1. Video: Standing and Walking Meditation

2. Audio: What is the nature of compassion?

3. Read: The Buddha's Last Words? Motivation for Applying Mindfulness.

The Buddha's last words? Apparently, he urged his students to pay attention to the details.

🤔After 40 years of teaching, was the Buddha naming Mindfulness in his last breath?

Mmm, perhaps being mindful is a little more important than we realize.

What does it mean to be mindful?

The words mindful and mindfulness get used on a rather surface level these days.

As meditators, we create the space for deeper levels of mindfulness.

For example, during a meditation you may notice, separately:

1) a sensation arise in your knee, perhaps multiple times

2) experiencing/naming the feeling as unpleasant, after a while

3) applying the label pain,

4) an arising thought of moving the leg, perhaps multiple times, back and forth 1)- 4) for a while

5) a separate decision to actually move it,

6) the arising of the intention to actually move the leg, before it moves

7) the physical moving of the leg

8) the cessation of moving the leg

In this way, moving a leg becomes part of the meditation, so it's less likely to disturb us or generate negative emotions. 

We notice the wish to move the leg, after a series of sensations that became more intense over time. 

We note the decision that we will indeed move the leg. And we watch for the intention/impulse to physically move the leg.

The Potential for Insight

From this example, we see that what we used to think of as, "moving my leg", does not exist, in that there is no single gross action or moment that encapsulates it. There are mutliple arisings that we can be mindful of, in even a simple action. 

‼ 

And we may have the experiential insight that this is happening behind all of our decisions and actions, and has for our entire life.

Why does this matter?

With regular practice and this experiential learning, we begin to bring this kind of self-awareness into our daily lives. We can catch, for example, an arising of dislike as it happens.

By seeing this dislike for what it is, we potentially stop it unconsciously growing into something more, fueled by our emotions and thoughts. It was really a single moment or sensation, and being mindful of it breaks a chain of unconscious behavior based on it. 

Doing this just once in a day, we might stop the unconscious chain reaction of a bad mood, bad day, or another person we dislike but we're not sure why. 

This is the potential of being mindful. And this is why we keep running Meditation Groundwork.

Will you join us?

Sign up to our mailing list now, and check the schedule for the next evening meditation.