Oh, that old ego!

This can be very reassuring if we let it be:

Don't be afraid. Fear has tortured us throughout our lives. It's just the Ego talking, making up stories.

— Nawang Gehlek

Joy

And Joy is Everywhere;
It is in the Earth's green covering of grass;
In the blue serenity of the Sky;
In the reckless exuberance of Spring;
In the severe abstinence of grey Winter;
In the Living flesh that animates our bodily frame;
In the perfect poise of the Human figure, noble and upright;
In Living;
In the exercise of all our powers;
In the acquisition of Knowledge;
in fighting evils...
Joy is there
Everywhere.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

Wednesday life form blogging

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Something about coexistence

Meditative practice will really help with the following because it teaches us how to let go of judgment and be with reality exactly the way it is:

In a world marked by the coexistence of multiple faiths ... the horizontal relations between faiths require as much attention as the vertical dimension of each.

- William Connolly, from his book Pluralism

Radical acceptance

The following passage from After the Fall is truly profound. If each of us would do this there would be so much greater happiness and alleviation of suffering in the world:

I dreamed I had a child, and even in the dream I saw it was my life, and it was an idiot, and I ran away. But it always crept onto my lap again, clutched at my clothes. Until I thought, if I could kiss it, whatever in it was my own, perhaps I could sleep. And I bent to its broken face, and it was horrible . . . but I kissed it. I think one must finally take one’s life in one’s arms.

-- Arthur Miller, from After the Fall

Utter acceptance of who and what we are and what we have experienced is the only way forward on the path to enlightenment - of that I'm very certain.

(I am indebted to Fr. Clyde Glandon for calling the above quotation to my attention.)

Monday meditative picture blogging

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Something about happiness

On an impulse this morning, I did a goodsearch* on "happiness". The very first result was (surprise, surpise) a Wikipedia article. Here's a little excerpt:

Some researchers have found that about 50% of one's happiness depends on one's genes, based on studying identical twins, whose happiness is 50% correlated even when growing up in different houses. About 10% to 15% is a result of various measurable life circumstances variables, such as socioeconomic status, marital status, health, income, and others. The remaining 40% is a combination of unknown factors and the results of actions that individuals deliberately engage in for the purpose of becoming happier. These actions may vary between persons; extroverts, for example, may benefit from placing themselves in situations involving large amounts of human interaction. Also, exercise has been shown to increase one's level of momentary subjective well-being significantly.

Okay, folks. Looks like 40% is up to us. That's quite a lot, actually. And that's where meditative practice comes in. It's startlingly simple:

- A lot of unhappiness comes from suffering.
- Suffering is caused by excessive attachment, craving.
- The remedy is letting go.
- And we learn to let go through meditation.

So get those bottoms on those cushions, people!

(* If you use GoodSearch for your search engine at least part of the time and type in St. John's Center for Spiritual Formation as your charity of choice, the Center will benefit. Please help us in this easy way that costs you absolutely nothing!)

Sunday art blogging

Artist: Vincent Van Gogh

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Yesterday, we had our annual fundraising garage sale for the Center. Someone sold a print of the painting above and I bought it. I absolutely love the colors!

And now, for your reflection today:

Flowers grow out of dark moments.

-- Corita Kent

And this one:

Flowers. . . are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

~~~

Rest and mindfulness

Learning how to allow the mind to rest is one of the fundamental benefits of meditative practice:

When we come to a point of rest in our own being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest, and then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud becomes a revelation, and each person we meet a cosmos whose riches we can only glimpse.

— Dag Hammarskjöld

Meditation and pain

Another good reason to practice!

People who practice Zen meditation have been shown to be far less sensitive to pain than nonmeditators, and they are better at coping with it. Meditating really isn't that much harder than medicating. The goal isn't to suppress emotions, but to identify how they arise and how they influence you.
...
Meditation may help in a few ways: It may distract your mind so you react less to that idiot who almost cut you off or other hot buttons. It also may help you tolerate pain by helping you bypass a blame-and-stress cycle in your brain. This bypass helps decrease stress hormones and increase pain-squelching ones.

It's from a little article entitled "Use your mind to turn down pain".

(Don't worry about whether or not your meditation is technically "Zen" or not. The method described in the article is just basic tranquility/mindfulness.)

Something about smiling

Please don't consider the following a platitude. It's not. This is very, very true:

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.

-- Joseph Addison

Wednesday life form blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

I recommend that you click through to Cynthia's blog. She has another great picture of the elk posted over there. I love it when Cynthia gets back from vacation. (She was visiting her cousin for about a week in Colorado.) She returns with such great pictures!

Experiencing a change in heart

I just started reading a rather wonderful and insightful book entitled Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high. Here's a brief quotation from it about making a helpful and convincing apology:

Now, an apology isn't really an apology unless you experience a change in heart. To offer a sincere apology, your motives have to change. You have to give up saving face, being right, or winning in order to focus on what you really want. You have to sacrifice a bit of your ego by admitting your error. But like many sacrifices, when you give up something you value, you're rewarded with something even more valuable - healthy dialogue and better results.

I was intrigued by the instruction to focus on what we really want. That reminds me one of the great reflection questions that we first learn about in Foundations in Meditative Practice Class here at the Center: "What do I really want?" Spending time with that question can go a long way toward making our lives happier and more meaningful.

To help you count your blessings (ha!):

Monday meditative picture blogging

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Change and the importance of acceptance

Many people believe that if they accept the way things are - the way they are - then they will be stuck, that they will not have the motivation to change. Actually the opposite is true. It is lack of acceptance that keeps us stuck. Here's a good little explanation of how that works:

Desiring to change is okay, but longing for change actually hinders our growth. An important aspect of developing acceptance is learning to avoid craving. Craving is when we long for something, and unfortunately craving can make us very unhappy. One common form of craving is to crave experiencing something different from our current experience. This longing actually creates an unhealthy form of dissatisfaction with what we’re currently experiencing since the flip-side of craving is aversion. Craving and aversion are polar twins. When we crave to be experiencing something different then we reject our current experience.

Mindfulness involves an attitude of acceptance, which is the opposite of either pushing an experience away or longing for an experience. With mindfulness we’re prepared to take on board how we actually are. This doesn’t mean that we want to stay the way we are at the moment. On the contrary we almost certainly will wish to move on from there, but the first step in moving on is to recognize fully where we are, and to accept it.

It's from a short article called "Tools for learning acceptance" on the Wildmind site.
~~~

Seeing (and valuing) what is not

Have you ever thought of noticing and appreciating what is absent? I just found a little article on this principle and here's an illustration offered:

Many of the things we use are examples of the value of nothing. Claw hammers remove nails with little effort using a simple tool, a split in the metal. The opening -- where nothing is -- creates the function of this part. Without the space, it's a dull chisel.

Here's another short excerpt:

Between every event, every moment, every action and every reaction, there is a place to pause and think. Sometimes the pause is very brief, even just a moment. But a moment is a moment.

Look for the moments when there is no sound, no movement. Look at the still walls, the still ceiling, the stable trees or placid grass.

I really like the idea of looking for what is not there - not seeing that as deprivation but, rather, seeing the basic value of the absence of some things.

A different kind of walking meditation

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Meditation and anger

In the Saturday morning class at the Center we're in a series on anger. I happened to find a little article on line called "Basic Goodness, Anger, and Meditation" that I like very much. Here are a couple of the important points:

One of the ways meditation helps with anger is by uncovering our natural positive qualities. Meditation isn’t about creating some ideal state; rather it is a process of letting go, of shedding our superficial confusion, so that our true nature can come forth.
...
Often people think meditation is about stopping our thoughts, or emptying the mind, which are misconceptions. Anyway it’s impossible to stop our thoughts, since the mind is an ongoing phenomenal display with much vividness and power. The idea of meditation is that we can be present with our thoughts in a simple way.

I really like that very last sentence. It's so easy to be present with our thoughts in a complicated way and that tends to create suffering.
~~~

What wise people do

I saved this quotation a long time ago and just found it again:

As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.

-- The Buddha

I particularly like this because it points to the very practical nature of training the mind. Meditative practice is not all pie-in-the-sky, airy-fairy, "ethereal" stuff. It is very down to earth, helpful material that will truly make our lives better.