In this chapter Bhikkhu talks about meditation as not just something to do when you are at the zendo, on your cushion at home, or in your yoga class. It is to live a life filled with opportunities to “mediate” in each and every moment to be mindful and to be present!
He writes:
To be effective in revealing truth, meditation or bhavana must include mindfulness (satti). Mindfulness means pure attentiveness, an alert, impartial function of mind that simply notes whatever appears by way of the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and mind itself. Mindfulness does not cogitate, judge, or interpret; it only observes, naturally and without commentary, the actual character of an object or phenomenon (page 16-17). [1]
Wow! Imagine how different your life would be if you walked around in a mindful way, without judgment, criticism, or expectation. Without judgment! I am not saying this effort won’t be difficult since we have been living a life filled with judgments and opinions and rules. Yes, we need some so we won’t try to cross the street on the red instead of the green and won’t eat food that looks or smells spoiled and get food poisoning that’s for sure! But those are extremes.
I’d like for you to give this technique a try for just 5 minutes! I’d like for you to simply go about your business focusing your thoughts on looking at things as they actually are. This is a curb I need to step down. Not—look at this curb it’s all busted up and the yellow paint is all chipped! Where are my tax dollars going!?
You may be thinking I don’t have time to practice mindfulness or mediation I’m too busy! Bhikkhu writes, “…insight meditation is not an extra duty to be piled on top of our already overburdened minds, but rather a way of looking more clearly at what is actually happening (page 18).”
He encourages us to “rouse and employ mindfulness in all situations, to perceive simply what is there, to note calmly and objectively the rising and the passing away of phenomena, specifically with regard to (1) the physical body; (2) pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feelings; (3) mind or consciousness and (4) mental objects (page 18).”
In doing so you will see your life and the external world more clearly and yet less judgmentally. You will see it just as it is. He goes on to recommend that there is, “No need to comment on these; mindfulness merely notices, holding on to nothing. Likewise, the mind entertains countless ideas and perceptions. They all come and go, come and go—and the consistent, moment by moment observations of these is meditation (page 19).
So, if you think in order to be meditating you have to be sitting on your cushion, or at the beach, or in the mountains you are wrong! When you find yourself focused on this “moment” without judgment you are meditating! How easy is that…simply live in the now moment not in the past not in the future. What a novel idea! Let me know how it goes!
[1] Nyanasobhano, B. (1998) Landscapes of wonder Discovering Buddhist Dhamma in the world around us. Somerville Massachusetts: Wisdom Publications
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