7 Fountains of Mindfulness

Periodically, I reflect on the teachers who inspire me most. Here is my current list - with links to their teachings in case you are interested:

Ayya Khema

I read her books, I search her writings on the Web, I watch her videos, I listen to her Dharma talks, and I plan to go on a retreat this summer with her student, Leigh Brasington. It is one of my great regrets that she is no longer alive to dispense face to face teachings. I quote from her extensively in Mind Deep. Leigh has the most comprehensive Web page on her work. 

Ajahn Chah

Often, I visit the old sage's website, and read his teachings at random. And each time, a new pearl of wisdom reveals itself. Ajahn Chah is the one teacher who validated the importance of 'the knot', and confirmed what I already knew intuitively. 

Ajahn Sumedho

This now elder monk was a student of Ajahn Chah. I have recently delighted in his reflections on the nature of awareness. Just like Ajahn Chah, his teachings are direct, simple, and infused with deep wisdom. He used to be the abbott at Amavarati monastery in England, and has now retired to a monastery in Thailand. 

U Tejaniya

I call him the 'attitude' monk. U Tejaniya's most noteworthy contribution centers around the importance of bringing the right attitude to practice. He is also more relaxed than most monks. U Tejaniya's teachings are freely available on his website. His Tricycle interview, The Wise Investigator, contains some very inspirational passages on how to use practice to successfully deal with depression.  I am planning to attend a retreat with him next year.

Ruth Denison

Ruth is a formidable teacher, a very wise old woman whose way of living is as powerful a teaching as the words that she speaks. Retreating with her in the desert two years ago turned out to be such a blessing. And I am glad I kept a record, both with words and videos. Ruth never wrote a book - other than Sandy Boucher's biography, but that does not really count . . . , never made a movie, and recordings of her Dharma talks are scant. She has little interest in leaving a legacy. She just wants to keep on giving, in the present moment . . . 

Gil Fronsdal
The Insight Meditation Center, Gil's community, is only 10 minutes from my house. Gil is my 'backyard' teacher. I always learn something from attending Gil's talks, all of which are available on AudioDharma. Gil has the gift of making sometimes obscure teachings into easily accessible dharma material. 

And of course, the teacher of all teachers, the Buddha himself. For an online source to the sutras, I go to Access to Insight. For good old fashioned paper books, I rely on In the Buddha's Words, and also The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha.

With much gratitude.

Not Resting on Our Laurels

I always learn so much from listening to Ayya Khema. This time, she makes very clear the need to constantly practice, not just to move forward on the path, but also to not go backward. 

Mindfulness practice is work, constant work. This is why it is called practice. This week, I visited the Mindful Living page on the Huffington Post and was struck by the number of articles attempting to trivialize mindfulness as something that can be easily captured with minimum effort. Headlines such as   'Are You Up For The 24-Hour Mini-Mindful-Moment Challenge?', 'Momentary Mindfulness', 'One Minute to Stress Less', 'Mindfulness in 60 Seconds or Less', . . . The truth is mindfulness practice flies in the face of our fast, flashy, pleasure seeking, goal oriented culture. Mindfulness practice is tedious, often times boring, and mostly about effort.

There is no such thing as taking a vacation from practice. 

A Retreat From Social Media

Packing for my trip to France tomorrow, I had to decide what kind of electronics to bring? iPhone, MacBookPro, iPad, none at all? The real question had to do with how involved did I want to be with social media during this time away, and how to create the conditions that would best facilitate my intention. The iPad made the final cut. Not Blogger friendly enough that I will be tempted to blog, and yet a good platform to check on emails if necessary. I am also putting my vow out here on this blog, and also on Twitter and Facebook, that I will be taking a ten-day sabbatical from social media. No tweet, no update, no answering comments on blogs, no writing posts, no surfing the Web, no Linking in. Posts appearing on this blog will have been written prior to me leaving and be posted, courtesy of Blogger automatic scheduler. 

When is the last time you have taken a break from social media? Did you notice a difference in your ability to practice mindfulness? And if so, how?

When You Are Sick Like This

Body ridden with various aches and pain, fatigue, fever . . . the last thing I feel like doing is to sit and practice mindfulness! And yet, I know having the flu is no excuse. Being enveloped by lots of physical unpleasantness does not mean one cannot practice. Quite to the contrary, not feeling good represents the perfect opportunity for investigating mind's reactivity and aversive tendencies. And so, this morning, I willed myself into sitting first thing, heeding Ajahn Chah's teaching - from Our Real Home:

The more tired you feel, the more refined you have to keep focusing on in every time. Why? So that you can contend with pain. When you feel tired, stop all your thoughts. Don't think of anything at all. Focus the mind in at the mind, and then keep the mind with the breath: buddho, buddho. Let go of everything outside. Don't get fastened on your children. Don't get fastened on your grandchildren. Don't get fastened on anything at all. Let go. Let the mind be one. Gather the mind in to one. Watch the breath. Focus on the breath. Gather the mind at the breath. Just be aware at the breath. You don't have to be aware of anything else. Keep making your awareness more and more refined until it feels very small, but extremely awake. The pains that have arisen will gradually grow calm. Ultimately, we watch the breath in the same way that, when relatives have come to visit us, we see them off to the boat dock or the bus station. Once the motor starts, the boat goes whizzing right off. We watch them until they're gone, and then we return to our home.We watch the breath in the same way. We get acquainted with coarse breathing. We get acquainted with refined breathing. As the breathing gets more and more refined, we watch it off. It gets smaller and smaller, but we make our mind more and more awake. We keep watching the breath get more and more refined until there's no more breath. There's just awareness, wide awake. [...] When you're sick like this, gather the mind into oneness. This is your duty. Let everything else go its own way. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, whatever: Let them go their own way. Just stay focused on your duty. If any preoccupation comes in to bother the mind, just say in your heart: "Leave me alone. Don't bother me. You're no affair of mine." If any critical thoughts come up — fear for your life, fear that you'll die, thinking of this person, thinking of that person — just say in your heart, "Don't bother me. You're no affair of mine."

Being grateful for the opportunity to practice . . . and hopefully becoming more wise.

Small Boat in a Big Ocean

It started with a request from the accountant. I needed to find out the exact price I had paid for my old house fifteen years ago. Buried in a pile of old papers,  the information surfaced, and other tidbits also that brought me right back to that time. Mind was quick. The divorce, details of the parting, images of my ex, of the children so young then . . . heart got flooded all of a sudden with a strong current of emotions. Grief, sadness, remorse, regret, love welled up, and I could feel myself going down, fast. 

Now was the moment, I felt, to experience things differently. The last few days' insight still fresh, awareness begged to take a different standpoint. Image of small boat shaken by a strong wind and ready to capsize popped into my mind, and I knew of a better place to be than in it. The ocean was vast, and I could sense the vastness that can absorb all. That afternoon's ripple was very small indeed, another conditioned phenomenon, transient emotions tied to a cause that would soon vanish as they always do.

I stood, sat, and walked with the emotions, and the awareness of the emotions, and the wisdom filtering through. And responded to the even greater love calling. Oh! the joy . . . 

Another related insight I have had lately deals with the subtle common misunderstanding of enlightenment and what it must feel like. The way I view this big word, is as a moment-to-moment phenomenon, when the truth of the big ocean makes itself known. It does not mean not experiencing and feeling pain, or difficult emotions, or unpleasantness. Instead it is about being with the whole package differently, and accepting things the way they are, letting go of the wanting that life would be all pleasure and satisfaction. An enlightened person is one for whom enlightenment is an ongoing phenomena. For most of us, it comes and goes.

How do you relate to the small boat and the big ocean? Do other images speak more to you? What does being enlightened mean to you?

5 Tips For Wannabe Mindfulness Teachers

From being a student, and also a teacher of mindfulness, I have learned a few things that I would like to pass along to 'wannabe' teachers:

1. Have integrity as a teacher

Learn from a reputable teacher. Sit every day for 30 minutes at least, and go on a long silent retreat at least once a year. Do not follow someone else's script. Instead let the words flow from your in-the-moment experience and your own practice. If not able, better have your 'student' listen to a recording of a more experienced teacher.

2. Do not add to the moment

Mindfulness practice is simply about being aware of what is. It is not about visualizing what is not there, or forcing your breath into a different rhythm. Those techniques belong to other types of meditation practices with a different goal.

3. Stay away from 'I' and 'You'

Instead go for 'we' statements, or even better, action oriented instructions without personal pronouns, e.g. "body sitting still, being breathed", or, "turning our attention to the experience of hearing sounds", etc. This way, the possibility of experiencing not self gets introduced.

4. Leave the space open for the wide range of possible experiences

Do not impose your idea of what the now ought to be. During body scan, make room for possibility not just of sensations but also of no sensations. During mindfulness of emotions, give examples of many emotions, and also possibility of not knowing. Also, do not tell people that they should not think - such a common misconception, that get unfortunately passed on by so many untrained 'teachers'!

5. Talk, but not too much

Guiding means you need to use verbal guidance throughout the meditation to hold students' experience. It does not mean placating the whole time with non stop talking. You want to give students a chance to take in your instructions, and then experience for themselves. 

With deep gratitude to those teachers from which I learned much about the art of teaching mindfulness: Gil Fronsdal, Bob Stahl, Jon Kabat-Zinn

It's Like This

Joy has been with me, ever since I wrote yesterday's post. Tonight, I could not resist continuing with Ajahn Sumedho, along the same theme of awareness as refuge - this time from his book Intuitive Awareness:

Awareness is your refuge: 

Awareness of the changingness of feelings, 

of attitudes, of moods, of material change 

and emotional change: 

Stay with that, because it’s a refuge that is 

indestructible. 

It’s not something that changes. 

It’s a refuge you can trust in. 

This refuge is not something that you create. 

It’s not a creation. It’s not an ideal. 

It’s very practical and very simple, but 

easily overlooked or not noticed. 

When you’re mindful, 

you’re beginning to notice, 

it’s like this.

Still fragile mind needs to be constantly reminded. Earlier today, my husband asked, if I was still feeling giddy from 'the monk'. Then, I said yes. Tonight, with the interruption of an unpleasant email, I found myself slipping into anxiety, and much unpleasantness. Ajahn Sumedho was not completely forgotten though, and mind knew it was wavering off the path. T'was time to  refresh . . . and to learn once more, 'it's like this'. That knowledge is the ultimate refuge, the boundless safety that allows one to be one step removed from the fleeting disturbance.