Meditation - There's More to It Than Sitting

In the [the Buddha's] Discourse on How to Establish Mindfulness, there is the following section on Clear Comprehension:

A meditator when moving forward or backward is clearly aware of what they are doing; when looking ahead or behind, clearly aware of what they are doing; when bending, stretching ... when carrying things , clearly aware of what they are doing; when eating, drinking, chewing, savouring ... when passing stools or urine ... when walking, standing, sitting, falling asleep and waking up ... when speaking or staying silent, they clearly aware of what they are doing.

That is, whatever the meditator is doing, that is what they must be mindful of.

In other words, the sitting meditation is only a part of the practice as a whole. The Buddha wanted us to develop a meditative life. To know what we are doing at all times. A life of full-time awareness. The danger for meditators is to raise the sitting meditation practice to the position of a magical ritual as if all we needed to do was a little sitting in the morning and in the evening (perhaps) and liberation from suffering is assured.

Too often meditators think sitting meditation is the be-all and end-all of the Path. I once met a meditator because of this. He had been tremendously ardent, spending months in intensive meditation only to come out and live the 'good life.' After years of this so-called practice, achieving very little in terms of inner peace, he had achieved little but sorrow and despair. He felt the five years of so he had spent on the meditation practice had been a great waste.

So, it is this dependence on meditation sitting as the one and only practice that leads to disillusionment and disappointment. Eventually the meditator may abandon the practice altogether as useless! So sitting meditation is only part of the Buddha's path, though undoubtedly necessary.

Bhikkhu Bodhidhamma
"Meditation In Ordinary Daily Life"

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On Bringing Awareness to our Sexuality

"One some level, we as a society regard sexuality as something dark, forbidden.  This shadowy undercurrent of puritanical sentiment still flows deep in our cultural memory.  As a consequence, the desire for sex is rarely simple.

Sometimes is it imbued with the thrill of conquest or the lure for the forbidden.  Often it is driven by the thirsting desire for excitement and romance, to cover over the anxiety of our aloneness.  And almost always, from our very core, there comes some desperate craving for acceptance, for love.

Yet the power of our sexual energy is in itself neither good nor bad. Far more important than the mere denial of fulfillment of desires, the clarity of our awareness determines whether our sexuality is a heaven or a hell."

Ezra Bayda from Saying Yes to Life (Even the Hard Parts)

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Pema Chodron on the Path of Compassion

"Compassion is not a magical device that can instantly dispel all suffering. The path of compassion is altruistic but not idealistic. Walking this path we are not asked to lay down our life, find a solution for all of the struggles in this world, or immediately rescue all beings. We are asked to explore how we may transform our own hearts and minds in the moment.

Can we understand the transparency of division and separation? Can we liberate our hearts from ill will, fear, and cruelty? Can we find the steadfastness, patience, generosity, and commitment not to abandon anyone or anything in this world? Can we learn how to listen deeply and discover the heart that trembles in the face of suffering?

The path of compassion is cultivated one step and one moment at a time. Each of those steps lessens the mountain of sorrow in the world."

Pema Chodron

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When the Tibetan Master Cried at the Loss of His Son

"When Marpa, the great Tibetan meditation master and teacher of Milarepa, lost his son he wept bitterly. One of his pupils came up to him and asked: ‘Master, why are you weeping? You teach us that death is an illusion.’

And Marpa said: ‘Death is an illusion.  And the death of a child is an even greater illusion.’ But what Marpa was able to show his disciple was that while he could understand the truth about the conditioned nature of everything and the emptiness of forms, he could still be a human being. He could feel what he was feeling; he could open to his grief. He could be completely present to feel that loss. And he could weep openly.

There is nothing incongruous about feeling our feelings, touching our pain, and, at the same time understanding the truth of the way things are. Pain is pain; grief is grief; loss is loss — we can accept those things. Suffering is what we add onto them when we push away."

Ajahn Medhanandi  from "The Joy Hidden in Sorrow"

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Metta for a Dog and Its Delight

O Great Doggy Heart,

Looking upon the Wonderful Object of your Joy and Desire,

May your Master make time for your Joy and Delight in the Chase,

May you race through the grass with ecstasy,
as the Great Hunter of Things Thrown and Things Caught!

May your Master delight in your Joy and Delight in the Chase

May your Master look deeply into this Joy and Delight

And sense the endless Fields of Love, where Dog and Delight and Master and Play,

And are One in the never-ending Bliss of the Dance of Being.

Steve Goodheart

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Quantum physics, Oppenheimer, and the Buddha

“If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say ‘no’; if we ask whether the electron’s position changes with time, we must say ‘no’; if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say ‘no’; if we ask whether it is in action, we must say ‘no’.

“The Buddha had given such answers when interrogated as to the condition of man’s self after death, but they are not familiar answers from the tradition of the 17th and 18th century science.”

Robert Oppenheimer

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Listen with Compassion

“Deep listening, compassionate listening is not listening with the purpose of analyzing or even uncovering what has happened in the past. You listen first of all in order to give the other person relief, a chance to speak out, to feel that someone finally understands him or her.

Deep listening is the kind of listening that helps us to keep compassion alive while the other speaks…During this time you have in mind only one idea, one desire: to listen in order to give the other person the chance to speak out and suffer less. This is your only purpose. Other things like analyzing, understanding the past, can be a by-product of this work. But first of all listen with compassion.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

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The Old Monk and the Secret of Heaven and Hell

The old monk sat by the side of the road. With his eyes closed, his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap, he sat. In deep meditation, he sat.

Suddenly his zazen was interrupted by the harsh and demanding voice of a samurai warrior. “Old man! Teach me about heaven and hell!”

At first, as though he had not heard, there was no perceptible response from the monk. But gradually he began to open his eyes, the faintest hint of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth as the samurai stood there, waiting impatiently, growing more and more agitated with each passing second.

“You wish to know the secrets of heaven and hell?” replied the monk at last. “You who are so unkempt. You whose hands and feet are covered with dirt. You whose hair is uncombed, whose breath is foul, whose sword is all rusty and neglected. You who are ugly and whose mother dresses you funny. You would ask me of heaven and hell?”

The samurai uttered a vile curse. He drew his sword and raised it high above his head. His face turned to crimson and the veins on his neck stood out in bold relief as he prepared to sever the monk’s head from its shoulders.

“That is hell,” said the old monk gently, just as the sword began its descent.

In that fraction of a second, the samurai was overcome with amazement, awe, compassion and love for this gentle being who had dared to risk his very life to give him such a teaching. He stopped his sword in mid-flight and his eyes filled with grateful tears.

“And that,” said the monk, “is heaven.”

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Using Breath as an Anchor to Come Back Home To

"For me, it is an axiom that meditation is not so much about being with the breath every single second. That is very difficult and can only be achieved in very specific circumstances. But this does not mean the meditation of coming back is not effective.


You could have a thousand thoughts, and a thousand times you will have the opportunity to come back. You can make the choice to come back at any time, and it will diminish the power of the mental habit. So cultivation is the coming back, again and again, to the breath. It is not useful to think only about the effect of meditation, because that is a slippery slope. Better to focus mainly on cultivation.

When we come back to the breath, we come back to experience. It’s very important to see that when attention goes off, it generally goes into abstraction. In abstraction we are ignoring reality instead of being in the fullness of experience, which is where our creative potential can come out and express itself. We all know we have a brain, we have a certain kind of emotional system related to the heart, we have a body, and we have sensations that go with it. All this is not going to stop. But there is a difference between what I would call creative functioning within those potentials of thinking, feeling, and sensation, and being stuck in them and feeling you can’t get out. Concentration brings back the mental, emotional, and physical patterns to the creative functions of mind, body, and heart.

An image of what concentration does is that of a glass with muddy water. If you shake the glass, the water gets muddy and you can’t really see through it. But if you leave the glass alone for a bit, the mud goes to the bottom and the water at the top becomes clean. This is the basic idea of concentration: if things are not so agitated and they settle down, then you can see more clearly and there can be more space for you to see. Over time meditation develops space around our thoughts, around our feelings, and around our sensations."

Martine Batchelor from "Breaking Free with Creative Awareness"

Insight Journal Winter 2008

Martine Batchelor is the author of Meditation for Life, The Path of Compassion, Women in Korean Zen, and Let Go: A Buddhist Guide to Breaking Free of Habits. She teaches at Gaia House in England and also world-wide, and lives in southwest France.

Slack Mind or Agitated mind - Build a Fire - Extinguish a Fire

“Monks, suppose a man wanted to make a small fire burn up, and he put wet grass on it, put wet cow dung on it, put wet sticks on it, sprinkled it with water, and scattered dust on it, would that man be able to make the small fire burn up?” — “No, venerable sir.” — “So too, monks, when the mind is slack, that is not the time to develop the tranquility enlightenment factor, the concentration enlightenment factor, and the equanimity enlightenment factor. Why is that? Because a slack mind cannot well be roused by those states. When the mind is slack, that is the time to develop the investigation-of-states enlightenment factor, the energy enlightenment factor, and the happiness enlightenment factor. Why is that? Because a slack mind can well be roused by those states.

“Monks, suppose a man wanted to extinguish a great mass of fire, and he put dry grass on it,... and did not scatter dust on it, would that man be able to extinguish that great mass of fire?” — “No, venerable sir.” — “So too, monks, when the mind is agitated, that is not the time to develop the investigation-of-states enlightenment factor, the energy enlightenment factor, or the happiness enlightenment factor. Why is that? Because an agitated mind cannot well be quieted by those states. When the mind is agitated, that is the time to develop the tranquility enlightenment factor, the concentration enlightenment factor, and the equanimity enlightenment factor. Why is that? Because an agitated mind can well be quieted by those states.”

The Buddha, Samyutta Nikaya, 46:53

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When Meditating, Don't Chase the Shadows

"When you sit and meditate, even if you don't gain any intuitive insights, make sure at least that you know this much: When the breath comes in, you know. When it goes out, you know. When it's long, you know. When it's short, you know. Whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, you know.

If you can know this much, you're doing fine. As for the various thoughts and concepts (sanna) that come into the mind, brush them away -- whether they're good or bad, whether they deal with the past or the future. Don't let them interfere with what you're doing — and don't go chasing after them to straighten them out. When a thought of this sort comes passing in, simply let it go passing on. Keep your awareness, unperturbed, in the present.

When we say that the mind goes here or there, it's not really the mind that goes. Only concepts go. Concepts are like shadows of the mind. If the body is still, how will its shadow move? The movement of the body is what causes the shadow to move, and when the shadow moves, how will you catch hold of it? Shadows are hard to catch, hard to shake off, hard to set still.

The awareness that forms the present: That's the true mind.  The awareness that goes chasing after concepts is just a shadow. Real awareness -- 'knowing' — stays in place. It doesn't stand, walk, come, or go.  As for the mind — the awareness that doesn't act in any way coming or going, forward or back — it's quiet and unperturbed. And when the mind is thus its normal, even, undistracted self — i.e., when it doesn't have any shadows — we can rest peacefully. But if the mind is unstable and uncertain, it wavers:

Concepts arise and go flashing out — and we go chasing after them, hoping to drag them back in. The chasing after them is where we go wrong. This is what we have to correct. Tell yourself: Nothing is wrong with your mind. Just watch out for the shadows."

From "The Art of Letting Go" by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo
Translated from the Thai by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Geoffrey DeGraff)

Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo

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A Buddhist Vision of the Beatitudes

Blessed are the merciful, for they have learned how to be merciful to themselves.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they have looked into their heart of darkness and smiled with the wisdom of a Buddha.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they have transformed the war in their own hearts.

Blessed are they who mourn, for through suffering they will seek and find the path to release.


Blessed are the poor (the beggars) in spirit, for they will discover the kingdom of heaven is already within.


Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness sake, for they have learned to let go of persecuting the unrighteousness of others.

Blessed are the meek, for they have learned the joy of letting go of self and of finding self in others.


Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after liberation, for they have found the desire that leads to the end of all entrapments.

Steve Goodheart

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