practice mindfulness

There is nothing personal about suffering. Everyone suffers but it is not personal.Don’t react to the fact there is suffering.The second insight: Suffering should be understood.Instead reacting to suffering; really look at it, embrace it, accept it. The third is that suffering has been understood. One has experienced suffering, looked at it, accepted it, know it and let it be what it is. I think the cycle of learning and understanding suffering needs to be an awareness incorporated into daily life. Tonight while washing dishes and cooking supper, I was angry at my husband for not helping me. I was suffering and blaming him. I stopped myself and looked at it objectively. I stopped reacting and felt immediately better. it was my thoughts that were causing me pain not my husband. I chose to cook and wash dishes. I then chose to enjoy my tasks and have been happy the rest of the evening. I chose not to allow my thoughts to make myself suffer. Very important lesson learned.

I dreamed that I was going to be the first woman to row a boat from the river near home to the ocean which is around a 3 hour drive. Probably several days by row boat. I don’t remember the details but I endured many hardships. I was detained a week after being washed out into the Atlantic Ocean. When I arrived, I was at a university that was also a Buddhist temple. There were monks there waiting to speak to a higher monk. My parents were there. I didn’t feel pain around them. My father was in a room full of beautiful gold Chinese relics. I knew he had a past life in China and he clung to this past. But it was okay. An understanding about him passed on to me. I moved on to my mother but she wasn’t as I know her now. Because of the patience and hardships I endured in the row boat, I felt a patience and compassion for her I haven’t felt before. It made her seem calmer, deeper and kinder as well. I felt like I was enough to both of them. They didn’t hate each other anymore. It was all part of a master plan. Then I knew what it was all about. I was preparing to face the Buddha presence.The Buddha within me. It was my turn in line with the monks to learn more about dealing with the suffering in life. I woke knowing that life is suffering. It doesn’t mean that something is wrong with me if I cannot resolve all the suffering in the world. It just is. Meditate on it. Be aware. Relax. Suffering has always been and always will be. I can’t do anything to change it but I can stop tormenting myself about my helplessness and do the things I can. I can let go. If I can let go, be detached then I can know peace and compassion.

slow down you move too fast

but I do keep trying. Quite an interesting experience today really. I was walking Cora in the forest for two and a half hours. Usually when I’m walking, my mind is racing and I keep going over problems and difficult issues over and over. I catch myself doing it all the time, and try to focus on being in the moment, and then a few seconds later, my thoughts starts racing again. Today was quite a long walk though. And for some reason, the further we walked, the more my mind calmed down. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t going over problems and worries still, but I did it a lot less, and was able to enjoy the lovely sunlight, beautiful forest and adorable poodle bouncing around me.

That lastet for quite a long time, but then, the closer we got to the end of the walk, the more my mind started racing again. Strange. But well, I had a lovely time during the middle part of the walk, which is excellent!

I think one of my major issues is keeping my mind from relapsing into thought about things that upset me. Learning about mindfulness and practicing the breath give my mind something to play with. I am reading “you are here” by Thich Nhat Hanh. It practically fell off the shelf at the book store. I have been practicing, “I am breathing in-I am happy. I am breathing out-I smile.” All week. I do think my mental attitude is improving. I like some of the things he says about Buddhism. I have heard some for many years but did not realize it was Buddhist. I also like what he says about any place that does have compassion and understanding is hell. Life is suffering, yes. But suffering leads to transformation. Transformation leads to understanding and understanding leads to compassion. If there is a reason for bad things to happen then it is easier for me to deal with them.

Lots and lots of fear.

My favorite meditation author, Charlotte Joko Beck, talks about two choices when it comes to fear:

(1) Remaining in the “bottleneck of fear,” where we will be slowly strangled to death.

(2) Slowly (and often with difficulty and discouragement) gaining comprehension by experiencing the “bottleneck of fear” and going through it.

She writes that, in the end, when we choose option #2, we discover that the false fear (and most of it is false) is composed of our illusory thoughts and the accompanying bodily tension.

::Deep breath.::

Time to avoid avoidance, resist resistance, and start to work on the very goals that I don’t feel like working on this afternoon (i.e., the ones I fear the most).

Like my challenge goal of filing my taxes.

I was walking her in the forest, being completely lost in thoughts, worries, making plans for the rest of the weekend and not really paying attention. Then suddenly I noticed that Cora was bouncing around me like a big, curly tennis ball. Clearly enjoying the experience with every fiber of her being. While I was missing out on it all because I was busy worrying about things that might not even happen and making plans for the rest of the day.

I’m not saying I was completely in the moment for the rest of the walk, but I did manage to focus a lot more on the moment, watching Cora bouncing and running around, and enjoying the scenery. And Cora and I had a lovely walk together. Must keep trying to learn from the master, who I happen to be lucky enought to live with.

It was Meditate, now its practice mindfulness.

When I finally climbed into bed late last night (or early this morning), I picked up this book from my bedside table, and it fell open to the chapter titled “Running in Place.” It’s a short chapter, but full of things that seemed very relevant last night, and still do today.

The author writes that “Running in Place” means experiencing our lives directly, being present as we are, right here and right now, instead of dreaming about how our lives might be if we did this, or had that. She asks:

What is there in our life right now that we don’t want to run in place with? Whatever is repetitive or dull or painful or miserable: we don’t want to run in place with that. No indeed!...It is frightening to run in place. A major component of practice is to realize how this fear and unwillingness dominates us.

According to the author, moving beyond that fear and unwillingness requires staying in place, until through patient and persistent practice, we learn to observe and become conscious of “the ego barriers of our life: the thoughts, the emotions, the evasions, the manipulations”, and then learn to return our attention, again and again, to “the direct experience of whatever the scenery of our life is at any moment as we run in place. Is it simple? Yes. Is it easy? No.”

So, back to running in place with my daily goals, continuing to practice, right here, right now.

When I was getting ready yesterday for my big challenge goal of having more people over, I was thinking of the phrase “This is it.” I remembered a cartoon about this phrase, and found it yesterday here. In this cartoon, two monks are sitting side by side, and the older one says to the younger one, “Nothing happens next. This is it.”

It’s sort of like the Buddhist saying that “everything is perfect as it is.” When I’m anxious about getting ready for guests to come, “This is it.” When I’m nervous/excited that the guests are arriving, “This is it.” When I’m happy that everyone is sitting together eating and talking in my living room, “This is it.” When I’m worrying that the chair that one of my guests is sitting in will fall apart, or that there aren’t enough places for people to set down their plates and glasses, “This is it.” When I am gratified that my guests are complimenting me, “This is it.” When I’m exhausted after they’ve all left, “This is it.” When I’m relaxing this morning and playing on the internet, “This is it.” When I’m uncertain about what to do with the rest of the today, “This is it.” It is being the anxious Buddha, the nervous/excited Buddha, the happy Buddha, the worrying Buddha, the gratified Buddha, the exhausted Buddha, the relaxing Buddha, the uncertain Buddha. Charlotte Joko Beck writes that “Real spirituality is just being with all that. If we can really be with Buddha, who we are, then it transforms”. (“Everyday Zen, page 13.)

As I was searching for the cartoon, I came across an essay called “This is it” by Alan Watts. I’ve only read the beginning, where he writes:

The central core of the experience seems to be the conviction, or insight, that the immediate now, whatever its nature, is the goal and fulfillment of all living…the immediate now is complete even when it is not ecstatic. For ecstasy is a necessarily impermanent contrast in the constant fluctuation of our feelings. But insight, when clear enough, persists; having once understood a particular skill, the facility tends to remain.

^{—Alan Watts, This is it.}