Showing posts with label stress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stress. Show all posts

Monday, March 26, 2007

Subtle Stress and Sensation


From The Strategy of a Peaceful Mind (Ajaan Suwat Suvaco. Trans. by Thanissaro Bhikkhu):
Stress, for instance, is a noble truth. It's right there in front of you. Why don't you become disenchanted with it? Because you don't see it, don't see the cause from which it comes. Or when you see the cause, you don't see its connection to stress. Why is that? Because delusion gets in the way. You see pretty sights, hear lovely sounds, smell nice aromas, taste good flavors, and then you fall for them. You get carried away and grasp after them, thinking that you've acquired something. As for the things you don't yet have, you want to acquire them. Once you acquire them, you fall for them and get all attached and entangled. This is the origination of suffering. When these things are inconstant, they stop being peaceful. They become a turmoil because they're inconstant all the time.


1-Minute Contemplation: What pretty sights, lovely sounds, nice aromas, good flavors, and sensual textures have you experienced recently? Carry yourself back to that experience. When the sensation ended, what was your experience? Look deeply at your response. There was perhaps a thankfulness for the opportunity to experience such a wonderful sensation. Was there any longing? Perhaps a twinge of "missing?" Or a very slight desire to feel the sensation again?

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

What is Life Offering You?



What is life offering you right now? Practice isn't just seated meditation. Life is practice. So I ask again, what is life offering you right now?

Life offers me struggle right now. This work week has strained my ability to cope. I have put in long hours, long, busy hours with more multitasking required than I am capable of. My saving grace has been my vacation over last weekend that left me mentally refreshed and rejuvenated. Just as there was a lesson I drew from my vacation, there is a lesson in this stress. Life is practice.

It's difficult to coax the lesson out from under the blanket of stress when I'm still lying on top of the blanket. So if I'm not ready for that yet, what is my practice? It is maintaining calm, slowing my breathing, remembering to release the tension in my shoulders. It is being with the stress, embracing it, rather than pushing it away.
I often notice that when people get up from the table on the patio, they don't push their chair back in. They have no commitment to that chair. They feel, "The chair isn't important, I have to get into the zendo and hear about the truth." But the truth is the chair. It's where we are right now. ... We're looking for the truth instead of being the unease and distress of where we are right now. [1]

The lesson arises of its own accord in the course of my practice. And if it doesn't? I practice.


1-Minute Contemplation: What is your life presenting right now? Are you chasing after something you don't have and forgetting to look directly at where you are right now? Are you pushing away what's in your life right now rather than embracing it, getting to know it? Now forget all this talk and just practice. Rising. Falling. I breathe in, my abdomen rises. I breathe out, my abdomen falls.



[1] Everyday Zen, Charlotte Joko Beck. 1989.