Thoughts on “Mindfulness”

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by Ajahn Sumedho

From off the Web

Meditation and Psychotherapy 

Posted on 1 July 2010 by Buddhism NowAS

“I was invited to a conference in Gloucestershire not so long ago which was all about dealing with spiritual crises. There were therapists, psychiatrists and counsellors there talking about mindfulness, because this word ‘mindfulness’ seemed to be the main topic of interest, which I thought was very good.

The way to liberate the mind is through mindfulness or awareness, and this is the essence of the Buddha’s teaching; this is the important one.

It isn’t that people in general are never mindful or always heedless and ignorant, but speaking for myself, it never meant anything to me in the past; it wasn’t raised up as anything significant. I would be mindful under certain circumstances, but I didn’t know what mindfulness was; I was just that way because the conditions were there for it. And in life-endangering situations, I would be particularly mindful. People would ask me afterwards, ‘Were you frightened?’ And I would say, ‘No, I was very mindful.’

It wasn’t that I had trained myself to be that way; it was just that I was naturally alert on those occasions; it just happened as part of the life-preservation instinct. We didn’t call it ‘mindfulness’, of course, and it wasn’t appreciated even though it had happened. After developing meditation over the years, however, I began to recognize and understand the power of it rather than just seeing it as a technique or a way to gain some limited state.

Psychotherapy gives a forum for talking about things that you would not perhaps talk about in other circumstances. It can be quite useful for allowing fears to become conscious, especially the darker aspects of the psyche. You can’t talk to just anybody about these things because you need someone who will listen to you without making judgements or giving advice, so having that facility can initially be quite useful as a skillful means.

But if that process becomes addictive, you can get too interested in yourself as a person. In meditation, on the other hand, you don’t find your personality that interesting after a while.”

http://buddhismnow.com/2010/07/01/meditation-psychotherapy/#comment-20555The path of mindfulness is the path of no preferences

The path of mindfulness is the path of no preferences.

posted on 12 October 2009 by Buddhism Now

The path of mindfulness is the path of no preferences. When we prefer one thing to another, then we concentrate on it: ‘I prefer peace to chaos.’ So, then, in order to have peace, what do we do? We have to go to some place where there is no confusion, become a hermit, go up to the Orkneys, find a cave.

I found a super cave once off the coast of Thailand. It was on a beautiful little island in the Gulf of Siam. And it was my sixth year as a monk. All these Westerners were coming to Wat Pah Pong-Western monks. And they were causing me a lot of sorrow and despair. I thought: ‘I don’t want to teach these people; they’re too much of a problem; they’re too demanding; I want to get as far away from Western monks as possible.’

The previous year I had spent a Rains Retreat with five others. Oh, what a miserable Rains Retreat that was! I thought: ‘I’m not going to put up with that! I didn’t come here to do that; I came here to have peace.’ So I made some excuse to go to Bangkok and from there I found this island. I thought it was perfect. They had caves on the island and little huts on the beaches. It was the perfect set-up for a monk. One could go and get one of those huts and live in it. And then go on alms-round in the village.

The village people were all very friendly, especially to Western monks because to be a Western monk was very unusual. We could depend on having all the food we could possibly eat, and more. It was not a place that was easy to get to, being out in the Gulf of Thailand, and I thought: ‘Oh, they’ll never find me out here, those Western monks; they’ll not find me here.’

And then I found a cave, one with a Jongram, and it was beautiful. It had an inner chamber that was completely dark and no sounds could penetrate. I crawled in through a hole and inside there was nothing. I could neither see nor hear anything. So it was ideal for sensory deprivation: ‘Oh, this is exactly what I’ve been looking for; I can practise all these high Jhanic states. I can go in this cave and just practise for hours on end with no kind of sense stimulation.’

I really wanted to see what would happen. But there was this old monk living in this cave who was not sure whether he was going to stay. Anyway, he said I could have the grass hut on the top of the hill. I went up there and looked, and down below was the sea. I thought, ‘Oh, this is also nice because now I can concentrate on the sea, which is tranquillising.’

There was a Thai monk on the island who was a very good friend of mine and he said: ‘Well, if they find you here, there’s an island about fifteen miles further out-they’ll never find you there. There’s a little hut there, and a little village; the people in the village would love to take care of a monk.’ So I was thinking: ‘You know, possibly after the Rains Retreat, I will go out to that further island.’

I really was determined to escape. I wanted peace and I found the Western monks very confusing. They would always ask lots of questions and were so demanding. So I was all set to spend the Rains Retreat in this idyllic situation.

My right foot became severely infected and they had to take me off the island into the local hospital on the mainland. I was very ill. They would not let me go back to the island and I had to spend the Rains Retreat in a monastery near the town.

Sorrow, despair and resentment arose towards this foot-all because I was attached to tranquillity. I wanted to escape the confusion of the world; I really longed to lock myself in a tomb where my senses would not be stimulated, where no demands would be made on me, where I would be left alone, incognito, invisible.

But after that I contemplated my attitude; I contemplated my greed for peace. And I did not seek tranquillity any more.

Ajahn Sumedho was ordained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand in 1967 and trained under the guidance of the highly respected Thai teacher, Ajahn Chah. He is now the abbot of Amaravati Buddhist monastery in England.

Ajahn Sumedho

http://buddhismnow.com/2009/10/12/path-of-mindfulness/

More about : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajahn_Sumedho

 

How to get a greater sense of focus, calm and clarity in your life.

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… In just 10 minutes

“ Most people assume that meditation is all about stopping thoughts, getting rid of emotions, somehow controlling the mind. But actually it’s … about stepping back, seeing the thought clearly, witnessing it coming and going.”

Andy Puddicombe

Andy Puddicombe

Andy Puddicombe: All it takes is 10 mindful minutes 

I think the present moment is so underrated. It sounds so ordinary, and yet we spend so little time in the present moment that it’s anything but ordinary.

There was a research paper that came out of Harvard, just recently, that said on average our minds are lost in thought almost 47 percent of the time. Forty-seven percent. At the same time, this constant mind-wandering is also a direct cause of unhappiness. Now we’re not here for that long anyway, but to spend almost half of our life lost in thought and potentially quite unhappy- it just seems tragic.

But there’s something we can do about it. There’s a positive, practical, achievable, scientifically proven technique which allows our mind to be more healthy, to be more mindful and less distracted. And the beauty of it is that even though it need only take about 10 minutes a day, it impacts our entire life.

But we need to know how to do it. We need an exercise. We need a framework to learn how to be more mindful. That’s essentially what meditation is. It’s familiarizing ourselves with the present moment. But we also need to know how to approach it in the right way to get the best from it. 

Most people assume that meditation is all about stopping thoughts, getting rid of emotions, somehow controlling the mind, but actually it’s quite different from that. It’s more about stepping back, seeing the thought clearly, witnessing it coming and going, emotions coming and going without judgment, but with a relaxed, focused mind.

(he’s juggling balls…)
So for example, right now, if I focus too much on the balls, then there’s no way that I can relax and talk to you at the same time. Equally, if I relax too much talking to you, then there’s no way I can focus on the balls. I’m going to drop them. Now in life and in meditation, there’ll be times when the focus becomes a little bit too intense, and life starts to feel a bit like this. It’s a very uncomfortable way to live life, when you get this tight and stressed. At other times, we might take our foot off the gas a little bit too much, and things just become a sort of little bit like this. Of course in meditation — (Snores) — we’re going to end up falling asleep.

So we’re looking for a balance, a focused relaxation where we can allow thoughts to come and go without all the usual involvement.

Now, what usually happens when we’re learning to be mindful is that we get distracted by a thought. Let’s say this is an anxious thought. So everything’s going fine, and then we see the anxious thought, and it’s like, “Oh, didn’t realize I was worried about that.” You go back to it, repeat it. “Oh, I am worried. Oh, I really am worried. Wow, there’s so much anxiety.” And before we know it, we’re anxious about feeling anxious. You know, this is crazy. We do this all the time, even on an everyday level. If you think about the last time you had a wobbly tooth. You know it’s wobbly, and you know that it hurts. But what do you do every 20, 30 seconds? ..’ It does hurt.’ And we reinforce the storyline, right? And we just keep telling ourselves, and we do it all the time.

Only in learning to watch the mind in this way that we can start to let go of those story lines and patterns of mind.

When you sit down and you watch the mind in this way, you might see many different patterns. You might find a mind that’s really restless. Don’t be surprised if you feel a bit agitated in your body when you sit down to do nothing and your mind feels like that. You might find a mind that’s very dull and boring, and it’s just, almost mechanical, it just seems it’s as if you’re getting up, going to work, eat, sleep, get up, work. Or it might just be that one little nagging thought that just goes round and round and round your mind. Well, whatever it is, meditation offers the opportunity, the potential to step back and to get a different perspective, to see that things aren’t always as they appear.

We can’t change every little thing that happens to us in life, but we can change the way that we experience it.

That’s the potential of meditation, of mindfulness. You don’t have to burn any incense, and you definitely don’t have to sit on the floor. All you need to do is to take 10 minutes out a day to step back, to familiarize yourself with the present moment so that you get to experience a greater sense of focus, calm and clarity in your life.

Excerpt from the TEDtalk, Andy Puddicombe: All it takes is 10 mindful minutes 

 

Mindfulness meditation may ease anxiety, mental stress

Julie Corliss, Executive Editor, Harvard Heart Letter.

Elizabeth Hoge, a psychiatrist at the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, says that mindfulness meditation makes perfect sense for treating anxiety.

“People with anxiety have a problem dealing with distracting thoughts that have too much power,” she explains. “They can’t distinguish between a problem-solving thought and a nagging worry that has no benefit.”

If you have unproductive worries,” says Dr. Hoge, you can train yourself to experience those thoughts completely differently. “You might think ‘I’m late, I might lose my job if I don’t get there on time, and it will be a disaster!’ Mindfulness teaches you to recognize, ‘Oh, there’s that thought again. I’ve been here before. But it’s just that—a thought, and not a part of my core self,’” says Dr. HogTo get a sense of mindfulness meditation, you can try one of the guided recordings by Dr. Ronald Siegel, an assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. They are available for free at www.mindfulness-solution.com.