This was instruction that my father sent along in an email, so i can come back to my meditation practice. I hadn't been meditating for the last few months and truth be told I was dreading to sit. Its a simple practice and so powerful yet its so strange that Ive been running away from it, from myself. With these instructions I am going back to to my practice of sitting, everyday. I thought it would be great to put up the email pointers as a guide to those seeking to sit and meditate. Here's to your practice:
Here are the steps for Samadhi meditation:
1. First do few stretches if you dint do full or part yoga already.
2.Sit erect in a quiet, cool and dimly lit place and take five deep breaths counting backwards.
3.Relax and let go and loosen up.
4. Say to yourself: “Right now, in this moment, everything is OK. I accept this moment exactly as it is. All is well”.
5. Just BE, in a non doing state. Do not do anything mentally as well as physically. Just be. Since everything is already OK there is no need to do anything.
6. Do not create any thoughts. Just BE.
7. If a thought comes up on its own, do not block it. Do not hold on to it. And Do not be carried away by it.
8. If you find yourself carried away by a thought, just drop it and come back to just be.
9. Be like that for a while (if necessary keep timer for ten of fifteen mins before sitting and BE till then).
10. Take five deep breaths counting forwards and slowly open eyes and rub palm together and rub face and get up.
Letting go is a lesson I get to learn constantly. To me, its indicative of how much I hold on to "my, me and I" On day four I was squirming to get away from the obsessiveness with which I do things. My should's, ought to's and have to's came to the surface. In the end though, I let the awareness of it wash through me. Here are some of my realizations from day four of my media fast.
After two weeks of pushing it away and one week of completely embracing it, I am back to the world of computers, television sets and music. Not that I could possible escape it while I was on the fast but I chose to consciously choose other things over media. My media fast entailed a whole week (and a few bumpy previous weeks) of not reading books, watching tv, or using the computer (it was mainly the internet but I can never get on my laptop and not open Google Chrome). The first two days were a breeze. I was on a high that I chose something so positive but then day three happened and it was not pretty. Here are my notes from there:
I love clean feet, who doesn't? I often ensure that I get a pedicure to keep them clean besides making sure that they are taken care of on a day-to-day basis. You'll often see me in closed shoes because my feet can get really haggard when I wear thongs. Since the last year though I've ignored my feet. Giving it a cursory glimpse every now and then and quickly running into the bathroom to scrub it clean was hardly a way to keep them clean. Cracks started to show and I let them turn callous and abysmally dirty. I would look at it, feel sad and then shrug and go about my work.
Have you taken care of your feet today?
Two days back, my dad looked at my feet, panicked at how disgusting they were and ran in and got a bucket of hot water with salt and soap for me to soak my feet in. He scrubbed it for a bit and later also dunked it in a ton of cream and asked me to wear a socks to keep it moistened. I was doing this every once in a while but somehow getting my feet taken care of by my dad really felt like awakening to me. He did what I do for my baby everyday. He took care of me. I have been ensuring that they remain neat and clean since then. Its an interesting thing. This habit of ignoring a part of ourselves in the quest for doing something for someone else or doing something better with our time.
I let the habit of taking care of my feet go ever since Anika was born. While I wear slippers around the house to make sure they don't get dry and dirty, every time I feel hurried, I run around the house without my slippers. I spend very little time in cleaning my feet because I feel rushed by the need to take care of my little one-maybe she's awake, maybe she needs me, maybe I should relieve my husband from taking care of her, and so forth.
This is just one thing, this not taking care of my feet thing, there are so many things like this that get shelved for later in the service of something else that we think is pressing. Postponing workout, postponing talking to a friend, postponing mealtimes, postponing cleaning the house, etc.
Thank you feet!
My feet have seen so much. Walking miles and miles. Waiting with me at tough spots in my life. They've taught me to run, they've shown me that I could grow muscles in my calves and that my hamstrings and hip flexors can be supple and strong. I birthed with the help of my feet-squatting and kneeling to reduce pain. I learnt to feel the smallest toe, the mounds and the arches of my feet in my yoga classes and I learned to understand my state of being with them- If I am vigorously shaking them I know that am restless. I know that I am tensed if the muscles around my ankles are pulled. My feet are an important part of who I am.
Having known how it feels like to have my feet taken care of by someone who loves me, I have begun to internalize that love for my feet. This has become a mindfulness practice for me-not pushing away this part of me in service of something else, because I know from experience that when I do that even that something else gets done mindlessly.
What are your feet doing this minute? Are they feeling taken care of?
Washing the dishes is like bathing a baby Buddha. The profane is the sacred. Everyday mind is Buddha's mind.~Thich Nhat Hanh
(I read this at Lisa's last week review post as a part of the Wild Elephant Project and thought it fit so perfectly here, washing dishes and washing your feet how different can it be, huh?:)
This week's Wild Elephant Project suggests a mindfulness practice that is a wonderful addition to my current practice. Lisa quotes from the book and gently guides us through the practice over at her website. The practice is to "Use loving hands and a loving touch, even with inanimate objects". I often focus on my feet, where I place them, how I move and so forth as a part of my yoga practice. However, the practice of using "loving hands" in my everyday life was a brand new one for me. I had read about it earlier at The Domestic Yogi's post on mindfulness of the hands and was pleasantly surprised that Lisa brought it up as this weeks practice.
Granpas loving hands
The practice has been a way to slow things down for me. I started to notice that by default I am in a hurry. Like doing things quickly was a characteristic that had become me. I am not sure when that happened but it did, so much so that even when I think I am being mindful there is a hint of hurriedness in my actions. This practice is a lot like sitting meditation, for me. I became fully absorbed in the right now, cutting vegetables with mindful awareness, treating them with respect, love and gratitude. Cooking with the same awareness of my hands led to the feeling of breathing in and out in a scared space. But eventually, the sense of hurriedness came back. I was still aware of what my hands were doing but I couldn't bring back the slowing down. I could see what my hands were doing, placing the dishes with a loud clang in the sink, picking up my baby and carrying her on my hips with less awareness, placing my hands down on the floor and putting my weight on them to help me sit or stand. Once in a while I would tell myself to be gentle. I would try to slow down and appreciate what my hands were doing- caressing my baby's hair, massaging my neck gently, cleaning the kitchen counter.
The use of loving hands and a loving touch came to my rescue last night. I couldn't sleep till about two because I had a painful and sore throat. I couldn't swallow, I couldn't breathe easily because my nose was blocked and I just couldn't sleep with all that pain. I tried to clear my nose by rubbing the outer part of the nose, I tried to breathe hard in spite of a blocked nose and all of it sent alarm bells ringing in my head. So much for loving touch, my head seemed to say. It was in that moment that I chose to accept that pain and my hands showed me the way. The way I was treating myself-my nose, my throat- constantly trying to rid myself of the blocked nose and the itchy throat, using my hands to help me rid this pain, all of that was a way of waking up for me. It dawned on me that I was pushing away a part of myself. I wanted only a neat, happy, relaxed self that could help me go to sleep and my way of doing that was by pushing away this sick, itchy, uncomfortable side of me. I was so far away from loving myself.
That's when I sat up and did the tonglen meditation along with my breathing practice. Below is a video of the Tonglen meditation by Pema Chodron. It is a meditation that allows one to experience the "spacious quality of our minds and the warmth of our hearts" it is a way to get closer to pain that one feels and in that accept ones own pain as well as the pain of humanity. Pain is not something that we rid ourselves of, it is something that we get closer to and befriend. It is in knowing both pain and happiness that we get closer to ourselves and humanity.
My Tonglen last night focussed on breathing in my physical pain and remembering the physical pain of many in the world. And breathing out space for acceptance of this pain not only for me but for the world as well. This morning I opened Chodron's book on "Start where you are" to look at one of the slogans she talks about. "Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation"
She says "This slogan points out how interruptions themselves awaken us, how interruptions themselves-surprises, unexpected events, bolts out of the blue-can awaken us to the experience of both absolute and relative bodhichitta, to the open, spacious quality of our minds and the warmth of our hearts. This is the slogan about surprises as gifts. These surprises can be pleasant or unpleasant; the main point is that they can stop our minds. You're walking along and a snowball hits you on the side of the head. It stops your mind."
So using Lisa's prompt to remind me about loving myself, using Toglen to accept the uncomfortable and painful, were all ways to use the unexpected to awaken to authenticity. Every moment of every day is a reminder in pausing our thinking, obsessing minds, shifting away from the ever so important "I" and focusing of the vast space that fills us and bounces off of us. You can be jolted out of your "I" talk in many many ways. Something as simple as a sneeze can jolt you out, a shocking news, a disaster, a pleasant surprise- all of it are gifts to awaken us to the experience of unbounded space, all of it are invitations to develop compassion for the predicament of the people in the world and ourselves and all we need to do is pay attention to our hands. That simple.
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* The title of this post is from a book by Cheri Huber with the same name. I highly recommend this book.It is an exercise in self awareness and is truly a treasure. For Indian readers it is available on Flipkart.com! I just checked. The inspiration to use this as a title comes for Lisa's post, so if you are wondering what in the world that means, hop on over to her website to read more.
If you have a minute to spare, just close your eyes and observe what happens in that head of yours. We are plagued by our thoughts. Thoughts about what, when, how and why of any and every thing. It is these thoughts that make us. Indeed, my thoughts create opinions about things and people, they help me understand the world, albeit through a narrow lens, they help me decide on my life's goals and they help me critically analyze what is good for me and the world at large. They prepare me for success and failure. They make us, really. I think, therefore I am.
If you give yourself a few minutes everyday to just watch your thoughts, you will be astound by how repetitive, mundane and tangential they can get. Of course, there are moments of creative thinking, sparks that define us too, but they are thoughts all the same. I think, therefore I am.
But isn't that limiting? 'I', my ego, keeps things in control by thinking-logically, practically, emotionally, but what about the moments when we let go, loose control, surrender and become one, moments when thoughts cease to exist, albeit momentarily?
Are you listening?
Quietening the mind is a process that entails making the ego permeable. Making the 'I' permeable. It entails letting others in, being vulnerable and dropping the controlling aspects of our selves. This, I am learning, happens when you balance the 'being' and 'doing' aspects of yourself.
For me, putting my little baby girl to sleep is one of those moments of letting go and making my ego permeable. If my mind is racing, and is full of thoughts about things to do, I fail to notice what Anika wants. She cries and screams, almost like telling me to focus on something besides myself. Only when I switch from the 'I' state can I really listen to her needs. Only when I cease to think and just be, can I deeply feel connected to my daughter.
I'll bet that most of us have experienced, in one way or another, this connection. When you find a deeper connection with yourself or someone else there is a sense of falling away of the ego. Words have a way of coming in between this understanding. Think about times when just looking at someone arose compassion, love and calmness.
Thoughts separate us from what is.They take us away from connections we can possibly make with others in the present moment. They separate us from deeper connections we can make with ourselves and the world. But how does one not think? In our day-to-day lives there are many moments when we let go and just be. Like when I put my baby to sleep, when I relinquish my stubborn "must have's" to some one else's requests or when I meditate.
Here is a wonderful quote from Mark Epstein's book that is apt in the context of quieting the mind:
"Be Patient, do nothing, cease striving. We find this advice disheartening and therefore unfeasible because we forget it is our own inflexible activity that is structuring the reality. We think that if we do not hustle, nothing will happen and we will pine away. But the reality is probably in motion and after a while we might take part in that motion. But one can't know" -Paul Goodman.
Today is one of those days. I woke up next to my little one who
was also beginning to wake. Because it was early and because she had slept late
last night, I knew from previous experience that if I didn't activate her she
would go back to sleep. But here was my husband, who woke up along with us
today and was thrilled to see that our little one was waking. He cooed to her,
kissed her and began to talk to her. Anika was enjoying it but I was upset. I
told my husband not to activate her, that she needed her sleep and she would go
back to sleep if she was left to herself. I regretted this soon as I said it.
Photo: Charlotte Community of Mindfulness
Thus began my morning, with a 'no!' on my lips and regret on my
mind. I wanted it to go away because that's not what a mindful person wakes up
with. Unfortunately, I couldn't shake off the feeling that germinated within me
and I just went about my morning's spiritual practice with a cloud in my head.
The feeling grew larger and wilder when I 'had' to hurry my
practice, take care of some chores and put my baby back to sleep and it
culminated in the most unmindful outburst at my mother. Of course, at the end
of it my loop of regret and anger at myself only got reinforced. I sat for my
afternoon practice of meditation and saw that I was pushing a part of
myself away, like an adult who shushes a child who only knows how to cry when
her needs are not met. This imagery instantaneously roused compassion in my
heart for the part I was pushing away. So okay, I was angry, I was upset and I
was grouchy. I sat with the feeling without trying to decipher who did what to
make me go bonkers. The meditation didn't leave me feeling great but I was able
to step out of the cycle somewhat and by my evening practice I felt mindful
enough to let go.
Why am I sharing this detail? I've just begun to appreciate how immensely
important these bad days are in teaching me about myself and about
the world around me. We talk about greed, about discrimination, about
inequality and about how it is all rests in our hearts. These dark feelings
germinate and stay within us much like my anger, dissatisfaction and regret.
Often these feels go on to hurt someone else. We hurt our family with our harsh
words, we hurt our mother earth with our unmindful deeds and we hurt each other
and ourselves with our discriminatory treatment towards one another. Most of
all we hurt ourselves. Our anger, greed, fear, insecurity gets reinforced when
we try to push it away or try to eliminate it by taking it out on someone else.
I don't mean to say we should stop it right away. I tried pushing my anger and
it went nowhere. It reinforced itself with every other aspect of my day. What I
do mean to point out though, is that what you see on the outside germinates from
within. Not being mindful at the start of my day made me look at everything
through that lens. Everything seemed unacceptable, including myself.
My anger towards hate crimes is justified, my anger towards
inequalities is further justified, hey! I am a brown woman from a developing
country I know what it is to be discriminated against. But this anger that's
arising in me, can i just sit with it? Just sit with the anger and not with
what happened to anger me. Can I sit with it and accept it? Can I breathe
through it and gain a broader perspective? Is there a child within that is
being shushed? Whatever it be, understanding the source of our darkness
and another persons behavior from this place of accepting our anger (or
darkness for that matter)can help us break out of the cycle of hate. I am
hopeful about that. What might germinate from understanding is mindful action.
I would have woken up with with my husband and baby and spend the early hours
of the morning in the cocoon of love that was generated by Anika's smile and my
husband's delight.
You loose an opportunity to love, understand and partake in growth
and joy when you act from a place of anger, fear, insecurity, greed-from a
place of un-mindfulness. You also gain love, understanding and joy from this
same place if you can accept it, breathe and practice in some mindful
activities.
I hope to notice my anger, my greed, my jealousy, my darkness, to
see how it manifests within me and outside of me, I hope to take that
opportunity to teach me a new way of being. That is activism to me.
I bow to the darkness within.
*****
It feels like a cloud of negativity has been floating around in my head. I am confronted with a darkness that I could conveniently ignore before. But not now. As I go deeper into my spiritual diet I feel darkness than light. Old wounds or rather unresolved conflicts seem to open up inside me and every time I sit I gape into the wound that has opened up. It's sore, it's burning and it's uneasy.
The broken relationships, the angry words, worry about the future, the flitting hopelessness, they are all sitting on my chest and the back of my head. I recite "breathing in I calm my thoughts, breathing out I am serene" I am momentarily calmed but the thought comes back like a big black cloud. What do I do with you thoughts? How do resolve you? How do I make peace with you? These questions keep gnawing at me. Restlessness gets the better of me. I feel the need to resolve now.
I feel restlessness during my meditation practice, I seem to nod off more during the day, am I avoiding my big bad cloud? And yet I sit, I sit with the deep belief that seems to pervade within: this moment is exactly as it should be. Pushing away my darkness has never helped me resolve it, in fact putting it away for later has only eaten me up even more and yet a part of me seems to be doing that. I don't want to face regrets, or anger or worry.
Amazingly enough, as I sit everyday with my feelings, I become one with them. It's as if that part of me which was pushing away regret, anger and worry( for a more sublime state of being) was finally seeing that carrying emotions from the past and for the future was only human, it was in fact a part of being whole. There wasn't a thing I needed to do about it other than watch it and embrace it, as I would an innocent child. I smile at the dawning of some light within me as I continue to sit.
As I learn to bow to the darkness within I seek to understand what I push away so I can embrace every part of me, every part of the universe.
"The giver is our parents; we are the continuation of our parents and our ancestors. The gift is our body itself. The one who receives the gift is us. As we continue to meditate on this, we see clearly that the giver, the gift, and the receiver are one. All three present in our body. When we are deeply in touch with the present moment, we can see that our ancestors and all future generations are present in us. Seeing this, we will know what to do and what not to do-for ourselves, our ancestors, our children and their children" -Nhat Hahn in Peace is Every Step.
**********
Anger. Jealously. Hatred. Contempt. Greed. I have it all in my heart and as I move through my 21 day spiritual diet I seem to become more and more aware of it. I have had days when I wake up irate. Possessed by anger I express it when my husband doesn't fold the sheets, leaves a wet towel on the bed, or rushes me on his way to work. On irate days I am unpleasant with my parents who call me in the morning to wish me a good day. I am upset by the traffic, by the maid, by work and finally by myself for being irate. As the day gradually moves by I can 'suck it up' but I am never fully recovered from mornings like these. I find myself on a loop of regret and guilt for having been rude to myself and people around me.
Shining the light of mindfulness on my everyday life has led me to become aware of the seed of my anger, when it begins to form. While I sit with my destructive emotions and look at them, a new understanding dawns on me.Nhat Hahn in his book asks us not to push our emotions away but sit with them and breathe "Breathing in, I know that anger is in me, Breathing out, I know that I am my anger" breathe instead of being consumed by thoughts about what another person didto anger us.
Nhat Hanh ask us if we would scream at the lettuce for not growing well? No! If you have planted the lettuce and it doesn't seem to grow well you will look into the reasons for why it isn't growing well rather than yell at the lettuce or blame yourself or someone else for it. Once you understand the reason you will nourish it in a way that will make it grow well. Thus are humans. If you find that you are angry at someone, sit, breathe and ask yourself why that is so. When you shine this kind of mindfulness on yourself and others, real understanding takes place.
In an emphatic statement Nhat Hanh says "no blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding, if you understand, and show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change". While it feels like a tall order, I start with myself. All of psychology tells you that when you are angry you should breathe, count from 10 to 1 but I have found that this does very little. What has helped instead is this practice of everyday mindfulness even when you are not overwhelmed by negative emotions. Breathing in I calm my body, breathing out I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment!" . Practicing mindfulness through yoga, meditation and pranayam helps me catch my negative emotions the moment it shows up . Practicing mindfulness will place positive seeds on an everyday basis which will then act as antibodies, taking care of negative emotions when they seize us.
Nhat Hahn says, if we can see the entire humanity in a grain of rice, if we can see our mother in the palm of our hand, when we are one with our parents, our ancestors and our children in a way that is expressed in the first quote, we are open to knowing that there is a reason behind every destructive emotion and when we can sit with this insight utmost compassion is what flows forth.
Take a moment as you read this to close your eyes and take a deep breath saying 'in' to yourself as you breathe in and saying 'out' as you breathe out. Do this again. And as you finish your second breath let your body relax while you keep your eyes closed for a few moments. Slowly open your eyes after those few moments and go back to reading or doing whatever you were doing before.
In those calm moments, you just experienced the 'experiencing self'. The self that allows you to stay engaged and absorbed in things you love most. The self that allows you to be mindful and aware of each moment. My lesson for the last two days has been to stay aware of every moment or in my case as many moments as possible.
In a conversation with my sister today she reminded me about a talkwe heard on TED.com on happiness. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman talks about how there are two types of selves that inhabit within us-the remembering self and the experiencing self. Kahneman talks about how both the selves experience happiness differently. He says that the experiencing self is the moment to moment interpreter of our lives. The way I understand this is that, this is the self that sustains mindfulness. It is what you just saw for yourself with that short meditation.
In the same link you will see that Martin Seligman talks about what he calls engagement. He says that an engaged life is a life that allows you to become absorbed in love, friendship, work and leisure. It is what keeps your experiencing self at its peak of 'happiness' so to speak. When you enhance the experience of engagement you enhance your well being.
Photo:Plumvillage
Going back to that conversation with my sister, she was telling me how rushed her life feels, how her PhD is pushing her to the brink of insanity almost. She was talking about how her expectations about herself was the main thing to blame. Haven't we all been there? I for one know exactly what she means. I am sure some of you know what it is to work and work till you drop down dead every night only to start over again the next day. Like me, my sister also decided she needed to reorganize her schedule and allow some moments where she can actually experience. That's it. Experience.
On a day-to-day basis I find that, I eat in a mighty hurry, I think about what the next best thing to do is, while already doing something else, I think about how I want to finish something soon enough to do to the next thing. But taking a break, stopping, and taking a deep breath lets me just be.
My book for this first cycle of the spiritual diet asks me to do whatever I do just for its sake. Eating for the sake of eating, washing dishes just for the sake of washing dishes, walking for the sake of walking, etc.Of course there are tons of reasons for doing those things but while you are doing it, just do it as if that is the only thing to do in this moment.
Breathe in-and-out as if that is all there is to do in this moment. Experience. that is all.
My first spiritual diet lesson is to consciously smile. In the book Peace is Every Step, Thich Nhat Hanh says smiling helps us approach the day with gentleness and understanding. I remember trying this when I was a teenager. Back then, I had read somewhere that 15minutes of smiling continuously every morning made you a happier and more pleasant person to be with. When I was 16 I was definitely not a pleasant person to be with. Ask my mom. I was the quintessential teenage rebel with a frown on my face and questions in my heart. I was always angry and irate. So when I read that piece of instruction to smile I decided to take it up as a challenge. I remember waking up early and smiling continuously for 15 minutes while i took a shower. It ended in a jaw ache, I tell you and I stayed as irate as ever.
Does my baby foot make you smile?
Today though, I feel profoundly grateful for the simple advice . In fact I find myself knowing what he means when he says smiling brings gentleness and understanding into our lives.In his book, Thich Nhat Hanh asks us to have reminders in our everyday life to help us smile, say you look at your clock, it should remind you to smile. You can have a flower or a quote on your desk/on a wall to remind you to smile.
My reminder to smile has been the face of my little baby girl. When I read what the author had to say, I just had to think back on all the moments when a smile from Anika got me to smile as well. Today, I made a conscious effort to acknowledge how I felt every time I smiled. This awareness about smiling helped spread awareness in everything I did. Every time I got angry I became aware of it, every time I yelled today, I became aware of it. Awareness certainly helped me adjust my perspective. Does smiling plunge you into gentleness and understanding? What does smiling do for you?
I leave you with a meditative tag from Nhat Hanh's book:
Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment,
I know this is a wonderful moment!
Here's what spiritual dieting is and why I am going on one.
2.Sit erect in a quiet, cool and dimly lit place and take five deep breaths counting backwards.
