“As a general principle, any positive state that you experience within the context of silent sitting practice (when you reach the state of samadhi), you must try to attain in the midst of ordinary life.”
~ Shinzen Young’s teacher
In my experience, some “judgy” people will make up their own opinion about you — about what you should do or shouldn’t do — when they don’t know all the facts. I use the word judgy, because if you’re a Christian, Jesus was very clear on this point:
“Judge not, that ye not be judged.”
To wit, sometimes you just have to let people be wrong about you. (From this tweet by TinyBuddha.)
For many years I struggled with how to combine two of my main interests, Zen and work. I had read that the Zen mind is the mind before thinking, so it seems like Zen and work must be totally unrelated, because you need your mind to work. And then over time I came to understand phrases like, when working, just work; in computer parlance, become single-threaded.
This article contains a collection of quotes that have been helpful to me in understanding the relationship between Zen and work. Please note that I don’t wrap each quote in double quotes, and I also try to attribute each quote to the correct author/speaker. If you’re interested in how to combine Zen and work, I hope you’ll find them helpful.
My meditation tip of the day: If you really, really, really can’t take time out to meditate, the best thing you can do is pay ruthless attention to the present moment during your daily activities. And the best way to do that is through mantras or noting practices.
“Noting Gone may lead to a spontaneous spirit of love and service (bodhicitta). As I’ve said, where sensory events go to is where sensory events arise from. Gone points to the source of your own consciousness ... so Noting Gone can lead to a spontaneous sense of oneness with — and commitment to — all beings.”
From the book, The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works by Shinzen Young.
(I don’t remember where he stated it, but I also remember that Shinzen Young said that if he could only teach one meditation technique, it would be noting gone.)
These “metta meditation” instructions come from this story on LionsRoar.com.
FWIW, when I practice metta meditation I always start by thinking about the best dog ever. :)
“Meditation practice brings our neuroses to the surface rather than hiding them at the bottom of our minds. It enables us to related to our lives as something workable.”
~ Chogyam Trungpa
The CliffsNotes of my favorite meditation instruction for beginners is:
Sit as usual, and then approximately every 4 seconds say either “hear” or “calm,” depending on whether you hear thoughts in your mind, or not. Just keep doing this for as long as you meditate, whether that’s one minute, two minutes, five minutes, etc.
IMHO, it’s a terrific technique for people who are just getting started with meditation. I still use it a few times a year if I can’t calm down or something like that.
That comes from Core 1, Lesson 8 of the Brightmind app.
On a drive back to Colorado in 2017 I listened to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. In the book, The Lady Chablis talked about how much the estrogen shots affected her, mentally and physically — her thoughts, such as who she was attracted to, as well as her physical attributes.
I’ve often thought about how our thoughts and behavior are affected by our hormones (estrogen, testosterone, etc.). That’s one reason I like meditation: The farther you get away from the physical body and chemically-influenced brain, the more you can figure out who you are.
“You can meditate while talking to someone, while washing the dishes, while driving. As your experience grows, you eventually come to a point where you are so present that there is a kind of merging of inside and outside. When that happens, ‘focus’ becomes more than an extremely interesting and pleasant experience; it becomes a transformative experience.”
“Eventually a delicious figure-ground reversal takes place. In the beginning, meditation is something that happens within your day. Eventually, the day becomes something that happens within your meditation.”
I haven’t decided yet if I like the book, Demystifying Awakening: A Buddhist Path of Realization, Embodiment, and Freedom, by Stephen Snyder, but one thing I do like is the concept of an “80/20 rule” that he learned about for when we are interacting with other people.
The idea is that even when you’re talking and interacting with other people, 80% of your concentration should still be on yourself and your inner processes, and 20% should be on who you are interacting with.
This is consistent with my own thoughts on the subject, and what Ram Dass said about Maharaji, that Maharaji could always be seen mouthing “Ram ... Ram ... Ram,” even when he was listening to others. Ram Dass himself also spoke of this in his own practice, and is almost always seen working a mala in public speeches.
“Bring your mind to one point and wait for grace.”
~ from one of my favorite Ram Dass books, Polishing the Mirror, this is something that Maharaji told Ram Dass
IMHO, this is a wonderful definition of the word “namaste”:
I honor the place in you
Where the entire universe resides.
I honor the place in you
Of love, of light, of truth, of peace.I honor the place in you
Where if you are in that place in you and
I am in that place in me,
There is only one of us.
This namaste definition comes from the excellent Ram Dass book, Polishing the Mirror.
Namaste. :)
Maybe because of my Back To Now app, I really like this quote about remembering from Ram Dass:
“I think that remembering is the strategy that most religions are designed to do. It’s remembering there are other planes of consciousness, it’s remembering the illusory nature. It’s remembering Maya, it’s remembering Dukkha. It’s remembering the karma, the sangha, the Buddha, it’s remembering that you’re not caught on one plane of consciousness. It’s reminding you to wake up. The device is to wake you up.”
That quote comes from this ramdass.org page.
[This is a story from a book that I have, but unfortunately at the moment I can’t remember the name of the book. I just typed this by hand from some images I have of the original story.]
One day during a speech Hakuin said, “They say there’s a pure land where everything is only mind, and that there’s a Buddha of light in your own body. Once that Buddha of light appears, mountains, rivers, earth, grass, trees, and forests suddenly glow with a great light. To see this, you have to look inside your own heart.”
An old innkeeper who had meditated for many years was sitting in the audience, and when she heard this, she felt a strange understanding of his words. She later told her family, “I feel that happiness is as near as my skin.” When she was awake and asleep she kept his words alive:
“Inside your own heart, trees shine with a great light.”
Inspired by a conversation with a friend recently about “trying to love everyone,” I dug into things a little more and found the following information from Ram Dass, Zen masters, the Maharaj-ji (Neem Karoli Baba), and Yoda.
As I keep trying to figure out what Ram Dass means when he says, “love everyone,” I dug through his book, be love now and found these two quotes:
This page contains a list of my favorite mindfulness quotes. Most of these are short, concise quotes that help bring me back to the present moment, and work well with my “Just Be” mobile app.
Update: I have replaced my Just Be application — which was written for Android only — with a new application I call Back To Now, which runs on both Android and iOS.
Just Be was a mobile mindfulness app that I created for Android users. This is what the reminders/notifications look like when you receive them on an Android phone or tablet:
I can’t find the exact Ram Dass story I’m looking for or the specific details, but it goes something like this ... after his initial work with Maharaji in India, Ram Dass came back to the U.S. and lectured on spirituality. As he says it, “I was supposed to be a spiritual teacher with no attachments, but the reality is that wherever I went, I had these nine boxes of things that were of sentimental value to me.” So he’d go from city to city lecturing about how to have no attachments, and all the time he was lugging these nine boxes around behind him.
One day he realized that he really needed to give up his attachments to those things, so he did his best to give everything away, but at the end he still had three boxes remaining. “I’m sorry, Maharaji,” he said, “that’s all I can do for now, this is killing me.”
“That was a few years ago,” Ram Dass said. “Now I have thirteen boxes.”
:)
The following quote from Eckhart Tolle is from this video with Eckhart Tolle and Ram Dass:
These are just temporary forms. (Pointing to Ram Dass) This form will be gone soon. (Pointing to himself) This form will be gone soon. (Pointing to the audience) And sooner or later, all these forms will have dissolved. Poof. Like soap bubbles. Poof. And all that remains is The One that expressed itself through The Many.
And if you know yourself as The One, which happens when the stream of thinking stops, and there’s just an aware presence, the spacious, aware, formless presence, that’s who YOU are beyond the form. (Ram Dass nods “yes.”) And from there you can enjoy the play of forms.
I didn’t get to spend much time with her, but I met Kate Johnson at the 2013 Buddhist Geeks Conference and she seemed like a very nice person. I love this quote: “Activism is the rent I pay for living on the planet,” which originally comes from Alice Walker. There’s a little story about Kate Johnson here on LionsRoar.com.
