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Try this at your local bookstore
0. Before walking into the store, take a few deep breaths, quiet your mind and set yourself up for mindfulness.
1. Walk into the store and go to the section that you like/dislike the most - something that will trigger strong reactions.
2. Slowly read book titles and names of authors.
3. Mindfully observe the thoughts that pop into your mind. Don't resist any of them.
4. If you catch yourself getting carried away with some book, move on to the next one.
(Alternatively, do this in the magazine section. Mindfully watch your mind go nuts over pretty ladies or handsome men or fashion magazines or sports cars or golf.)
But don't get carried away - we don't want attachments, we want mindfulness.
A few sessions of this, and sitting on the cushion at home won't feel as "monkey mind" anymore
1. Walk into the store and go to the section that you like/dislike the most - something that will trigger strong reactions.
2. Slowly read book titles and names of authors.
3. Mindfully observe the thoughts that pop into your mind. Don't resist any of them.
4. If you catch yourself getting carried away with some book, move on to the next one.
(Alternatively, do this in the magazine section. Mindfully watch your mind go nuts over pretty ladies or handsome men or fashion magazines or sports cars or golf.)
But don't get carried away - we don't want attachments, we want mindfulness.
A few sessions of this, and sitting on the cushion at home won't feel as "monkey mind" anymore
0
Comments
A boy can go blind, looking at his mangas for too long.
Or grow inky palms.
Wowww, THAT would be a challenge!
Yup.
And if you do decide to try it, here is a Chinese Zen tale for you to ponder
"An old woman had supported a monk for twenty years, letting him live in a hut on her land. After all this time she figured the monk, now a man in the prime of life, must have attained some degree of enlightenment. So she decided to test him.
Rather than taking his daily meal to him herself, she asked a beautiful young girl to deliver it. She instructed the girl to embrace the monk warmly - and then to report back to her how he responded. When the girl returned, she said that the monk had simply stood stock-still, as if frozen. The old woman then headed for the monk's hut. What was it like, she asked him, when he felt the girl's warm body against his? With some bitterness he answered, "Like a withering tree on a rock in winter, utterly without warmth." Furious, the old woman threw him out and burned down his hut, exclaiming, "How could I have wasted all these years on such a fraud." (from "Radical Acceptance" by Tara Bach)
I already have tried it.
Sure why not. The only rule is: keep mindfulness going. If trying to read the book breaks your mindfulness, put it away..
What? :P