meditation is essentially training our attention so that we can be more aware—not only of our own inner workings but also of what’s happening around us in the here and now. Once we see clearly what’s going on in the moment, we can then choose whether and how to act on what we’re seeing. (Location 260)
whatever gets our attention flourishes, so if we lavish attention on the negative and inconsequential, they can overwhelm the positive and the meaningful. But if we do the opposite, refusing to deal with or acknowledge what’s difficult and painful, pretending it doesn’t exist, then our world is out of whack. Whatever doesn’t get our attention withers—or retreats below conscious awareness, where it may still affect our lives. In a perverse way, ignoring the painful and the difficult is just another way of feeding the wolf. Meditation teaches us to open our attention to all of human experience and all parts of ourselves. (Location 282)
the feeling of having your attention fractured by job and family, the enticement of electronic diversions, or the chatter of your mind—that morning’s spat with your mate replaying in your head, a litany of worries about the future or regrets about the past, a nervous endless-loop recitation of the day’s to-do list. Parts of that mental soundtrack may be old tapes that were instilled in childhood and have been playing so long we’ve nearly tuned them out of conscious awareness. (Location 287)
Meditation teaches us to focus and to pay clear attention to our experiences and responses as they arise, and to observe them without judging them. That allows us to detect harmful habits of mind that were previously invisible to us. (Location 300)
All forms of meditation strengthen and direct our attention through the cultivation of three key skills—concentration, mindfulness, and compassion or lovingkindness. (Location 306)
The practice entails paying attention to each in-and-out breath, and when your mind wanders (it will, that’s natural), noticing whatever has captured your attention, then letting go of the thought or feeling without berating yourself for it. You then return to focusing on your breathing. In this way meditation trains us to stay in the moment before us instead of reliving the past or worrying about the future. And it teaches us how to be gentle with ourselves and others, to forgive our lapses and move (Location 310)
But if we apply mindfulness to the experience of anger, we can safely draw close to the emotion instead of fleeing, and investigate it instead of stonewalling. We notice it without judging it. We can gather more information about what happens when we get mad—what sets off the anger, where it lodges in the body, and what else it also contains, like sadness, fear, or regret. This pause for nonjudgmental acknowledgment creates a bit of peaceful space within which we can make new, different choices about how to respond to something like anger. (Location 324)
Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what’s happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. (Location 331)
If you meditate regularly, you also get certain results. I’ve already mentioned some of them, including greater calm, and improved concentration and more connection to others. (Location 395)
You’ll begin to spot the unexamined assumptions that get in the way of happiness. These assumptions we make about who we are and the way the world works—what we deserve, how much we can handle, where happiness is to be found, whether or not positive change is possible—all greatly influence how and to what we pay attention. (Location 398)
Assumptions block direct experience and prevent us from gathering information that could bring us comfort and relief, or information that, though saddening and painful, will allow us to make better decisions. (Location 406)
You’ll stop limiting yourself. When we practice meditation, we often begin to recognize a specific sort of conditioned response—previously undetected restrictions we’ve imposed on our lives. We spot the ways we sabotage our own growth and success because we’ve been conditioned to be content with meager results. (Location 414)
You’ll weather hard times better. Meditation teaches us safe ways to open ourselves to the full range of experience—painful, pleasurable, and neutral—so we can learn how to be a friend to ourselves in good times and bad. During meditation sessions we practice being with difficult emotions and thoughts, even frightening or intense ones, in an open and accepting way, without adding self-criticism to something that already hurts. (Location 421)
You’ll rediscover a deeper sense of what’s really important to you. Once you look beneath distractions and conditioned reactions, you’ll have a clearer view of your deepest, most enduring dreams, goals, and values. (Location 429)
You’ll have a portable emergency resource. Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively. (Location 431)
You’ll be in closer touch with the best parts of yourself. Meditation practice cultivates qualities such as kindness, trust, and wisdom that you may think are missing from your makeup but are actually just undeveloped or obscured by stress and distractions. You’ll have the chance to access these qualities more easily and frequently. (Location 435)
You’ll recapture the energy you’ve been wasting trying to control the uncontrollable. (Location 438)
Though we can affect our physical and emotional experiences, we can’t ultimately determine them; we can’t decree what emotions will arise within us. But we can learn through meditation to change our responses to them. (Location 447)
Recognizing what we can’t control (the feelings that arise within us; other people; the weather) helps us have healthier boundaries at work and at home—no more trying to reform everyone all the time. It helps us to stop beating up on ourselves for having perfectly human emotions. It frees energy we expend on trying to control the uncontrollable. (Location 449)
You’ll understand how to relate to change better—to accept that it’s inevitable and believe that it’s possible. Most of us have a mixed, often paradoxical attitude toward change. Some of us don’t think change is possible at all; we believe we’re stuck forever doing things the way we’ve always done them. Some of us simultaneously hope for change and fear it. We want to believe that change is possible, because that means that our lives can get better. But we also have trouble accepting change, because we want to hold on permanently to what’s pleasurable and positive. We’d like difficulties to be fleeting and comfort to stick around. (Location 452)
Everything is impermanent: happiness, sorrow, a great meal, a powerful empire, what we’re feeling, the people around us, ourselves. Meditation helps us comprehend this fact—perhaps the basic truth of human existence, and the one we humans are most likely to balk at or be oblivious to, especially when it comes to the biggest change of all: Mortality happens, whether we like it or not. We grow old and die. (Location 458)
Following our breath while observing how thoughts continually ebb and flow can help us realize that all elements of our experience are in constant flux. During a meditation session, you’ll find it’s natural to go through many ups and downs, to encounter both new delights and newly awakened conflicts that have bubbled up from the unconscious mind. (Location 464)
We can’t control what thoughts and emotions arise within us, nor can we control the universal truth that everything changes. But we can learn to step back and rest in the awareness of what’s happening. That awareness can be our refuge. (Location 475)
“I’ve been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened,” Mark Twain once said. (Location 601)
Meditation—training our attention—allows us to find an essential cohesiveness. (Location 637)
Thoughts and feelings will inevitably arise and claim your attention, but you’ll practice repeatedly noticing and letting go of these distractions, then returning your awareness to the in and out of your breath. Breathing, discovering you’ve been distracted, and starting over: simple and manageable. (Location 694)
Some of these thoughts and feelings may be fascinating and delightful; some may make you uncomfortable; some may be deadly dull. You’ll practice letting them all go, without taking the time to judge them. This is a crucial first step in learning how to be more centered and present. (Location 696)
Everyone who meditates, beginners and longer-term practitioners alike, gets hijacked at times by thoughts and feelings; it’s impossible not to be. But once you see how doable it is to start over, you won’t judge your efforts so harshly. And you’ll learn that starting over and not fruitlessly berating yourself are skills you can bring into your everyday life when you’ve made a mistake or lost sight of your aspirations. You can begin again. (Location 700)
This act of beginning again is the essential art of the meditation practice. (Location 778)
If you have to let go of distractions and begin again thousands of times, fine. That’s not a roadblock to the practice—that is the practice. That’s life: starting over, one breath at a time. (Location 790)
Try to bring some of the qualities of concentration you just experienced—presence, calm observation, willingness to start over, and gentleness—to the next activity that you perform at home, at work, among friends, or among strangers. (Location 797)
success in meditation is measured not in terms of what is happening to us but by how we relate to what is happening. Do you calmly observe your sleepiness, anxiety, or distraction? Success. Do you try to stop punishing yourself for feeling these things? Success. (Location 899)
Not paying attention keeps us in an endless cycle of wanting. We move on to the next thing because we aren’t really taking in what we already have; inattention creates an escalating need for stimulation. When we’re keenly aware of what’s happening, we don’t need to grasp for the next great moment of sensation or taste or sound (all the while missing what’s actually here, right in front of us). Nor do we need to postpone our feeling of happiness until a more exciting or more pleasing object comes along, (Location 907)
His life is a pursuit of a pursuit forever. It is the future that creates his present. All is an interminable chain of longing. (Location 915)
Imagine eating an apple. If you do so paying very little attention to the sight of it, the feel, the smell and the taste, then eating the apple isn’t likely to be a fulfilling experience. Becoming aware of a mild discontent, you’re likely to blame the apple for being boring and commonplace. It’s easy to miss the fact that the quality of your attention played a major role in your dissatisfaction. (Location 920)
Learning to deepen our concentration allows us to look at the world with quiet eyes. We don’t need to reach out and grab ever more exotic or forbidden fruit. We develop calm and tranquility—and the calmer we get, the more at home we feel with our body and mind, with life as it is. (Location 938)
The point of meditation is not to annihilate thoughts; obviously there are plenty of times in life when thinking is called for—vital, in fact, to our survival. What we hope to learn is the difference between thinking and being lost in thought. We don’t want to stop our thoughts but to change our relationship with them—to be more present and aware when we’re thinking. If we’re aware of what we’re thinking, if we see clearly what’s going on in our minds, then we can choose whether and how to act on our thoughts. (Location 973)
Thoughts moving through your mind are like clouds moving across the sky. They are not the sky, and the sky remains unchanged by them. The way to be with them is just to watch them go by. That’s not generally how we experience our thoughts, but that’s what you’re working toward. (Location 981)
Meditation is a microcosm, a model, and a mirror. The skills we practice when we sit are transferable to the rest of our lives. In Week One we used the tool of concentration to steady and focus the mind. Following the breath, we became aware of thoughts, feelings, and sensations. We noted them and let them go without getting swept away by them, without dodging them or ignoring them (as we might normally have done in our busy daily lives), and without berating ourselves for having them. (Location 1076)
DEVELOPING OUR CONCENTRATION helps us steady our attention. The next skill we’ll develop, mindfulness, helps us to free our attention from burdens we may not even know we’re hauling around. (Location 1122)
How many times has an attempt to dodge pain made us miss the sweet parts of bittersweet—the chance to grow in response to a challenge, to help others or accept help from others? How many pleasures escape our notice because we think we need big, dramatic sensations to feel alive? Mindfulness can allow us to experience fully the moment in front of us—what Thoreau calls “the bloom of the present”—and to wake up from neutral so we don’t miss the small, rich moments that add up to a dimensional life. (Location 1401)
Mindfulness isn’t difficult; we just need to remember to do it. (Location 1466)
Often people think, I don’t have the right kind of mindfulness, the right level of concentration. Progress is not about levels; it’s about frequency. If we can remember to be mindful, if we can add more moments of mindfulness, that makes all the difference. Countless times a day we lose mindfulness and become lost in reaction or disconnected from what is happening. But the moment we recognize that we’ve lost mindfulness, we have already regained it; that recognition is its essence. We can begin again. (Location 1472)
I’VE HEARD SOME WONDERFUL EXPLANATIONS of mindfulness. Sylvia Boorstein, a writer and teacher, calls it “awake attention to what is happening inside and outside so we can respond from a place of wisdom.” The Vietnamese Zen teacher and poet Thich Nhat Hanh says, “I like to define mindfulness as the energy that helps us to be there one hundred percent; the energy of our true presence.” (Location 1479)
core group of unhealthy human tendencies that are obstacles to happiness. They’re the states of mind that distract us in meditation practice, and trip us up in the rest of our lives. Broadly speaking, they are: desire, aversion, sloth, restlessness, and doubt. (Location 1551)
You may recognize that the thoughts and emotions that come up in this week’s meditations are part of recurring patterns—that you’re hearing a lot of what I call old tapes, the familiar, habitual mental soundtrack I mentioned in the introduction. It’s helpful to acknowledge these tapes of ours, perhaps even to good-naturedly name them: Oh, (Location 1752)
During the meditation about a difficult situation, as I pictured that day, I realized how familiar that ‘one false move and I’m doomed’ feeling is. I don’t know yet why I play that tape—but at least now I know it happens.” (Location 1765)
The fourth-century Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu told this story: There was a man so displeased by the sight of his own shadow and footsteps that he determined to get rid of both by running away from them. But every time he put down his foot, there was another step, and his shadow kept up with him without the slightest difficulty. He thought he must not be running fast enough. So he ran faster and faster and faster, without stopping, until he finally dropped dead of exhaustion. He failed to realize that if he merely stepped into the shade, his shadow would vanish, and if he sat down and stayed still, there would be no more footsteps. (Location 1777)
Practicing mindfulness meditation is making the choice to be still—to step into the quiet shade instead of running away from difficult thoughts and feelings. We sometimes call meditation non-doing. Instead of being swept away by our usual conditioned reactions, we’re quiet and watchful, fully present with what is, touching it deeply, being touched by it, and seeing what is happening in the simplest and most direct fashion possible. (Location 1782)
And being mindful of the moment doesn’t mean that we give up savoring memories or setting goals. I like to quote Thich Nhat Hanh: “To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future,” he says. “The idea is simply not to allow yourself to get lost in regrets about the past or worries about the future. If you are firmly grounded in the present moment, the past can be an object of inquiry, the object of your mindfulness and concentration. You can attain many insights by looking into the past. But you are still grounded in the present moment.” (Location 1880)
When we know our thoughts, we neither dodge them nor get lost in them. Instead, we can decide when and if we should act on them; we can better discern which actions will lead to happiness and which to suffering. Meditation allows us to see and accept ourselves as we are in the moment—sometimes hot-tempered and sometimes mellow, sometimes cowardly and sometimes strong, sometimes ashamed and sometimes proud, sometimes confused and sometimes clear. (Location 1947)
The customary phrases are usually variations on May I Be Safe (or May I Be Free from Danger), May I Be Happy, May I Be Healthy, May I Live with Ease—may daily life not be a struggle. (Location 2047)
If we’re in the habit of seeing only the negative in ourselves and missing the positive, we can experiment with turning our attention to the goodness within us. If we’re in the habit of ignoring the humanity of strangers or people we don’t know well, we can experiment with being open and aware, taking an interest, connecting. If we’re in the habit of not really listening while conversing, we can experiment with being more fully present with the next person we speak to. If we’re in the habit of classifying and dismissing people based on what we think we know about them, we can experiment with listening with fresh ears, giving our full attention. If we’re wholehearted, open, interested, we may find that people surprise us. (Location 2360)
Remember that we don’t meditate to get better at meditating; we meditate to get better at life. (Location 2542)
