Tag: meditation

Freedom from Clinging: Kiss the Joy!

One of my first Dharma teachers was the appropriately named Dhammarati – he who delights in the law, the teachings of the Buddha. In 1984 I’d been attending the London (Triratna) Buddhist Centre for a few months following an initial 6-day residential retreat. I spotted a poster for a weekend event he was leading at the Centre and signed up. It was quite an intimate event with maybe 10 of us tucked away in a back study room in the large converted fire station in East London.

 I don’t remember much about the content of the weekend, but one gesture that Dhammarati used quite frequently has stayed with me for over 40 years. It is possible the theme had something to do with the Paramitas (Perfections), one of which is dana, or giving, because the gesture or mudra was of a clenched fist gently relaxing into an open hand. It is such a simple movement, but I find it striking that, rather than the teachings and discussions from those two days, this is what has stayed with me, not just as a memory or an image in the mind, but a visceral felt sense of this is what the spiritual life is about.

Open handed and open-hearted giving are said not to lead directly to wisdom itself but to be a crucial supporting factor. Sangharakshita has said that we should always be giving something; giving of our time or energy, giving materially, or giving of the Dharma. Giving of our confidence or fearlessness is another form of dana much needed in our world today. The Buddha said we should give freely, without expectation of reward or benefit in return. Training in dana as an attitude and an orientation point us towards the mind and heart that are, in those moments of giving, free from clinging.

In a recent interview for Tricycle Magazine, Joseph Goldstein talks about the defining issue that all Buddhist traditions have in common; they are tackling the deep-seated human tendency to cling and searching for the mind of ‘non-clinging.’ In those moments when we give, we go beyond our self-referential desires, including the desire to protect and insulate ourselves by shoring up physical and mental ‘stuff’ around us.  Dana softens the mind and helps make visible the deeper ways that the mind clings.

Clinging is that closed fist, and it hurts to cling. By clinging or grasping, we are trying to guard against losing what we are holding on to, and so we often feel tense and brittle. The heart-mind becomes tight and held in check, and this can translate to pain and tension in the body. This in turn creates uneasiness and an indefinable feeling that something isn’t quite right. Clinging is a deeply ingrained human habit, and mostly, we don’t know another way but to hang on. Our defensiveness is not protecting healthy boundaries but making sure we don’t lose what we consider ‘mine’ or whatever threatens ‘me.’

One of my favourite Dharma teachings is that of the Four Upadanas, four aspects of experience that we cling to. Firstly, the Buddha says, we cling to our sense experiences to try and create a feeling of security. Then there are two aspects relating to views; one to views in general including ideological and philosophical beliefs, and thirdly, views specifically about what we call ‘self.’ Finally, we cling to rituals and practices, creating an over-reliance on externals as a way to Enlightenment. These are a rich source of investigation – and we’ll be exploring them over New Year on a 5-day retreat (more info HERE).

Even though it creates suffering to keep our fist tightly closed, it is counter-productive to try to force it open. Practice is not about ignoring our own psychological defences but using a kindly, spacious, awareness with the intelligence of wisdom, to investigate how we cling and see for ourselves how it hurts. When we see this over time the natural response is to release clinging, to let go. In meditation, when we cultivate an awareness characterised by ease rather than control, and an open mind rather than a pre-determined agenda, we start to get a sense of what freedom from clinging feels like.

When we take awareness practice into our daily lives, we find many opportunities to recognize the tightening that happens when we hold onto views and opinions. At times we can access fruitful territory where we’re able to let go of being right, or of knowing what to do, or of needing to prove ourselves. We might notice the ‘planning’ mind looking to secure a future for itself a hundred times a day; that noticing, allows us to re-connect with the groundedness and groundlessness of present moment awareness. When we can stay with uncertainty and the disorientation that arises, rather than immediately jump to a limited security of thinking we know who we are and where we stand, we start to experience the rewards of non-clinging.

With an open hand and open mind, we can touch into the experience of those famous words by the poet and visionary, William Blake, we ‘kiss the joy as it flies.’ We stand within a flow of momentary experience and experience a kind of gleeful weightlessness. Freedom from Clinging is accomplished through standing, with awareness and wisdom, in the heart of the mind that clings.

Find out more about the retreat ‘Freedom from Clinging’ HERE

The Relationship between Faith and Receptive Mindfulness

Faith isn’t something that is talked about a lot within the practice of receptive mindfulness, so it is good to explore how it fits into meditation practice, especially practice that is emphasizing direct experience. How can we know something like faith directly?

We can use the Buddha’s teaching of the Five Spiritual Faculties to describe the qualities that we are looking to bring into being more and more in mindfulness meditation – and this is what Sayadaw U Tejaniya does. These faculties are mindfulness, wisdom, energy, stability of mind and faith. So here faith is an integral part of what we are cultivating to bring about wisdom and clear seeing.

In my own practice I tend to use the section from the Satipatthana Sutta that is seen as the primary way of defining ‘right mindfulness’ in the early Buddhist tradition. This consists of 4 qualities – mindfulness, clear knowing, helpful energy and a mind free from gross hindrances. This list doesn’t explicitly include faith – although it does emphasize positive mind qualities that are experienced in the quality of awareness free from ‘desire and discontent’.

Bhante Sangharakshita, in his seminar on the Five Spiritual Faculties talks of faith as “for a Buddhist, faith means faith in the Buddha”. He goes on to say that we are really saying when we have faith in the Buddha is that we have faith in the Buddha’s Enlightenment, we have faith or confidence that Awakening is possible – because the Buddha was able to Awaken.

To say that we have faith that Enlightenment is possible is really to say that we have faith or trust in our capacity to grow and to change. We have faith in our ability to change in a positive direction without putting limits on that capacity to grow in many ways. For example, to grow more aware, more patient, more compassionate and wiser.

Faith manifests as a confidence in the teachings of the Buddha, the path to Awakening, and the teachings of mindfulness and wisdom. Looking into our experience directly means that we can recognize in our own heart and mind how that awareness affects the mind. We can notice how the mind feels when faith or confidence or trust are present and see how they benefit the heart and mind. We can see when faith is deepening our ability to practice and serving as a strong motivation.

 We can also learn a lot from a kind of impersonal faith in Awareness itself. We can start to see that when mindfulness increases, the mind starts to understand itself in a new way. Just the act of being aware can stimulate faith by recognizing its role in the positive growth of qualities that allow insight and understanding to flourish.

When, in meditation, we experience the heart-mind brighten or uplift, when we notice the expansive pleasure of deep relaxation of the body and mind through awareness, we can often also notice how these moments of practice increase our confidence in our capacity to tread the Buddha’s path.

Here are a couple of suggestions for practice.

Take faith or confidence or trust as an ‘object’ throughout meditation and into daily life. What does it feel like in the mind-heart or the body? Track your experience of confidence or trust in practice and notice what conditions lead to them increasing or diminishing. If faith qualities diminish this isn’t a cause for concern or judgement but curiosity. If they increase that is also something to get interested in.

Notice what kind of thoughts and feelings might be present when faith is present. What is the relationship between faith and confidence and other qualities such as joy or inspiration, appreciation and gratitude?

The Art & Practice of Bearing With

A few weeks ago, I was travelling back home by train. The journey was about 5 hours long and during the last of four different stretches the train started to fill up quickly. As people swarmed through the carriage looking for free seats, I was simultaneously trying to put upright a knocked over cup at my feet and pick up my day pack from the seat next to me with the intention to move it. A man stopped and indicated he’d like to sit in the seat. It was fairly obvious (to me) he thought I was reluctant to free up the seat and I told him in a slightly defensive tone that I was moving my bag.

I managed to get my bag on the floor between my knees and he sat down in the seat next to me. A simple and typical exchange on a crowded train you’d think. But I felt regret that I’d reacted, even though only slightly. It wasn’t really what I’d said, but how I’d said it. And I didn’t actually know if he’d been annoyed with me. Perhaps he was just a bit impatient. And anyway, what did it matter if he had assumed the worst – that I was one of those greedy passengers who want two seats while others have none! The atmosphere between us, these two strangers, felt a little sour. I tried to make eye contact, but he stared resolutely ahead. I wanted to say something, anything to lighten things up – but I could think of nothing.

I confessed this incident in a weekly meeting of practice friends, and after I’d described what had happened, I said that this particular area is a weak one for me. If I think I’ve been misunderstood, or my motives are misrepresented it stings. I don’t want to be seen in a way that’s stingier or meaner than I think I am. Or seen in a way that’s just wrong! I don’t like it. Maybe that’s fair enough, and this is probably true for many of us. The important thing is – what happens next? Does it end there? Or do we bite back? A third option which I think is a pretty common one is we manage not to say anything but we ruminate on what’s happened, and internally complain about the other persons attitude.

Sometimes, in certain situations, I’ll bite back. It’s a lose:lose response. It’s not nice for the other person and it’s uncomfortable for me. I usually feel bad that I’ve reacted. After I’d confessed this incident and the habitual nature of other moments like it, it got me thinking more about what happens during those times.

Life throws us moments where we’re misinterpreted or misunderstood. Someone picks up the wrong end of the stick about what we mean, and in a way that reflects badly on us. Or they do something that negatively impacts on us.

What do we do when that happens?

Why is it difficult at times to let it go? To let it roll off like water on a duck’s back?

One reason is that it is unpleasant, it hurts. It’s a moment of ‘dukkha’. When we feel judged or not seen for who we feel we are it is naturally unpleasant. When we’re mindful we’re able to ‘stay with’ what’s happening but our mindfulness is often not 360 degrees in the round. Because of our conditioning we all have sore spots, things that are more likely to trigger a reaction. For example, I find it painful and difficult to be ignored or forgotten about. I’m more likely to react in those circumstances even if mostly it stays as an internal reaction within my own mind.

Mindfulness has a lot in common with forbearance which Sangharakshita helpfully says is an aspect of patience. I think patience is a really beautiful quality with a lot of moral strength. Its opposite, impatience, is very self-absorbed, it’s all about what we want and wanting it now. In that moment we care very little about someone else’s reality. (Road rage is a dangerous example of this).

Forbearance is when we’re able to ‘stay with’ or even to ‘bear with’ the rush of uncomfortable sensations and feelings that can arise in the body and mind  when things aren’t the way we want them to be. It is possible (and desirable) to be mindful of the inner tensions that can arise when the impatient mind wants to act or speak in a way that’s an expression of reactivity. Whether we react internally or not, we can train the mind to be with difficult experiences without reacting externally to others. We practice bearing our own ‘dukkha’ without spraying it around to others.

The Buddha takes forbearance to extremes with an analogy in a teaching called the ‘Simile of the Saw’. He says even if bandits were to saw you from limb to limb train yourselves in this way “Let my mind be unaffected, I will not speak out in anger”. In another teaching the Buddha exhorts a particular Bhikkhu to ‘”Bear it Monk” when he is being treated badly by some villagers who he has previously wronged. This is the power of the unreactive mind; the power of not retaliating to small or large provocations.

The third aspect of my confession was to do with a lack of mindfulness working with wisdom. This happens when we take what someone else does or says personally. Something is being said or implied about ‘me’ that I’m not happy with and I need to protect myself. What rears up in the moment of reactivity is the desire to protect that all important sense of self.

The combination of mindfulness, forbearance and patience, along with clear recognition of ‘dukkha’ is a powerful way to progress in practice and to bring about wisdom. It can be helpful to take this area as a specific focus in practice. After all, it’s in relation to other people we most often experience feelings such as hurt, disappointment or anger. It’s easy to rationalize such incidents where we react as minor and unimportant but we can see how the mind feels when we do fully acknowledge our own faults even if in the greater scheme of things they are small. We don’t leave that sourness that I experienced on the train.

By working with difficult feelings we perfume the world more beautifully as well as our own minds.

You Have a Choice

A question came up recently in a Drop-In class: what do you do when you’re doing the open awareness mindfulness practice, but the mind is resisting doing the practice and wants to go off onto something else? In this case the ‘something else’ was a broad, spaciousness with a hint of the Buddha Amitabha’s love and a large dollop of pleasure.

We were almost out of time, and so my response was brief. I said, at that point you have a choice. You choose whether you are going to stay with the practice you started with or let the mind go onto some other type of practice. You make a conscious decision.

This is OK as far as it goes, but it’s a bit of a limited answer. So here is a more extended one.

Firstly: what are you choosing?

Secondly: who is choosing?

Both of these are in the realm of Samprajana or ‘clearly knowing’. Let’s look at number one.

When you choose to go towards a different practice mid-practice it’s worth looking at your motivation. This is especially true when – as in this case – there is resistance to being with what’s already happening. What is that resistance about? Usually there is some sort of un-seen view that the experience we’re having is not ‘enough’ – not pleasurable enough, not significant enough. We want ‘more’ and we want something different. Sometimes just recognizing and being with what resistance feels like in the mind is enough to transform the experience.

At times, though, resistance comes when we’re putting in too much effort to be aware and we need to ‘settle back’ and bring a greater quality of relaxation into awareness.

When we ‘clearly know’ what is happening in the body-mind we might decide that the condition of the mind needs something else in the moment. We might realize that the mood is flat or sad, for example, and the awareness is not very strong. We can keep plugging away with bringing mindfulness freshly to each moment, and in fact, that’s what I’d suggest initially. But at a certain point, and especially if the mood is going down, suggesting the awareness is not effective, you might decide to look into your toolbox and see what might help. This action is not coming from resistance to the current experience but ‘samprajana’ raising the question ‘what would be helpful for awareness to grow?’ or ‘what would help the mind quality improve?’

You might then choose to resource the mind through a short metta based practice leading to some uplift of heart-mind. Or to take an anchor to increase steadiness and stability of mind. Or you might open yourself to faith through a Buddha figure you have a connection with. It’s helpful to be clear why you are doing what you’re doing and what your aim is. And once you’ve accomplished some stability or positivity or confidence in yourself, you’re able to return to awareness.

Ideally you make the choice at the beginning of a session of meditation rather than switching part way through, though sometimes that becomes necessary.

So, who is choosing? Who is in the driving seat of the practice? With awareness practice we are training in ‘growing’ the qualities of mindfulness and right view/wisdom. We want them to be strong enough factors in the mind-heart to ‘choose’. They give rise to a more impersonal way of guiding our practice that is not based on personal preferences and conditioned habits of mind. They allow us to access different possibilities and to go where our minds don’t usually go. Understanding and clear seeing is a fruit of this type of mind.

When the desire to switch practice comes, we can ask ourselves is wisdom choosing, or is it craving (with their cousin, aversion)? How much of that ‘wanting’ is the same old conditioned mind going down familiar pathways? And can we strengthen awareness and wisdom further, by recognizing in the moment, what that experience of wanting or not wanting feels like, really know it for what it is?

When awareness becomes stronger, and we develop some momentum in the practice we can more easily identify this benign and impersonal quality directing our practice. With wisdom in the driving seat we can trust where the awareness takes us.

The Power of Vedana

A few years ago, I went through a period of what I could call ‘grace’ or ‘flow’. For several weeks I was extremely happy in a way that was characterised by contentment and ease. Difficult things still happened but the mind didn’t react to them.

Right at the beginning of this time I had to make a solo return journey to Virginia Waters, near London. I’m not a confident driver, particularly when I also have to navigate, and I hadn’t been there before.  To add to the potential stress, it was December, and the return 3-hour drive was after dark. At some point a few miles from my destination I missed a turning and got lost. Luckily, I had the google lady adapting to my errors and between us we got me there in the end.

What struck me during the whole journey, and particularly the part where I didn’t know where I was going, in heavy Christmas traffic, was the lack of stress and anxiety in my system. I felt calm and joyful. When I didn’t know where I was, I did my best to listen to the instructions, and to read the road signs. When I arrived, it was with none of the tension and tiredness I would normally experience in such a situation.

For weeks this continued – sunny, open, skilful and joyful states and no or very low reactivity in the mind. And then gradually it declined, and a more familiar mix of mind states started to reappear.

So, what had precipitated these lovely few weeks?

I’d been investigating craving in the mind for quite a while. What this looked like was being curious whenever I noticed desire in the mind, or the mind was hankering after a particular object. I’d narrowed down my field of craving to fairly obvious ones that arose most days. I was specializing in noticing craving for simple sense objects associated with the sense of taste, though this was just a way to look more deeply into how feeling and craving were working in the mind. I tried to be aware of whenever there was pleasant vedana (feeling tone) in relation to taste, or the mind sense’s desire to taste something (craving).

Rather than either having the object (chocolate, pizza, second helping etc) or intellectualizing myself out of having it, I tried to ‘stay with’ with feeling of liking something or wanting it. Each time the mind latched onto something it desired I’d notice the pleasant feeling associated with the object, and any liking or stronger desire to act on the feeling. I’d ask myself whether that little ‘jump’ between a pleasant feeling and acting on the desire it led to, was inevitable.

Explore further on an online retreat in Dec ’24

I kept the awareness light and steady. I was aware of both the object of desire and the reactions in the mind and body. Sometimes I’d deliberately lean into the pleasant vedana of the desired object and then notice the strong physical sensations, and a sort of mental ‘lift’ of liking that would drive the craving. It was very interesting to the mind to observe in this way, and usually the awareness was strong enough not be overwhelmed by the desire and to not have the tasty thing. It was important to the investigation that I didn’t rely on will power but on awareness, and to see that awareness was often enough.

The night before the long drive I was making an online food order at home. I added some Christmas goodies including my favourite ice cream. As my partner looked down the list, he teased me about the ice cream, and I realized I’d completely forgotten about my craving project. Awareness sort of lit up and came ‘online’ and there was a short inner mental tussle followed by several ‘aha’ moments and realizations around craving.

I remember the quality in the mind was completely ‘cool’ towards the ice cream though able to see very clearly the thoughts and different layers of conditioning towards it, and towards the treat mentality I was prone to. Feeling was just feeling, nothing more.

I had a clear sense that it wasn’t inevitable that I act on pleasant feelings. And there was a big moment when I realized that the same was true of all desired objects. I understood that seeing through craving, not acting on it wasn’t a once or twice action but an always action – and I experienced this as liberating.

Even though the effects of these ‘seeings’ lasted a few short weeks, it was very helpful and confidence-giving to see the effects on my whole being of even partial understandings. Since then other ‘seeings’ pop up regularly – the bizarreness of preferring one food stuff over another (not liking apricots in salad, or bananas in curry), or through the mind sense, being with awareness of the unpleasant feelings of anger or shame and feeling their energy liberate.

The earlier experience left a lasting – though inconsistent – habit of ‘staying with’ the feeling. This helps me recognize the craving or aversion present. The mind has developed the habit of finding its own feelings, sensations and thoughts more interesting than having the nice thing or blaming or rejecting the unpleasant aversive object.

Sometimes I notice the feeling tone of ignorance, the mind quality that actively ignores what’s best. The feeling is fairly neutral but undiscerning. The tone is one of low energy with a powerful wilfulness that looks to counter awareness with unawareness. It’s a toss up in those moments who will win out!

‘Staying with’ the feeling with awareness has its own emotional tone. It’s one of satisfaction and meaningfulness that is very close to understanding. Staying with vedana rather than getting lost in the ‘object’ lessens and alleviates dukkha and dis-ease. It helps awareness and right view flourish and strengthen. Awareness of vedana has the power to bring suffering to an end if we can keep the required focus on it.

Explore Vedana further with me in Ways to the Deep: an online retreat between Xmas and New Year.

Uncontrived Mindfulness & Other Power

On the face of it, the world of Pure Land Buddhism with its emphasis on devotion, on already being ‘saved’, and its sole practice being to chant the name of the Buddha Amitabha (Amida), would seem to have little in common with Mindfulness practice. Mindfulness practice is stripped back with a simple but powerful focus on what is actually happening within one’s own experience and looking to apprehend directly with wisdom ‘how things really are’. Myth, devotion and ritual are often not seen as playing a significant part.

Pure Land Buddhism is primarily about ‘other power’ – opening up to influences from beyond oneself such as the compassion of Amida Buddha, and mindfulness seen more on the side of ‘self-power’ where we need to cultivate or generate awareness.

I’ve been reading a book recently that has prompted some reflections around these areas of practice. The book is ‘The Promise of a Sacred World’ by Nagapriya (Windhorse Publications). Its focus is the 12th Century Japanese teacher Shinran who was influential in developments within the Pure Land tradition.

Initially I was enjoying the book but not finding a lot in common with my own practice of mindfulness, and even finding much of it somewhat alien to awareness practice. But increasingly Nagapriya, as he quoted and unpacked Shinran’s writings from 800 years ago, seemed to be associating ‘other power’ with ‘transformative awareness’. I found myself intrigued and inspired by, and also resonating with the book. I started seeing the connections between my own practice of mindfulness as a path to wisdom and other power.

Initially in awareness practice, even the very receptive kinds such as uncontrived mindfulness, we use ‘self-power’; there’s a cultivation of awareness in the present moment, we set an intention to be aware that sets the mind in a particular direction as opposed to another, and we regularly remind ourselves to be aware. All this is a subtle use of ‘self-power’. There is also self-power in the deliberate training perspective of ‘right view’ with the aim to clearly know what is happening in body and mind more objectively and impersonally. In both awareness and right view, we use self-power to train the mind to a point where awareness and wisdom become strong factors in the mind.

I sometimes use the metaphor of riding a bike to describe this process. Initially we need to push and then peddle, or we’ll fall right off the bike. Without gaining some speed we don’t have any stability or balance. But once we’re going, we peddle less and sometimes (especially going downhill) we don’t need to peddle at all. In fact, to do so is counterproductive and we get in our own way.

The same is true for mindfulness practice; at a certain point we can recognize that it’s not necessary to keep reminding ourselves. Awareness is already present and is working with wisdom under their own steam. We just need to notice that. There is now some momentum in practice. In Shinran’s words we’ve moved from “the false autonomy of ego-directed will’ to (as Nagapriya says) that which “permits a new kind of will to flourish.”

This new kind of will is not self-directed or self-referencing. The Right View perspective also grows stronger and more natural and works with awareness. In Sayadaw U Tejaniya’s words “awareness and wisdom do their own work”. They have become more natural to the mind and slipped the moorings of controlling self-power. They have become ‘other power’; more open to a world beyond that of ‘self’.

We need to be sensitive to this ‘new kind of will’ so that it flourishes. In these times it becomes easy to rest within the present moment. When we’re attentive to present moment experience at this point in practice there is a natural interest in how the mind is working. This interest is the beginnings of wisdom, and the awareness naturally wants to stay with watching and understanding the body/mind.

It turns out that what Shinran is describing is a pathway to the world of ‘transformative awareness’. That world is not separate from our limitations and faults but an ‘additional dimension’ that we can access at any time. The key is present moment awareness which, as we know, is always within our grasp. Whether we’re aware of our human frailties and foibles or knowing some new truth, both are held within awareness that transcends both.

When mindfulness becomes continuous the more attentive we are to the ‘luminous present’ the more access is gained to ‘other power’ as a ‘sacralised present moment’. The mythic aspect of the Pure Land is experienced as the preciousness of fully resting in presence. The language of myth and the sacred points to the mystery of awareness and the mysterious nature of experience. Awareness is precious without us needing to pin down why or how. It can’t be described or explained away; it has a touch of the ineffable. The promise of awareness is the promise of a sacred world where everything is touched by the quality of awareness and wisdom brought to it.

Quick Tips for Low Times

After the previous blog post ‘Relaxing the Conceptualizing Mind’ for when the thinking mind is strong, I had a request for some specific on-the-spot hints, for when the mind is over-whelmed and caught in the turmoil of negative thoughts and emotions. So here they are. The list is not exhaustive by any means but will hopefully contribute to a disentangling of the heart and mind that supports the growth of awareness and wisdom.

Thoughts combined with emotions can quickly pull us into a vortex that becomes hard to get out of especially if we struggle with the experience and don’t accept that this is how it is right now. At other times the mind can narrow down to become overly focused on something we’re experiencing – forgetting to take in whatever else is happening through the different senses.

Here are a few ways I’ve found helpful in my practice when awareness is losing ground to the storm of the conceptualizing mind. The first few are connected with awareness of feeling and emotion and the last couple more with awareness directly.

  1. See if you can dial up the warmer aspects of awareness – the warmth, ease, acceptance – the qualities of loving kindness naturally present when you look for them. You might focus on the area around your heart. Keep the attention light – just aware of feeling in this area and notice any changes in the quality of the awareness.
  2. Use a Right View perspective to work with any sense of discomfort from struggling with how the mind is. Remind yourself that it’s natural for the mind sometimes to be in conflict or pain or get lost in thoughts and over-thinking a situation. Nothing is wrong – in fact it is an opportunity for the awareness to recognize ‘dukkha’ – dis-ease or stress in your being, something everyone experiences at some time or another. With the help of Right View, we learn not to take it personally when the mind is like this.
  3. A very simple practice we can do over and over is to stay with feeling as an object. This can make a difference if all the thinking is leaving the mind feeling  ‘heady’. For many years I’ve used Jack Kornfield’s little mantra ‘let go of the story and come back to the feeling’ and find it really helpful.
  4. For a while quite consciously take a stronger and more neutral ‘anchor’ for example the breath, the sitting bones or sensations in the hands touching or possibly ‘sounds’ or ‘seeing’ happening. Whenever your attention is pulled back into painful emotions or an over-whelming story, acknowledge that and gently return the attention to the neutral anchor. This is quite an active way of working and it can assist the mind to calm down, and also strengthen awareness. When the mind becomes more settled you can let the anchor go and open up to more objects arising.
  5. Finally, the ‘AND’ practice which I learned from Andrea Fella. This is especially useful when the mind has got sucked into and become identified with a particular experience it is finding unpleasant, though it could also be very pleasant, and we’ve got quite attached to it. It could also be that the mind is simply distracted and not able to rest with present moment experience. This practice is also quite active, but the emphasis is on noticing what’s happening in your direct momentary experience. I think of it as a bit like stretching pizza dough. You’re opening out the mind from the tendency to home in on one strong pull – you notice that object AND what else is there? And there’s the breath, and there’s movement in the ribcage, and there are sounds – cars, a dog, bird song. You use all these objects happening around you to anchor the awareness more strongly in the present moment.

It’s probably best to stick with one of these points and try it out initially. If you’re familiar with the practice of receptive mindfulness you might find the mind naturally moves from one to another for example initially working with ‘feeling’ and then something that helps you anchor more strongly in the present.

You might work with one or more of these points for a whole meditation period or more. Be aware of the mind that wants a strategy to ‘work’ to get rid of something unwanted in the mind. Rather than making things go away it can be helpful to think instead of growing important qualities in the heart-mind like resilience, patience and openness. Overall, we are strengthening awareness, positive emotion and wisdom in the mind.

Relaxing the Conceptualizing Mind

A little story: about 25 years ago I was participating in a meditation workshop exploring thoughts. We were all led through a series of meditative exercises over the course of the morning. I felt very relaxed, present, and happy. The workshop leader then asked a question to which she made clear an answer was not expected but that asking the question could facilitate openness and curiosity to the experience in the moment. The question was ‘where do thoughts come from?’ – and even though she wasn’t looking for an answer – I had one! I didn’t offer it that day but the experience that arose with the question has stayed with me since then.

My ‘answer’ was from a slightly dreamy quality of mind that was simultaneously clear and distinct. ‘Thoughts come from the Alaya (‘store’) consciousness’. This thought took me by surprise but had a close resonance with the experience in the moment. It was clearly a conceptualization, and I was familiar with the idea from the Yogachara Buddhist tradition of the ‘alaya consciousness’ though it wasn’t one I used at all frequently.

The Alaya is said to hold mental impressions of all previous experiences, and these form the seeds of future experiences. It is a way of understanding patterns of behaviour and the momentum behind habits good and bad. It contains the idea that in the past we’ve repeated these habits many times, building up mental and emotional energy that makes them more likely to be repeated again in the present. They are the sum total of what makes us up.

So much for the idea of the alaya, back to my story – what was the actual experience like?

There was a feeling sense of experience as a mass of fragments of thoughts, impulses, and movements of mind. A kind of cosmic mental soup. I saw that some fragments rose to the surface of the mind and were identifiable or distinguishable – not as content but as experience. Others didn’t quite make it to the surface of full consciousness. There was a knowing that the more visible moments had more energy behind them. They were habitual drives and the strongest of them eventually would get expressed for good or ill. The literal seeing felt like the birth of a thought.

Something stayed with me from the short period this meditative experience lasted – some glimmering of an understanding of the nature of the mind and the mental objects within it.

I think about this experience infrequently and yet it came into consciousness during a recent meditation. It was the first time I’d sat for a few days as I’d been unwell with Covid. I still felt weak and breathless but wanted to get back to formal practice. My mind was all over the place, there were lots of thoughts but not enough energy to get involved with them or to be aware of individual arisings.

I found myself dropping in a practice instruction I often give at the end of a retreat when retreatants are about to leave the fairly low ‘conceptual load’ of retreat conditions and return to the ‘high conceptual load’ of daily life. The mental and emotional weight of making decisions large and small, various meetings, talking and using tech takes a lot of energy. The instruction is to find times to ‘rest back from the conceptualizing mind’ and prioritize the awareness mind by doing nothing.

This small thought really opened up my soggy covid brain into spaciousness and ease and a different relationship to mental activity. I was aware of thoughts and other mental movements but from a stance of lightness and brightness. There was a kind of relaxation and release from grasping onto detail and trying to make meaning from the illusive threads of experience. And it was possible to just stay there enjoying it.

When we sit without doing anything in particular there are times when doubts can arise about how we’re practicing, especially when experience isn’t pleasant. The voices of the conceptualizing mind can shout loudly driving us towards the more active ‘doing’ mode. ‘Shouldn’t I be doing something to change whatever is happening now?’. ‘I’ll never get anywhere with practice unless I use more effort’. The thinking mind has these thoughts and a thousand more. But are they true?

At these times we need to hold our nerve. Keep pointing true north. Is awareness present? Is right view/a dharma perspective present? Keep recognizing the conceptualizing thinking mind with its habits and its tendency to dominate other modes of being. Let the Awareness mode grow. Enjoy it. Appreciate it. You don’t know what it will grow into or what habits it will grow out of. It could bring in its wake a tide of ease or a transformative understanding. Keep going.

Rolling with the Waves

I love being in the ocean and particularly when there are decent enough waves that mean you have to either jump over them or dive through them in order to avoid a pummelling. When I get the timing right it’s such a great feeling to jump and be lifted onto the top of the wave. The waves carry you over without effort and you just go with it.

A lot of my recent learnings in practice have seemed to have this flavour and revolve around rolling with the waves or the punches in one way or another.

I’m very familiar with the opposite to this: a sense of ‘self-digging-in’ like an inner putting my foot down because there’s something happening that I don’t like or don’t understand and am resisting. I’ve practised over and again becoming aware of what resistance feels like in the body and mind.

And what I’m noticing recently is that experience arising less frequently.

I’ve been travelling a lot in the past couple of months and travelling is a great way to not have things go the way you want them or expect them to go. Less than 24 hours before I flew to Singapore en route to Australia my flight was cancelled hiking my travel anxiety higher than it already was on my first long haul flight in almost 10 years. Despite the anxiety I found myself rolling with it and 3 hours later I was rebooked via Istanbul instead of Frankfurt but still arriving within 30 minutes of the original flight.

Travelling also meant I was in unfamiliar territory – literally – I didn’t know how to get to the main road from where I was staying, or how to use the tram (not train or bus!), or where I could buy postcards and stamps. Travelling meant I had to remember to take suncream and a hat whenever I went out instead of gloves and thermal underwear. Or more strangely once I got into the Australian bush – a snake ‘kit’ containing a tourniquet and a phone. A certain amount of discombobulation meshed in me alongside the freedom that comes from relaxing into the unknown.

The most emotive reminder of how far I was from home and familiar territory came on the first full day of the second retreat I led. The weather was hot with the promise of a storm. The day was labelled a ‘total fire ban’ day and the danger level described as ‘catastrophic’. Catastrophic is a strong word especially when coupled with the next word I heard – evacuation. Not a choice but a requirement in the terms of our rental agreement. These were more familiar concepts to the retreatants all from different states of Australia but new – and unexpected – to me.

We ended up evacuating without fuss to the Melbourne Buddhist Centre for a day retreat. Though somewhat unnerving I felt calm and just able to do what needed doing. My friend had organized the retreat making sure there were enough car spaces to take us all (though not our luggage) away from any danger. I remember deciding to pack all my teaching notes, not just ones for the day retreat, having to take seriously that although we expected to be back by nightfall we might not be. If a lightening strike from the expected storms coupled with high winds took hold of the dry bush, we might never return. Sitting in meditation together before heading for the city this was a sobering thought.

There is another aspect to this ‘rolling with the punches’ which is more difficult to describe. This is the desire to have what I want or the insecurity I’m used to arising from the fear of not getting what I want – especially in relation to my partner – is diminishing. This is especially visible around time. Time spent together is precious, and even more so now we both have work that takes us away from home a lot. So, something might come up where it looks like he will need to go away just as I arrive back from leading a retreat meaning another stretch of several weeks apart.

 And what I’m finding is that although I may well get a spike of the old ‘what about me’ reaction and feel resistance to more separation, again, it doesn’t have a lot of juice. That reaction doesn’t dominate and the stronger feeling is more likely to be a generous one – I want him to benefit from the opportunities his new job brings despite the initial reaction of what it means to me.

This is such a relief and a delight for the mind! Self-referencing and self-interest are tight and contracting for the mind and heart. They are viscerally painful and to see them arise and roll on through is to experience my mind in a new way. Trust and confidence are more familiar guests in my psyche these days as a result.

These feel like welcome benefits to the practice over many years of allowing and accepting whatever arises in experience. Relaxing and opening to what life (or the mind) throws up and having a felt understanding that whatever is happening is enough.

One final story; this week I had to travel to Birmingham for a medical appointment. Because of a landslip on the route, we were in a rail replacement coach rather than on the train. It became clear on the return journey the driver really didn’t know where he was going. I found the thought ‘has he never heard of Google Maps?’ running through my mind. We circled one small village for what seemed like an age before inexplicably heading back towards Birmingham. At one point, at traffic lights, he decided to turn the 12-ton coach around in the narrow road performing a dangerous (multi) 3-point turn, hitting various curbs at regular intervals. He was a terrible driver, and the journey took more than double the time it should have.

 And yet rather than the desire to just get home taking over I simply enjoyed the countryside around and the sense of bonding with other passengers over our strange journey. I was OK to be with what was happening despite it being at odds with what ‘should’ be happening.

I’m enjoying the pleasure of the mind that is making fewer demands on the world that it be as I want it to be. And as a result, suffering less – because the mind has begun to understand in a deeper way that the world and everyone in it is never going to be just as I want it.