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Can we really achieve a quiet mind in our day to day lives?
Hey all,
One of the biggest challenges in my spiritual growth at the moment is the constant and negative chatter of my mind.
I'm having hard time focusing on my tasks because my mind is always yapping away.
He's always talking talking and talking! I'm not sure how to deal with it. When I get into meditative state, my mind gets somewhat quiet. However, I would really like for some tips or guides that I could use in my daily activities.
Has anyone's mind become more quiet through Buddhist practice? What kind of practices can one do to achieve it?
One of the biggest challenges in my spiritual growth at the moment is the constant and negative chatter of my mind.
I'm having hard time focusing on my tasks because my mind is always yapping away.
He's always talking talking and talking! I'm not sure how to deal with it. When I get into meditative state, my mind gets somewhat quiet. However, I would really like for some tips or guides that I could use in my daily activities.
Has anyone's mind become more quiet through Buddhist practice? What kind of practices can one do to achieve it?
0
Comments
Mtns
Frustrating, isn't it? The good news is it's a resolvable problem. The bad news is it requires mindfulness. The good news is you are developing it via meditation.
I will give you some tips that help me greatly. The good news is they work wonders. The bad news is you will have some resistance to overcome in doing them.
Yes. I will share with you now.
When you wake up in the morning lay in bed until your alarm tells you that you can't any longer or until you feel ready to leave the bed. Either way, when you get out of bed, rise up, stretch your body and take 3 breaths. Not regular breaths, but deep, forceful, energetic breaths. Breath in wakefulness and breath out sleepiness. On the last exhalation, shout 'YES!' or something affirmative. You won't feel like it, but do it anyway. This wakes you up and sets the tone for the rest of the day.
Getting up and dragging butt to the coffee maker just to find the timer didn't work is no way to start the day. Get up with energetic breathing and a shout whether your feel like it or not, just do it. Try it once and see how much difference it makes.
Adopt mindfulness reminders that self trigger during your day. Getting in or out of your car triggers you to breath mindfully 3 times. Going through a door triggers 3 mindful breaths. Starting a meeting triggers 3 mindful breaths. Making a phone call triggers 3 mindful breaths. 3 mindful breaths takes about 10 seconds. You have the time.
By having regular and frequent mindfulness triggers in your day it helps to carry the mindfulness developed in meditation throughout the entire day.
Practice makes perfect so forgetting mindfulness triggers or just not feeling like it on a bad day is no cause for self disparagement. Just do as you do when the mind wanders during sitting. Gently start again. Over and over. Practice makes perfect.
That does not make any sense to me. If by "trying," I'm missing the point. What is the point? Every action has a purpose. We "try" to fulfill that purpose with every action we take. How can there be action or purpose without "trying?"
Thank you for the tip. I actually read this in Radical Acceptance but have not been practicing it. I will try to make it a habit from now.
Volumes of books have been written on exactly this. I can recommend "Full Catastrophe Living" by John Kabat-Zinn as a good one to start with.
Best of luck with your practice. Nobody ever said this stuff was easy
Mtns
So, you're still "trying" to be still and become mindful.
What is wrong with "trying?" Let's be honest here. We're all "trying" here whether we're meditating and learning about Buddhism. We all have a purpose to it. To be happier, peaceful, enlightened, free from suffering and etc.
Such statement as "missing the point by trying" just sounds like a linguistic trick to me.
One thing that helped me while focusing on the breath were the instructions of the Buddha from the Mahasatipatthana Sutta. They seem simple enough. But just endeavor to accomplish them, and you will find out how simple (or not) they are:
"Here, monks, a monk abides contemplating body as body, ardent, clearly aware and mindful, having put aside hankering and fretting for the world...
"Here a monk, having gone into the forest, or to the root of a tree or to an empty place, sits down cross-legged, holding his body erect, having established mindfulness before him. Mindfully he breaths in, mindfully he breaths out. Breathing in a long breath, he knows that he breathes in a long breath, and breathing out a long breath, he knows that he breathes out a long breath."
The establishment of mindfulness before one attempts to meditate can go a long way toward establishing the correct condition for a solid meditation session. As a side benefit, it overwhelms the interference of the five hindrances such that they no longer bother you. While it may take some time to develop this ability, it is well worth the time and effort spent doing so.
Sometimes this is not true. You may have to experiment to learn what works for you. One of the tricks I read about, tried, and it eventually worked was: whenever the mind begins to interfere with the silence, just tell it to "Stop!" or "Be silent!" Keep telling it to "Stop" each time it interferes until it does stop, and don't accept anything less. Eventually, the mind will obey.
Have you never heard the phrase, "do, or do not, There is no 'try'."....?
In other words, you either do it, or you don't. It has been likened to 'trying' to pick up an object. Not picking it up, but trying to pick it up.
It's ludicrous. Effort is what you are implementing, but you need to be mindful - or not bother being mindful.
Trying to be mindful, isn't being mindful. It's simply going through the motions. You are either mindful, or you're not.
It's like trying to get pregnant. Until you are pregnant, 'trying' won't make you pregnant. you'll just be not pregnant, until you are.
You have to be mindful, about being Mindful.
Your mind, must be full of nothing else, but being aware of the is-ness of the Moment. By moment.
You will find as time goes on, as you practice being in the Now, now, that you'll tend to be more 'present' than absent', over time. But you have to do it. not think about getting there eventually. You have to do it, Now.
is that any clearer?
It helped me reading all this.
I really appreciate the breath exercises mentioned.
Struggling to end the way you are feeling is no good. The notion that 'speedy' moment is not good is just habitual thinking. When you accept the moment as it is, speedy mind and all, paradoxically you will feel much better about it.
There are thousands of shades of moments: speedy moments, panicked moments, grey moments, light moments, dark moments, bored moments, overwhelmed moments, inspired moments, plain tired moments.
Buddhist practice is not about getting any one of these moments.
Buddhist practice is not about getting rid of any one of these moments.
Buddhist practice IS about seeing these moments clearly just as they are
You deal with it in the same manner as you deal with it during sitting meditation. But instead of returning to breathing as you do during sitting meditation, you return to "food shopping" or "driving a car" or "eating lunch", etc. The situation is different but the practice is the same.
Trying is a problem because successful application of mindfulness requires a degree of calmness and detachment and the sense of trying undercuts these.
By asking, enlisting the help of others, we get information and advice, then we have to go and practise. Because it's practice, we will imagine that we are getting nowhere or only making slow progress. All I can tell you is that there comes a moment, often unlooked-for, when (for want of a better way to say it) silence becomes embedded in us, or, perhaps, we gain access to a fundamental silence that has been there all along and against which all chatter and noise detaches and disguises.
To start with, this silence between the sounds may be partial, occasional, but my own experience suggests that it tends to spread and to take up more of my mind. It is that much more accessible. I would love to believe that, with time, the whole of my mind will be as still as that stillness. Perhaps I should find out how to believe in rebirth.
"Trying" really can be seen as "practice". Although "enlightenment" is misread even by many Buddhists. However, it is very individual, and nobody can broadbrush either "enlightenment" or "happiness" and even approach reflection of reality.
There seems to be many who state that enlightenment is a destination, or a point to get to, but I see Buddha still practicing after his "enlightenment". Enlightenment is the path as well as the destination. They are one in the same, woven in the same cloth.
"Trying" seems to imply getting to a destination, or falling short of something. "Practice" is ongoing, no matter what the results are of day to day actions.
As far as linguistic tricks, perhaps that would go for all human language? Words are nothing more than a mental map of reality.
I welcome any different views on this.
In gratitude..
In Buddhism, we want to overcome attachments.(and with too much trying...this becomes another attachment :scratch:) This has to also carry over to meditation. If you sit attached to the idea of a quiet mind, or enlightenment, you are likely to struggle.
So you sit. And as a thought drifts in, you let it go but you don't push it away...just let it go.
Some very wise person on this board (I don't remember who now
"there is no wisdom, no attainment, and even no non-attainment. "
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]tadyatha - gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha! [/FONT]
Yes, it is possible to result in a significantly quieter mind than one currently has, but I believe this is through years of dedicated and ongoing practice. Try not to worry or as others have pointed out, "try" too much. With genuine meditation and practice, the results will come of their own and they will instead be very natural, not forced or willed as such.
Take the example of an oak tree, first the seed is planted, then cultivated, watered and loved over the years. The shade and relaxation that she can provide one day is not by accident, but nor can that result be wished for or harped over. Worrying and fretting over it is not so helpful either, it can lead to just more of a stressed mind. Tending patiently and overseeing the gardening (practice) is what is most important.
That you notice the overactive mind, and you wish to do something about it, is already the first step. Happy planting, and best wishes. Take it easy, the Dharma is not our tool, but it can help us. As genkaku might say, patience, courage and doubt.
Best wishes,
Abu
I agree, we are all trying, and that is the beauty of it in practice ie reality. One day you are trying to swim, and another day you are swimming effortlessly. This is why consistency and practice is most important, regardless of any opinion from me or you.
I do not know what your practice or tradition is, but perseverence furthers.
Best wishes,
Abu
The constant busy-ness of the mind is hooked into, part of, the energy of our culture and circumstance. Trying to stop it is like trying to stop the local traffic. It will only partially succeed at best. Even monks who withdraw to a forest kuti have years of practice before becoming as quiet as the forest, and even that isn't the peace of liberation. There is a liberated stillness that is found in that very busy-ness (forest or city). The activity of this body and mind element is stillness when it is completely unopposed. There isn't a liberated stillness apart from this except for the occasional resting in "concentration", but that is only temporary.
You can find teachers who talk about this one way or another in the three main traditions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-QlSW5KwxI