Stay together, friends.
Don’t scatter and sleep.
Our friendship is made
of being awake.
The waterwheel accepts water
and turns and gives it away
weeping.
That way it stays in the garden,
whereas another roundness rolls
through a dry riverbed looking
for what it thinks it wants.
Stay here, quivering with each moment
like a drop of mercury.
Rumi
“The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.”
Benjamin Disraeli
The idea of mindfulness – of dropping our preconceived ideas and being open to what truly ‘is’, or just being present – is daunting. While we all know where to begin – right now – it often seems overwhelming because of the pace of our lives and the weight of our responsibilities. One way to get our arms around it is to practice punctuated mindfulness – to set apart a few specific times during the day to still our minds, listen to our bodies, and see what is before us openly and without prejudice. To get your practice to ‘bloom’:
Sow Intently
Begin by taking inventory of the moments of your daily life that you consider mundane – the times you are on ‘autopilot’. Showering, folding clothing, and washing dishes are common examples of such times. Commit three such times to paper to start, and place them in a conspicuous location – like your bathroom mirror or dashboard - for review every morning and evening. By turning these times over to mindfulness, you erect a ‘lattice’ on which to train your practice for growth.
Nurture Compassionately
By keeping the times you have committed to mindfulness practice in a conspicuous location, you can verify adherence to your intentions. In the event things aren’t going as planned, don’t pass judgement on yourself. Remember your current way of doing things took many years to commit to habit, and changing takes time. In the event one of the intended times isn’t working, perhaps changing it will work. As you are able to consistently practice your intentions, add more. Don’t be discouraged and don’t give up!
Reap Fully
Over time, the benefits of practicing just being present unfold in ways that are always new and full of joy. There is so much packed into the present that is inaccessible to us because we are distracted by our inner-narrative. When we are truly still and see mindfully, we see everything as if it was for the first time, and regain the wonder of living.
By starting with punctuated mindfulness, we can manage our personal transformation by establishing our practice and growing over time. It’s a great form of horticulture that can be done even in the depths of our Chicago deep-freeze!
by Michael Brunner
“Without the intentional effort to awaken, life speeds by. We habituate to experience, perceiving through the filter of the past and not orienting ourselves to the novel distinctions of the present.
Our invariant representations lessen the information density because they establish filters that constrain what we actually see. If there were to be a new flower, we might miss it because we are anticipating the old flower. Waking up and ‘smelling the roses’ is, literally, telling the invariant representations of our brains to take a break.”
Dan Siegel
I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.
All that is eternal in me
Welcomes the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.
I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Waves of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shells of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
To live the life that I love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.
by John O’Donohue
“Take delight in others and propagate dignity.”
Chogyam Trungpa
. . . life can be so beautiful
in the moments . . .
. . . when you have no answers,
but beauty and brokenness
that caress
the intimate details
of lives intertwined
with genuine kindness
the reaches far within
the marrow of the bones
that seeks
to dance
to interlace
to live
in the beauty
of the moment . . .
from Musing Along the Ike by Nancy Sack
It’s wonderful to have time to celebrate the holidays with family and friends. The holidays mean many things to different people. And sometimes, this can be a challenging time of year for some. So I’d like to say something about how we might approach this time of year in a way that would help us be at peace with ourselves and those around us.
There is a Zen story about a student who is not at peace with himself. His mind is busy and restless. He’s much like you or I, when we get stressed out, worried and anxious. I’m sure you are intimate with this condition. I hear this question from students all the time. “How can I have peace of mind?” So the story continues, and the student visits a Zen Master and sincerely and openly admits to the teacher that his mind is not at peace.
The teacher tells the student, “Bring me your mind, and I’ll put it to rest.” So perhaps at this point, the teacher tells the student to go practice meditation and in this deep silence with himself, inquire into the nature of mind itself and see what he finds. The student does so, and returns to the teacher and says, “I have searched for the mind, but I cannot find it.”
If you, like this student, sit down in meditation and practice returning your attention to your breath, you will also discover that what seems like a very busy and hyper-active mind is by it’s very nature, still and luminous, and cannot be located anywhere. We speak of this kind of intimacy as “touching the mind”. You touch it breath by breath, moment by moment. When you slow down in this way, you will discover that it’s possible to have this grounded, embodied awareness that is peaceful and still, no matter what the outward circumstances might be. Your conceptual mind cannot reach it.
Having searched and inquired the student comes up empty. The Diamond Sutra says, “Dwell nowhere and bring forth that mind.” So now the teacher tells the student, “I have completely put it to rest for you.” In other words, when you reach this place of intimacy and stillness within yourself, you will be at peace with yourself and the world.
Living a Zen-inspired life is to find this peace which passes all understanding and is beyond what our conceptual mind can grasp or control. We practice daily meditation in order to strengthen and cultivate this kind of awareness. This kind of awareness is always fresh and new. When we are able to live our lives in this way, we can deal with any obstacles or difficulties with more balance and clarity.
So during these holidays, I encourage you to enjoy being with your family and friends and with children. But also make time to reflect and be still. It’s winter after all, so it’s also a time to slow down and take the full measure of what it means to be alive and how much we can appreciate and express our gratitude for the mystery and wonder of it all.
by Robert Althouse
“An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.”
Bonnie Friedman
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Saint Francis of Assisi
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