Summary of two Live sessions, Sunday, Dec 5: The theme was ‘The Habit of Meditation’ and the main points I emphasized were:
1. Training the mind is essential if we wish to find freedom from suffering;
2. Meditation is one of the most helpful practices for training the mind as it allows us to identify where and how we are suffering; our own role in creating our suffering; and how we can untangle ourselves by ‘abandoning the unskillful’—identifying and letting go of mind states such as greed, aversion, and delusion—and ‘developing the skillful’—cultivating qualities like gratitude, generosity, compassion, loving-kindness, and equanimity;
3. If we wish to gain the benefits of meditation, it’s important to make meditation a habit, rather than just an occasional practice. I highlighted ways of making meditation a habit through:
- cultivating a strong and clear intention to develop a daily/regular practice
- creating as much consistency as possible—same time, same place, where possible—to help our brain turn the practice into a habit
- making a commitment for a set period—say, a week—and meditating each day, and at the end of the period, making a commitment for the next week…until the practice becomes a habit
- using guided meditations, if helpful, or sitting in silence for a set period, for example, 15 or 30 minutes
- finding a meditation ‘buddy’ or group to practice with and be accountable to
- practicing with diligence and with kindness towards yourself.
I shared a number of poems this week, including:
• Martha Postlethwaite’s ‘Clearing’• Rumi’s ‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there…’• Antonio Machado’s ‘Walker’• Thich Nhat Hanh’s ‘For Warmth’• Dawna Markova’s ‘I will not die an unlived life’• Wu Men’s ‘Ten Thousand flowers in spring…’• William Blake’s ‘He who binds to himself a joy…’• Lao Tzu’s ‘Empty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace…’• Layman Pang’s ‘My daily affairs are quite ordinary… drawing water and carrying wood.’
Please let me know if I missed anything. I’ll share the full text of a couple of the shorter poems in a separate post. Have a lovely week and see you next Sunday at 9 am eastern—or at the Mindfulness and Habit Change workshop on Saturday, December 11 🙏🏼
