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Mindful Attitude
Buddhadragon
Ehipassiko & Carpe DiemSamsara Veteran
in Mindfulness
I came across this interesting excerpt called "Attitude," from the book "Mindfulness in Plain English," by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana.
It sets out to give some useful mindfulness tips to take into account during our meditation practice in particular, but I find they may also come pretty handy when applied to our outlook on life in general:
May we all have a blessed and blissful day
???
12
Comments
thank you dhammadragon.i love it--great reminders.
I think it's appropriate to comment on the difference between acceptance and complacency. One can still be active, while the other lets go - too much.
It is good to practise Acceptance. It's less skilful if one resigns one's self to everything with an air of complacency. That leads to Apathy.
Nice text, a worthy reminder.
Right attitude is not the same as passivity, complacency or other unbalanced psychological behavours that @federica rightly mentions.
A good example is the acceptance in pushing hands from tai chi. It is totally soft and receiving as a choice (not as an unbalanced being beaten up strategy) and can become a yin merging/changing into yang ...
Another example many will be familiar with is a yoga or meditation asana. Totally an active stance BUT only by employing the gentle, accepting, relaxed, attitude can we understand and progress in these disciplines ...
And yes it applies to our life attitude. Confict becomes a co-operative dance. Difficulties become points of relaxing around rather than escaping/hating/stiffening ...
We haz plan! ????♥️
Me too.
My philosophy is to proactively do what depends on us to do/attain/change, and learn to accept the situations and things we can do nothing about.
Accepting that a door that stays closed is not our door, is not the same as throwing in the towel before even putting in some good fight.
@DhammaDragon thank you for posting! An important reminder. Life becomes busy and complex and to return to these core concepts is vital.
May we all have a blessed and blissful day indeed. I second that.
Love you all here. I feel very fortunate indeed to have found my Sangha here.
Have a great weekend.???
"A door that stays closed, is not our door." Clever, that.....
Useful reminders when applied to meditation too... it gives a slightly different balance to sitting practice when you approach it like that, rather than just always and immediately returning to the breath.
That’s my current hangup in meditation by the way - having gotten distracted, how should one return to the breath from the experience of a sequence of thoughts? Immediately and abruptly, or more gently?
The way I do it - and I'm not suggesting I'm right, I'm just giving what I do - Is, when I notice that my thoughts have infiltrated, I smile inwardly, then say to myself, 'Focus' or 'watch' or 'Mindful'.... and I breathe. I don't always pay attention to the breath. I sometimes focus on sensations, how I feel, and concentrate my gaze on the inside of my eyelids.
I often begin to see swirling colours (I know they're a natural phenomenon, phosphenes), but I find them helpful to my Meditation...
I agree. It's important to distinguish acceptance from complacency. The line between the two is the line between right and wrong effort. To practice acceptance is to practice honesty, to accept, to be honest about things as they are and not to pretend they're otherwise. As Bhante said, "just observe it all mindfully." But mindful of what? Of what's actually wholesome and what's actually not. Stopping at acceptance is unskillful, because it does lead to apathy. But peering through acceptance to see what really is wholesome and what really isn't is skillful, when it leads to right effort, to seeing and abandoning what's actually unwholesome and to seeing and embracing what's actually wholesome. Edit: Then, rinse and repeat.
I'd go with gently, the way kindness, compassion, appreciation and equanimity would do it. If that doesn't work, there's five other ways: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.020.than.html
I do the same, but focus on the center of my brain. I'm gonna try the eyelids. Swirling colors.
Centre of the brain... Not heard that method before. How, pray, would you do that, exactly?
I take it that it would be a visualisation, or imagery....?
It's not a method, just a calming focal point. First, I have a deeply held belief in the notions of objective and subjective reality, that we don't see reality, we sense it and make a construct of it. The latter is a reflection of the former, the perception of it, the awareness of it, but not the reality itself, e.g., there's the objective reality of the breath, of a breathing body, a beating heart, the pulse, etc., and there's the subjective experience of them. Putting my attention in the center of the brain signals my mind to make a clear distinction between these two and to focus on the reflection, the subjective reality. I don't loose track of the respiration, the body, physical, emotional, mental sensations, but dwell in the strictly subjective experience of them, the awareness itself. It's all real, I assume, but my knowledge of it can't be, I also assume, anything other than in my head. So, that's where I put my attention.
Interesting. Thanks.
Indeed. We are fragile flowerings. We know how easily our petals fall. Sometimes seeds ...
Don't dwell that was a good one ...
lobster , thank you. learned from you , to readjust if need be,move foward and be well....and stay positive.
Thanks for that one @DhammaDragon, been a while since I read that book, going to have to dig it out and have a re-read.
That's a very positive note, @paulyso.
Good idea, @Traveller