Appreciate the richness of your life and develop it into a cadence and harmony that enriches others.
more >Whether we are in the busy streets of New York or in the solitude of a mountain cave in Nepal, our happiness and contentment are completely within our own hands. Sitting meditation enables us to rest our mind in a present and a cheerful way. At the base of that experience is a quality of happiness, which is not a sense of giddiness, but of relaxation. Wherever we are, life is going to be coming at us. But if we use our lives as an opportunity to develop mindfulness, we will always be able to acknowledge that we are in a very precious situation.
When we sit, we’re making a direct relationship to the source of happiness, this wish-fulfilling jewel, the mind itself. Meditation gives us the ability to unpack the box in which the jewel is hidden. In effect, we’re taking time out from our busyness to say, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to be right here.” That is a very profound step, because we’re beginning to look at the truth and to trust it. That is mindfulness.
Our mind goes through a lot in the period of a day. Generally speaking, our thoughts cycle between positive and negative. Either we’re thinking about what upsets us or makes us anxious, or we’re riding the wave of what inspires us and reminds of us good things. If we aren't mindful of what we're doing, the pattern tends to shift toward more disturbing thoughts and emotions. We get consumed by the negativity of the mind—fear and regret, anger and desire. When these thoughts and emotions come up, they completely obscure us and we’re trapped by them.
In meditation, we learn to sit and watch all the ups and downs come and go like clouds in the sky. In the process, we gain more strength in terms of our clarity, insight, and prajna—wisdom. These are noble qualities that we all possess. With the mindfulness cultivated in meditation, we begin to be able to recognize them. They are the lessons we learn from watching our discursiveness. But to develop those qualities takes more effort than just sitting on the cushion; we have to be proactive. If we don’t apply ourselves, nothing is going to happen.
Yes, it’s important to show up, to have the discipline to sit, but there is also the internal aspect of dealing with every thought, every emotion. That is how we learn that they are temporary. They are always arising, always falling away. We can look at our mind and try to figure out where the thoughts come from, but we’ll never actually find that moment. The point is to learn to relax, to learn not to be absorbed in our discursiveness. Once we’re lost in it, we can be lost in it for twenty minutes, half an hour, or twenty years. The mind is where we live. That is how we experience things. Whether we have a good day or a bad day really depends on our experience of the mind.
Being mindful gives us the confidence to see and acknowledge our thoughts without being hooked by them. It allows us form the mind into something that is totally useful and pleasant. In terms of a spiritual tradition, we can say that we are developing our mind’s potential to become buddha, awake. But in a very pragmatic sense, this level of practice is helpful to anybody. If we’re going to be living in this world we should at least have the ability to work with our mind. When we do yoga, for example, the more flexible and fluid the body becomes, and the less of a nuisance it is. When we practice mindfulness in meditation, we are putting the mind into a situation where it can become flexible, joyous, and less of a problem. It’s that simple.
To practice successfully requires that we hold a view of what our mind really is. The image I like to use is basic goodness. What are the aspects of basic goodness? There’s compassion, virtue, wisdom, and other noble qualities. We meditate in order to become familiar with that good mind. Sometimes our meditation is fun; at other times, it can be boring. But overall, if we’re holding this view and applying the technique, meditation makes us stronger. We’re learning what the mind is, and stabilizing ourselves in that reality. This ability gives us a very powerful tool.
Our mind is always becoming familiar with something. Most of the time we’re becoming familiar with things that ultimately have very little relevance to us. We get familiar with the fantasy of food, a relationship, or a holiday. Of course we may have to pay the rent; there are always concerns on which our mind can chew. But in our daily meditation, we practice unloading those concerns from our mind and experiencing our precious opportunity to become familiar with something more meaningful. One way to ground ourselves in the view is to feel fortunate that we have the time and technique to meditate. We can say, “I feel very fortunate to be able to follow my breath because, number one, I have a breath.” It’s not necessarily guaranteed. For us to sit here and not appreciate what’s going on is ignorance, because we’re taking our lives for granted.
What happens when we feel fortunate? Inspiration is born, and it grows. Without inspiration, we don’t have any reason to return to the breath. Sitting is just an exercise. It’s like working in a factory: we’re just plugging in the time until we can go home. Our noble qualities are not increasing. Without the view, our meditation is like a rock at the bottom of a lake. What happens to a rock at the bottom of the lake? No matter how much time passes, nothing. In a hundred years, it’ll still be a rock at the bottom of the lake.
Even though our understanding may be small, we should have a level of confidence that the practice of sitting in this form and placing our mind on the breath is very special. It’s been handed down by people like the Tibetan yogi Milarepa, who did not leave us the message, “Meditation’s not really worth it,” or, “I looked in my mind and there’s nothing really there, but it’s a great way to lose weight.” He didn’t say that at all. Rather, he wrote 100,000 spontaneous songs that celebrate the basic goodness of our mind and the precious opportunity we have to develop our noble qualities. These are real. As our mind sticks with them, our level of prajna, "best knowledge", rises.
When we take the time to meditate, we’re not idly passing time. In following the breath and learning to deal with our thoughts, we’re laying the foundation for a shift in attitude that has the power to change our lives in a truly meaningful way. There’s a lot of darkness and aggression in our world. Cultivating mindfulness has an immediate effect on ourselves and others. When we apply ourselves in practice, we’re not only doing something very present, we’re also laying the conditions for how our lives will move forward.
