Balancing Meditation & Life

"Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you ... Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question ... Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use." Carlos Castaneda

The path of meditation practice can be difficult, and from time to time, when life takes a turn, we may encounter a few obstacles, stumble and take a few detours. But fortunately for us, people have been practicing for thousands of years, and written books about it, so we have a kind of manual that we can refer to for help.

If we go online, we'll see there are different variations of what will get in our way, but in the ancient tradition, the sages wrote about The 13 Obstacles most of us experience. I'll note a few:

VIYADHI – illness / disease mental or physical – its difficult to practice when we’re not feeling well.

STYANA – apathy – procrastination – making excuses for not practicing.

SANSHAYA – doubt -in our own ability - or doubting the benefit of our practice.

PRAMADA – it means ‘carelessness’ – but refers to lack of persistence or lack of skill – meaning going about our practice in a careless or the wrong way.

ALASYA – sloth – one of my favourite words :) In our practice this means an inertia of our body or mind due to ‘tamasic’ elements – ‘tamas’ is one of 3 ayurvedic gunas or elements of which everything in the universe consists. Tamas is the heavy one – which translates into heaviness or laziness due to overindulging – oversleeping, overeating or eating /drinking the wrong thing, like alcohol, processed foods, meat, etc.

So perhaps we feel good about ourselves because we’ve overcome those obstacles you've just read. But then there’s one that tricks us! Just as we’re feeling good about sitting, because it feels so fantastic, the obstacle that impedes our progress is called AVARITI – attachment to good feelings or experiences.

This goes hand in hand with the desire to do or experience something. For many of us, when we are experiencing avariti or “iccha” (desire) we are stuck in the mindset of 'want'. Whether this is wanting a deep meditation sitting or whether it’s wanting to get off the mat and do something else. And it relates to BHRANTI-DARSAN – meanideveloping the wrong view and consequence.

It’s very easy to get attached to the good feelings we get from meditation. And of course it can be a wonderful experience! But sometimes our practice doesn’t feel that good, and then we feel it hasn’t gone well. We have the feeling that our meditation went a bit “pear shaped”. That’s a misconception. And it's important to know that it's a misconception so as not to have a the wrong idea of what our practice is about: if the practice doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad sitting.

Why? The dynamic nature of the world around us means things are constantly changing - and that includes our meditation practice. It might be good for weeks, but it’s not always going to be great. On the flip-side, it means it’s not always going to be bad either.

This concept of the unpredictability of the universe is pretty much the starting point of our philosophy. In Buddhism, an "enlightened being is one who does not resist the flow of life but keeps moving with it". Therefore we practice being light and fluid and learn to flow with the changes. That's why we work with the mantra “not always so”. And that's why it's so important to "accept experiences as they are", without wanting it to be different.

If you are a planner and being in control is important, maybe that’s not what you like to hear. But the good news about this is that you don’t need to control your sitting, because there is really no such thing as meditation going pear-shaped. The aim of meditation is not to float on cloud 9. It's about noticing, about listening … to our life. Listening to what our mind and body and soul is busy with.

To listen carefully, we need to cut out the distractions. It doesn’t take much quiet sitting to realise how our senses distract us.

That’s why it helps to count. This is a good trick to have up your sleeve. (We can all do with a few tricks.) Count from one to ten, one to ten, one to ten. Each time from one to ten. Count at your own speed. You can count one on the inhale, two on the exhale. Or you can count slower. But try not to count too fast. Take a few minutes to focus your attention by counting. If you find yourself lost on count of 3 or 4, don’t worry about it, just start again. If you find yourself losing your path often, and cant get past 3 or 4, also don’t worry about it. Its not a competition. Don’t be too hard on yourself. We can just focus on our good intentions, on our good nature, and being gentle, we simply start again.

I also find it easier to get into meditation if I create an intention of sitting with a happy mind. Thinking of sitting as a kind of “coming home”. A nice feeling of being in the right place, doing the what you're meant to be doing at that moment. It's like setting the intention for a relaxed, happy, comfortable, sit. So we start off with that intention, but remember the unpredictability of the universe: so we don’t lose our cool if it doesn’t turn out that way.

Something I read which I find also helpful is to think of our Buddha nature: – our good nature or positive qualities. Rather than starting off feeling a bit anxious about not doing it right or thinking you’re pretty useless, Geshela Kelsang (a New Kadampa Buddhist teacher) says: “Whenever we meet other people, rather than focusing on their delusions we should focus on the gold of their Buddha nature.… Recognizing everyone [as a future Buddha] ... out of love and compassion we shall naturally help and encourage this potential to ripen.” As the Luna Kadampa goes on to write in the article: "This has to apply to us as well, seeing as we're a person. Whenever we "meet” ourself ..." (like when we sit in meditation) "we also need to focus on OUR good Buddha nature, and in that way bring out all our own good qualities."

A good place to start from.

Metta to you all

_/\_