Allowing life into meditation
Regular feedback after Ashtree Sangha monthly meeting
In February we had a brief discussion on the benefit of allowing meditation as a time to contemplate and review the day’s events, interactions or dilemmas.
This may not be what you would expect or wish of your meditation practice but sometimes this “mulling-over’ just occurs anyway and often it can be interesting just to go with it. Allowing one’s mind to do as it wishes can be a useful practice. Often there’s something to be learnt or resolved… and sometimes it allows us a window into how one’s mind operates and how such thoughts and emotions are supported or how they grow. If you like, this is the first Noble Truth. There is Dukkha. There is our experience
Sometimes this ‘reviewing and mulling’ occurs in the meditation, during the transition from daily life into a more settled state, but it may also extend over a longer period of time, especially if there is an issue in your daily life that really does demand your attention. Such issues can linger in some form, unless a level of resolution or change occurs. If you journal after your meditation then you may look at the content of your replays, the emotions and ‘tone of voice’ behind them and their familiar or not so familiar qualities. What are they all about? What keeps things going? A new way of working with them can evolve. This can be where the second Noble Truth plays a part. There are many causes and conditions for our experience, that we can see into.
I think of this as ‘allowing your life into your meditations’. You are offering a space for wisdom or understanding to be gleaned … you are allowing a way of bringing a settled mind to something that has come back and maybe needs contemplating…you are just being more receptive to your experience. If you stay with the stories, contemplating them and practising outcomes and scenarios, seeing them for what they are, then maybe a solution will occur. Perhaps you will see a new way of doing something or you may do something differently next time. By giving your experience understanding, time and space, it will bring a change. This is the third Noble Truth…cessation.
This ‘reviewing and mulling’ can be a place where ethics is brought into your practice…where your daily life really intersects with your meditation and feeds what the Buddha considered to be the path towards liberation. The aspects of the 8-fold path that he spoke of involve ethics, wisdom and meditation. What may appear as an indulgent or repetitive stewing over the days previous conversations and events, can offer a good opportunity to review and therefore learn about your views, thoughts, speech, actions and aspects of livelihood. Here we work with the fourth Noble Truth.
SO the invitation is to really be a little more forgiving and perhaps more receptive and curious with those times when your life comes into your meditation practice.
Anna Markey
March 2013
Download PDF version, 131 kB
In February we had a brief discussion on the benefit of allowing meditation as a time to contemplate and review the day’s events, interactions or dilemmas.
This may not be what you would expect or wish of your meditation practice but sometimes this “mulling-over’ just occurs anyway and often it can be interesting just to go with it. Allowing one’s mind to do as it wishes can be a useful practice. Often there’s something to be learnt or resolved… and sometimes it allows us a window into how one’s mind operates and how such thoughts and emotions are supported or how they grow. If you like, this is the first Noble Truth. There is Dukkha. There is our experience
Sometimes this ‘reviewing and mulling’ occurs in the meditation, during the transition from daily life into a more settled state, but it may also extend over a longer period of time, especially if there is an issue in your daily life that really does demand your attention. Such issues can linger in some form, unless a level of resolution or change occurs. If you journal after your meditation then you may look at the content of your replays, the emotions and ‘tone of voice’ behind them and their familiar or not so familiar qualities. What are they all about? What keeps things going? A new way of working with them can evolve. This can be where the second Noble Truth plays a part. There are many causes and conditions for our experience, that we can see into.
I think of this as ‘allowing your life into your meditations’. You are offering a space for wisdom or understanding to be gleaned … you are allowing a way of bringing a settled mind to something that has come back and maybe needs contemplating…you are just being more receptive to your experience. If you stay with the stories, contemplating them and practising outcomes and scenarios, seeing them for what they are, then maybe a solution will occur. Perhaps you will see a new way of doing something or you may do something differently next time. By giving your experience understanding, time and space, it will bring a change. This is the third Noble Truth…cessation.
This ‘reviewing and mulling’ can be a place where ethics is brought into your practice…where your daily life really intersects with your meditation and feeds what the Buddha considered to be the path towards liberation. The aspects of the 8-fold path that he spoke of involve ethics, wisdom and meditation. What may appear as an indulgent or repetitive stewing over the days previous conversations and events, can offer a good opportunity to review and therefore learn about your views, thoughts, speech, actions and aspects of livelihood. Here we work with the fourth Noble Truth.
SO the invitation is to really be a little more forgiving and perhaps more receptive and curious with those times when your life comes into your meditation practice.
Anna Markey
March 2013
Download PDF version, 131 kB