Sunday, March 05, 2006
Mindfulness
So hard to remember to do mindfulness practices, but I'm trying to remember to ask myself during the day 'what are you doing now?'. This morning I was making tea and noticed that I was 'making tea' - pouring boiling water over the teabags in the tea pot. As the Thay (Thich Naht Hanh) suggested in one of his books, think about where the food came from, how it grew, etc. So I found myself thinking about the tea leaves and their source.... Later while eating my lunch I thought about the wheat used to make the bread, etc.....
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
It sounds to me like you already on the road to mindfulness. One of the main problems of trying to achieve this state is trying to achieve this state. When we mindfully set about to be mindful, we end up cluttering our minds with shoulds and oughts. The secret is to learn to clear our minds so that they can become filled.
Yes, I can see that too many reminders of what to do and think just cause more clutter. What I find quite helpful is that I have signs in obvious places that simply say 'breathe'...a gentle reminder to think about my breathing (which tends to be shallow) and also gives me a nudge to be mindful - to stop being on autopilot.
as long as you don't eat your plate and start thinking where it came from :) (Ok, silly humor, but I've had hard day at university)
I personally agree that you should sometimes remind yourself of what you are doing and where it's coming from, stated that you don't become overenthousiastic and start questioning everything, like some people I know.
I find modesty an important issue, something lots of people in my surroundings have seem to forgot.
Ok, Bert. I promise not to eat my plate...unless it's made of chocolate!
Going slowly is the best advice I've given myself. But I have to restrain myself as you can see in my previous posts where I have long lists of reminders!
Of all the books that I have ever read on meditation (and there have been many) this is by far the best in my opinion.
http://www.enabling.org/ia/vipassana/Archive/G/Gunaratana/MindfulnessIPE/index.html
Thanks, Tim. I'll check it out.
Post a Comment