The problem with attachment to plans

Letting go of attachment to outcome is undoubtedly THE major enterprise of a life dedicated to meditative principles:

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

-- Joseph Campbell

I discoverd Joseph Campbell when I was quite young, maybe even an undergraduate, when I read his wonderful book, Myths to Live By. Highly recommended.

The finest gift

Compassion and loving-kindness are fundamental principles of applying meditative practice to our lives. But they can also seem a bit abstract sometimes. It helps to have some specific suggestions. Here you go:

The finest gift you can give anyone is encouragement. Yet, almost no one gets the encouragement they need to grow to their full potential. If everyone received the encouragement they need to grow, the genius in most everyone would blossom and the world would produce abundance beyond our wildest dreams.

-- Sidney Madwed

Veteran's Day, 2009

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Ha!

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Our dear friend-of-the-Center, Paul Rogers, sent me this!

(Click photo to enlarge.)

A profound little couplet

Just for the heck of it this morning, I did a GoodSearch on "happiness" and then clicked on the Wikiquote link that was listed. Here's something I found:

Happiness depends, as Nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.

-- William Cowper

Very true. Oh, so true.
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By the way, folks, please use GoodSearch as your search engine at least part of the time. You will help the Center thereby. Be sure to put our full name (St. John's Center for Spiritual Formation) down as your charity. Also, if you download their toolbar, using GoodSearch becomes incredibly easy. Also, if you like to order things online, do use GoodShop to access those sites. The Center gets a percentage of the sale that way. Thanks so much!!!

Monday meditative picture blogging

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Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Meditation and breathing

I've often noticed in the meditation hall that some people manipulate their breathing unnecessarily during meditation. They will either breathe too slowly (and often put themselves to sleep that way) or they will force the outbreath, thereby creating unnecessary tension. Here are some tips from a little article I found today:

1. As you breathe, let your abdomen expand and contract, rather than moving your shoulders up and down. This deeper breathing is more natural and similar to how babies breathe. It gives you increased lung capacity, whereas the ‘shallow breathing’ adults usually utilize doesn’t allow as much oxygenation of the blood.

2. Don't breathe too quickly or too slowly; just breathe at a natural rate, but more deeply.

3. If you find your thoughts drifting a lot at first, don't worry that you're doing it 'wrong'. Noticing that you've drifted and refocusing to your breathing is part of the practice, and something you're doing 'right'!

What You Need:

* A quiet place
* A few minutes
* A willing mind

Remember that "deep" as it's used here refers to a deeper part of the body - not to taking an unnaturally excessive amount of air on the inbreath.

Sunday art blogging

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Medieval miniature

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Learning to be happy

This morning, Beliefnet has a little slide show entitled "21 Simple Ways to be Happy". Here are a couple of the suggestions:

Pencil in Quite Time: Each and every day sit awhile, without television, without magazines, without the Internet. Just be!
...
Accept What You Cannot Change: Don't waste your precious time, energy, or thoughts on something that is beyond your control. Let it go.
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Meditate, Pray, and Chant: Research shows that people who are spiritual tend to be happier and healthier than those who are not.

You can take a look at all the suggestions right here.

Here and now meditation

Today I came across a page on the internet entitled "Here and now Meditation". Below is one paragraph from it:

In order to meditate and make our mind quiet, it is important for us to accept our life as it exists in the present moment. No matter how boring, banal, stressful , sad or colorless our present life is; at any given moment, it is all that we have with us. So accept your life as it is and remind yourself that you exists in the present moment. The aim of this step is to focus your whole attention on the present moment. This initial step act as a launching pad for the 'here and now' meditation as the entire attention of the meditator get focused on the present moment. So: Just be aware of the fact that you exist here and now !

I recommend that you click through and read the rest of the article. Here's one sentence I particularly like: "The main aim of this meditation is to break the habit of a mechanical life which most of us are living." Any practice that can help us stay in the present moment is all to the good.

Friday cat blogging!

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Sitting with the world

Here is a very profound meditation instruction:

Take a seat ...and just sit. .... Relax. Don't try to do anything at all. Don't try to make anything come, don't try to make anything go leave. Let everything do its own work, chart its own course. As you sit, just sit with the world, with whatever is there, all of the arisings and passings away in your mind, body, and environment. As you notice sights and sounds, thoughts and feelings, memories and anticipations, relax into them. Relax your mind and body. Actively do nothing. Make no efforts. Just sit, just be, at least for now.
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The mentality is this. There is nowhere that you need to go, nothing that you need to achieve, no one that you need to be....

-- Jundo Cohen

This is a very powerful antidote to the all too frequent obsession with "getting it right" in meditation.

I found it right here.

The best kind of knowing

I found this somewhere yesterday:

At the center of your being
you have the answer;
you know who you are
and you know what you want.

-- Lao Tzu

Of course, the question then is how to "find" that center of our being. You know what I'm going to say! We need to meditate consistently and also patiently. And never give up. Never, never give up!

Wednesday life form blogging

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Something about distractions

Just came across this in a simple meditation instruction and I really like it!

If you become lost in thoughts, the moment you realize you have been lost in thoughts, you are no longer lost.

-- Kim Eng

That's a very good point, isn't it?

On the light side

Carolyn Loomis sent me this!

Try this as a mediative support

Remembering the Departed

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Today is All Saints Day in the Christian liturgical calendar and tomorrow will be All Souls. Together they are the dates for the "Day of the Dead" celebrations in Mexico - a celebration that is now spreading all over the word. And it is a truly healthy observance, to my mind.

Whatever your religious or non-religious convictions, it is important to make friends with the reality of death because it is something that happens to all of us.

It seems appropriate, therefore, to share with you this wonderful poem - a classic:

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played
At wrestling in a ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

-- Emily Dickinson

May you remember your blessed dead today with joy and reverence.

By the way, I had the enormous privilege many years ago of attending The Belle of Amherst (a one woman play about Emily Dickinson) at the Kennedy Center starring the amazing Julie Harris. Just the memory of that performance stands my hair on end.