedness.
Ahimsa – non harming; Why not try to live so as to cause as little damage and suffering (to others and to yourself) as possible? (Ie. gossip, causing harm or pain, not taking care of your body, your soul).
If we could only recognize the process of “selfing” as an ingrained habit and then give ourselves permission to take the day off, to stop trying so hard to be “somebody” and instead just experience being, perhaps we would be a lot happier and more relaxed. “So, if you stop trying to make yourself into more than you are out of fear that you are less then you are, whoever you really are will be a lot lighter and happier, and easier to live with, too”. P238/239
Awareness itself can help balance out the selfing and reduce its impact. Notice too, that the self is impermanent. Whatever you try to hold on to that has to do with yourself eludes you. It can’t be held because it is constantly changing.
Parenting: Seeing parenting as a long, 18 yr. meditation retreat. I decided that there was a way to look at having children as a meditation retreat in its own right – one that would have most o the important features of those I was giving up, except for the quiet and the simplicity. You could look at each baby as a little Buddha or Zen master, your own private mindfulness teacher, parachuted into your life, whose presence and actions were guaranteed to push every button and challenge every belief and limit you had, giving you continual opportunities to see where you were attached to something and to let go of it. The retreat schedule would be relentless and demand continual acts of selflessness and loving kindness. To do it well would demand the greatest clarity of view and the greatest letting go and letting be I had ever been challenged with. The deep and constantly changing needs of children are all perfect opportunities for parents to be fully present rather than to operate in the automatic pilot mode, to relate consciously rather than mechanically, to sense the being in each child and let his or her vibrancy, vitality, and purity call forth our own. If I could let the children and the family become my teachers and remember to recognize and listen carefully to the lessons in living. We get virtually no preparation or training for parenting, only on-the-job, moment-to-moment training as things unfold. It gets more challenging as the children grow older and develop their own ideas and strong wills. The list of situations in which your equanimity and clarity will be sorely challenged, and you will find yourself “losing it” is endless. Your children will see it all from the inside and up close: your foibles, idiosyncrasies, warts and pimples, your shortcomings, your inconsistencies, and your failures. These trials are not impediments to either parenting or mindfulness practice. They are the practice, if you can remember to see it this way. The older children get, the harder it is to remember that they are still live-in Zen masters. The challenges to be mindful and non-reactive, and to look clearly at my reactions and overreactions and to own when I am off seem to get greater as I gradually have less and less direct say in their lives. Often it feels overwhelming, and sometimes quite lonely. You sense widening gulfs and recognize the importance of distance for healthy psychic development and exploration; but the moving apart, healthy as it may be, also hurts. Parenting is a mirror that forces you to look at yourself. If you can learn from what you observe, you just may have a chance to keep growing yourself. Try: Seeing children as your teachers. Observe them in silence sometimes. Listen more carefully to them. Read their body language. Assess their self-esteem by watching how they carry themselves, what they draw, what they see, how they behave. What are their needs in this moment? At this time in their day? At this stage in their lives? Ask yourself, “How can I help them right now?”. Then follow what your heart tells you. And remember, advice is probably the last thing that will be useful in most situations, unless it is just the right moment for it, and you are very sensitive to the timing and how you frame things. Just being centered yourself, fully present and open and available, is a great gift for them. And mindful hugging doesn’t hurt either.
Of course, you are your children’s major life teacher as much as they are your teachers, and how you take on this role will make a big difference in their lives as well as your own. The best way to impart wisdom, meditation, or anything else to your children, especially when they are young, is to live it yourself, embody what you most want to impart, and keep your mouth shut.
On occasion, you may find yourself thinking that you’re getting nowhere with your meditation practice. Nothing that you want to happen has happened. There is a sense of staleness, of boredom. Here again, it’s the thinking that’s the problem. There is nothing wrong with feelings of boredom or staleness, or of not getting anywhere, just as there is nothing wrong with feeling that you are getting somewhere and in fact, your practice may well be showing signs of becoming deeper and more robust. The pitfall is when you inflate such experiences or thoughts, and you start believing in them as special. It’s when you get attached to your experience that the practice arrests, and your development along with it.
In the deepest sense, the breath itself is the ultimate gift of spirit. But, as we have seen, the depth and range of its virtues can remain unknown to us as long as our attention is absorbed elsewhere. The work of mindfulness is waking up to vitality in every moment that we have. In wakefulness, everything inspires.
The idea of transcendence (into “spirit’ or “oneness” or “enlightenment”) can be a great escape, a high-octane fuel for delusion. This is why the Buddhist tradition, especially Zen, emphasizes coming full circle, back to the ordinary and the everyday. This means being grounded anywhere, in any circumstances, neither above nor below, simply present, but fully present. Zen practitioners have a saying “If you meet the Buddha, kill him” which means that any conceptual attachments to Buddha or enlightenment are far from the mark.