The economics of affluence demands that things that were special for us last year must now be taken for granted.
— David Steindl-Rast in The Music of Silence
To Practice This Thought: Act counter to the culture of affluence. Be grateful for something you've had a long, long time.
Did you know the average American spends 42-60 minutes a day waiting? We wait for doctor's appointments or meetings. We wait on hold on the telephone and for computer programs to download. We wait in line at grocery stores and banks and we wait in traffic.You can read more about it right here.
The Don't Wait - Meditate(TM) pledge invites people to convert waiting time into meditating time. If each and every one of us did this one, SIMPLE thing we would all have a regular meditation practice and experience the beneficial results!
People from all across the globe (U.S., Canada, England, Iran, Australia, Ethiopia, China, Bangladesh, Jamaica, India, France, Germany, Egypt and more ...) have signed the Don't Wait - Meditate(TM) pledge and agreed to convert their waiting time into meditating time. And holistic centers across the U.S. are even coming on board by converting their waiting rooms into meditating rooms!
When we look deeply into ourselves, we see both flowers and garbage. Each of us has anger, hatred, depression, racial discrimination, and many other kinds of garbage in us, but there is no need for us to be afraid. In the way that a gardener knows how to transform compost into flowers, we can learn the art of transforming anger, depression, and racial discrimination into love and understanding. This is the work of meditation.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh from Touching Peace
If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.
There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.
If we make our goal to live a life of compassion and unconditional love, then the world will indeed become a garden where all kinds of flowers can bloom and grow.
This is a very intriguing thought:
To stay in one place and watch the seasons come and go is tantamount to constant travel; one is traveling with the earth.
It is the opposite of schadenfreude which is pleasure over the misfortune of others - a great evil, indeed.One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.
Sometimes we are so accustomed to living in the house of intolerance and blame that we no longer even question it. We believe that, because we carry ancient traditions of resistance and impatience within ourselves, they will be with us until we die. The path of compassion asks us to overturn our habits, beliefs, opinions, and prejudices, to understand that our hearts can be transformed in every moment we are willing to be still, receptive and aware.
Photo by Cynthia BurgessWhen I was studying meditation in Cape Town, the resident monk shared his life with two cats who had the run of the meditation hall. I learned early on not to react when either of them wanted to sit in my lap or rub up against me. No human can win a contest with a cat who's determined!! And, of course, now I have three of my own. Cats love meditation energy, by the way....I was living in a little hut, about six feet by seven feet. It had a canvas flap instead of a door. I was sitting on my bed meditating, and a cat wandered in and plopped down on my lap. I took the cat and tossed it out the door. Ten seconds later it was back in my lap. We got into a sort of dance, this cat and I. I would toss it out, and it would come back. I tossed it out because I was trying to meditate, to get enlightened. But the cat kept returning. I was getting more and more irritated, more and more annoyed with the persistence of the cat. Finally, after about a half-hour of this coming in and tossing out, I had to surrender. There was nothing else to do. There was no way to block off the door. I sat there, the cat came back in, and it got on my lap. But I did not do anything. I just let go. Thirty seconds later the cat got up and walked out. So you see, our teachers come in many forms.
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.
"Be yourself. Because everyone else is already taken!"I think you can see how these are connected.
"You can't run and hide when the problem's inside."
"Unity" Use the phrase "just like me" to signify your unity with others. Whenever you find yourself making an assessment of another person, whether you are saying something critical or something complimentary, right after you think or say it, add the statement "just like me." For example, "My partner is so stubborn, just like me." "My friend is so generous with her time, just like me." "She holds too many grudges, just like me." "He is so creative, just like me."What an effective way of training ourselves to let go of judgment!
This is the Cat's Eye Nebula as seen by the Hubble Telescope.Flyers onboard Virgin Atlantic flights can now take advantage of a new inflight meditation facility.Mind you, the kind of meditation I recommend is not about blissing out. Still, this airline is trying to promote the spiritual well-being of passengers and I think it's a wonderful idea.
As a result of the popularity of its inflight audio meditation service, the carrier has now launched an offering that utilises audio and visual effects to provide a 30-minute meditation experience for passengers.
The Total Relaxation facility could help to lower blood pressure and boost the immune system as a result of minimising anxiety and stress, the airline said.
"Long-haul flights can be challenging for some travellers, especially if sleep proves difficult," commented Richard Latham of Meditainment.com, the provider of the service, adding: "By watching the Total Relaxation movie, passengers enter a state of pure bliss."
Virgin Atlantic's overall inflight entertainment offering includes the use of individual seatback screens showing films and television programmes and providing a range of music options, as well as the Skymap service, which shows passengers exactly where the plane is and provides facts about the flight.
Mantras are simple phrases that keep our heart, will, and mind attuned to that which is life-giving and eternal. They can be quietly spoken out loud during prayer time or repeated internally. Once they become established in our awareness, they can even become a steady background rhythm to all we do. They give us clarity, and they also allow for a quality of questioning that awakens dormant depths in us.
It is best to create a permanent meditation place. Your meditation place may be anything from a quiet room in the house, a table or a corner of your study desk, to even the shade of your favourite tree in the backyard. It doesn't matter where it is, just as long as you are able to find peace of mind there and access it regularly.
Ideally on a little table, place a cloth and other inspirational objects - such as a leaf from an amazing forest, a beautiful crystal, a crucifix or other sacred object, or a picture of a spiritual figure. If you cannot have a permanent meditation place, it is just as effective to create this space anew with every meditation. Just have the components (e.g. cloth, inspirational object, candle, incense) in a bundle, ready to go. Put simply, this place is an entrance to your heart - think of it as a shrine to your soul. Whatever inspires you spiritually is perfect.
I have picked flowers where I found them -- Have picked up sea shells and rocks and pieces of wood where there were sea shells and rocks and pieces of wood that I like. When I found the beautiful white bones in the desert I picked them up and took them home too.
I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it.
AIMLESS LOVE
This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.
In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.
This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.
The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.
No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.
No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then
for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.
But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.
After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,
so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.
Contrary to popular opinion, mind training is about far more than simply sitting crossed-legged on a cushion. There are numerous techniques that can be used in a very direct and practical way for raising awareness and the quality of communication at work. A well-structured programme of mind training will always include the three key elements of vision, insight and action.
Vision relates to the way in which we view the world around us. Essentially this is our attitude to life, to work and our perception of others. Clearly, when addressed successfully, this has dramatic implications for the workplace.
Insight relates to the practice of meditation itself and the wisdom generated through such practice. This allows us to work with increased clarity in any given situation and to respond in a skilful and compassionate way.
Action relates very specifically to the way in which we implement and integrate our refined vision and new-found wisdom into our everyday work. It is four years since Business Week first heralded the arrival of meditation in the workplace. Early pioneers included Apple, Yahoo! and Google, along with more traditional organisations such as Deutsche Bank and McKinsey. Needless to say, many organisations have since followed suit.
This growing trend is perhaps not surprising given the extensive scientific research published by the likes of the National Institute of Health and Harvard Medical School. The findings consistently demonstrate a decrease in the production of chemicals associated with stress, anxiety, depression and insomnia. At the same time they show an increased ability to relax, heightened levels of concentration and the alleviation of the many aches and pains that plague employees everywhere.
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Individuals who meditate tend to experience higher levels of sustained happiness and wellbeing in their lives. The result of this is an increased level of job satisfaction, improved morale and a greater willingness to contribute and communicate with fellow employees.
"Passage"The way in which we go to the grocery store may tell us everything about the way in which we live a life.
Be YourselfAt least if you're failing, you know you're alive; you're participating, engaged, learning, and therefore contributing to evolution. The Japanese have a phrase for this — they call it "the nobility of failure," implying, "Look at all the great things at which this person failed. She was really alive."
- Caroline W. Casey
Grounded in GratitudeResearch has also suggested that feelings of gratitude may be beneficial to subjective emotional well-being (Emmons & McCullough, 2003). For example, Watkins and colleagues (Watkins et al., 2003) had participants test a number of different gratitude exercises, such as thinking about a living person for whom they were grateful, writing about someone for whom they were grateful, and writing a letter to deliver to someone for whom they were grateful. Participants in the control condition were asked to describe their living room. Participant who engaged in a gratitude exercise showed increases in their experiences of positive emotion immediately after the exercise, and this effect was strongest for participants who were asked to think about a person for whom they were grateful. Participants who had grateful personalities to begin with showed the greatest benefit from these gratitude exercises. In people who are grateful in general, life events have little influence on experienced gratitude (McCullough, Tsang & Emmons, 2004).
Although gratitude is something that anyone can experience, some people seem to feel grateful more often than others. People who tend to experience gratitude more frequently than do others also tend to be happier, more helpful and forgiving, and less depressed than their less grateful counterparts (Kashdan, Uswatte, & Julian, 2006; McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002; Watkins, Woodward, Stone, & Kolts, 2003)
This is always how it isAnd the second is by Rainer Maria Rilke:
when I finish a poem.
A great silence overcomes me,
and I wonder why I ever thought
to use language.
Things aren't so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered.It is truly important to become comfortable with silence. Those who have an aversion to silence miss so much.
CalmAnother remark I’ve often come across is “Meditation is boring.” Do you really find your own company boring? Because that’s what meditation is: being with yourself...In another part of the article he says:
Meditation does not just calm you, it also blunts that painful edge of being in a competitive environment. You do not regard another as a competitor whom you must defeat; you affectionately regard his or her high standards as those you too can achieve. If you meditate for just 20 minutes daily, you will find a new keenness in your taste; your sense of humour too will be stronger where you laugh more, and more joyously; and your physical exercise sessions will feel like fun-and-games sessions. Oh yes, please do continue your cycling, walking or any form of exercise as also your sensible eating ways.Good stuff.
An old man said: I never wanted work that was useful to me but loss to my brother. For I have this expectation, that what helps my brother is fruitful for me.It is very difficult to practice this principle 100% because there is so much exploitation in the world and we are all intricately connected. But we can work toward the ideal of not contributing to the exploitation of others.
— Desert Father in Desert Wisdom translated by Yushi Nomura
To Practice This Thought: Make sure that no aspect of your work contributes to the exploitation of another being.
If we consider ourselves to be experts, well then, we already know. There is no spaciousness within for change, for transformation.In the beginners mind there are many possibilities, but in the experts there are few.
Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity.That's very encouraging. Very consoling. We are all mixtures - have always been mixtures and will most certainly continue to be mixtures throughout this life. So let us not become discouraged about not reaching enlightenment yet. But we can make enlightened choices whenever we wish.
“33 Hearts Mandala”
Garden of Eden
House wren 
