What a joy to return to our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss! We’ve been working with the four foundations of mindfulness: awareness of the body, feeling tone, thoughts, emotions and then all phenomena. We drew our practice inspiration from B. Alan Wallace’s Minding Closely: The Four Applications of Mindfulness.
We practiced with the third application: mindfulness of thought. We started by establishing centered awareness in the sensory field of the body. Then we shifted attention to the domain of mental experience: ideas, thoughts, images, desires, emotions and aspirations. Alan encourages students to observe how these formations arise and then dissipate. “No matter what arises within this mental space, simply attend to it and observe its nature – remaining alert, nonreactive.”
He teaches that there is no need to identify with thoughts, images or memories. We don’t try to control them, silence them or keep them going. It’s natural to be carried away by thoughts. We note this “excitation” arising and respond by relaxing more deeply. We release all grasping and allow the body to be still as a mountain, the awareness to be still as space.
We discussed the value of this focus in becoming more intimate with the workings of our minds. One student added that practice is complete when he can “walk it around” in his daily life. We wholeheartedly agreed on this point. Each of us has been challenged in the role of caring for loved ones in failing health or emotional distress. While meditation has helped me to calm myself and to remain present in these stressful situations, it hasn’t prevented me from “losing it.” Over the past few months, I’ve lost my patience many times and failed to listen with compassionate openness. These episodes have brought me back to the cushion to start again and renew my aspiration to love – and that includes extending love to myself.
I so deeply appreciate the presence of people who practice while fully engaging in the messiness and beauty of life. We get our hands dirty and that’s o.k. We can sit with our dirty hands and appreciate them. We can sense that we’re a part of something so much bigger than the beauty or the flaws that arise in the domain of “I, me, mine.” I so deeply appreciate the many acts of kindness extended by people who pause to reach out or to help one another in big and small ways. Our Yoga Bliss studio is such a beautiful space for these kinds of exchanges. We all come to move and meditate. We bring stories of happiness and hardship and offer each other our presence. We meet in the intimacy of real time. We practice, restore and renew ourselves to go back out into the world to try again. Namaste and thank you my friends.