More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Develop a mind that clings to nothing.” Sometimes it is translated as “Develop a mind that abides nowhere.”
Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing something about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not; namely, the path that is your life. Meditation may help us see that this path we call our life has direction; that it is always unfolding, moment by moment; and that what happens now, in this moment, influences what happens next.
The systematic cultivation of mindfulness through formal meditation practices wakes us up to the fact that our lives unfold only in moments. If we are not fully present for many of those moments, we may not only miss what is most valuable in our lives but also fail to realize the richness and the depth of our possibilities for growth and transformation—often in the very next moment—along with a profound coming to terms with things as they are, which is my working definition of healing, and as you will see, has nothing to do with passive resignation.
A student once said: “When I was a Buddhist, it drove my parents and friends crazy, but when I am a buddha, nobody is upset at all.”
Our actions are all too frequently driven, rather than undertaken in awareness—driven by those perfectly ordinary thoughts and impulses that run through the mind like a coursing river, if not a waterfall. We get caught up in the torrent, and it winds up submerging our lives as it carries us to places we may not wish to go and may not even realize we are headed for. Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank, and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us rather than to tyrannize and imprison us.
Ordinarily, when we undertake something, it is only natural to expect a desirable outcome for our efforts. We want to see results, even if it is only a pleasant feeling. The sole exception I can think of is meditation. Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity that at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get somewhere else but simply to be fully who you are in this moment, as you are. And to let that be OK for now—underscore for now.
Accepting that things are as they are is a form of intelligence. It has nothing to do with surrender, passive resignation, or despair. The awareness that holds the unwanted, the unpleasant, the difficult, even the terrifying and the heart-rending, affords us a new degree of freedom to be in wise relationship with the actual. Awareness is intrinsically both a refuge and a source of strength and sanity, of wisdom and compassion, including an honest compassion for ourselves as sometimes frail, vulnerable, and wounded creatures.
When we let go of wanting something else to happen in this moment, we are taking a profound step toward being able to encounter what is here now. If we hope to go anywhere or develop ourselves in any way, we can only step from where we are standing.
The spirit of mindfulness is to practice for its own sake and just to take each moment as it comes—pleasant or unpleasant, good, bad, or ugly—and then welcome and work with whatever arises because it is what is present now. With this attitude, life itself becomes practice.
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
Adopting a formal and regular meditation practice is a form of training the mind itself. In fact, in some traditions, it is called mind training. You might also say it is a way of befriending the mind, familiarizing yourself with its habits and energies. You could also think of it as taming the mind.
It’s not about making the mind empty or still, although stillness does deepen in meditation and can be cultivated systematically. Above all, meditation is about letting the mind be as it is and knowing something about how it is in this moment. It’s not about getting somewhere else or pursuing some special singular “mindfulness state,” which doesn’t exist, but about allowing yourself to be where and as you already are and letting that be enough for now (again, all puns intended).
