Mindfulness of thoughts.

" It is remarkable how liberating it feels to be able to see that your thoughts are just thoughts and they are not 'you' or 'reality' For instance, if you have the thought that you have to get a certain number of things done today and you don't recognize it as a thought but act as if it's 'the truth', then you have created a reality in that moment in which you really believe that those things must be done today"

So writes Jon Kabat-Zinn in Full Catastrophe Living"

For me this understanding was also really liberating, Thoughts have no arms and legs, they cannot hold me, the holding comes from this believing that my thoughts represent reality or 'the truth' as Jon kabat-Zinn writes. When I know that my thoughts are just thoughts, I can decide whether to act on them or not.

My thoughts are conditioned, they arise from my childhood, my upbringing, my culture and so on, for someone else other thoughts arise due to other conditions. If I can sit with some understanding of this I am no longer imprisoned by my thoughts.

Working with distractions in meditation

One of the things we find out quite quickly once we start meditating is just how many distractions there seem to be around us. Here I'm talking about external distractions, there are plenty of internal ones too, which I'll talk about on later posts.

Living in urban areas brings all sorts of noise, the sound of traffic being perhaps the most common, whether it's the continuous drone of traffic or the screech of brakes, the sound of sirens or the revving of engines. We are unlikely to find ourselves in situations where there are no cars or traffic, so what is to done when we sit to meditate? The practice is to just be with whatever sound it is we hear, this just being is just being with sound itself. Not even identifying the source of the sound if possible.

In my experience if I can just be aware, a bare awareness of sound from the streets, if I don't put my energy towards identifying the sounds they settle into the background of my experience.
If on the other hand I start to identify the sound of the cars, start thinking for example, who is it who is obviously breaking the speed limit tearing up this residential street! my mind is immediately fastening on the sound, making judgements, which may or may not be true, and I am preoccupied long after the car has gone and my meditation suffers.

So if we can practice sitting amid the various sounds of the world around us, with a bare awareness, hearing sounds as just sounds, letting the noise drift in and out of our experience without getting worked up about it, we will be able to deepen and enrich our meditation.

What is meditation?

One of the things I'd like to do on this blog is share some of my thoughts and experiences of meditation and spiritual practice in general.

This question, what is meditation? is one I reflect on quite a lot. The general definition I tend to refer myself to when I ask this question, is meditation as the continuous production of positive mental states. However this is only the start of an investigation into the nature of meditation, but what I take from it is that meditation is not something that you just do on the cushions, or chair, but is something that is part of everyday life.

If we think of positive mental states, we probably think of things like happiness, kindness, sympathy, compassion, delight, and so on. Being able to remain in positive mental states all the time is quite something, and one of the dangers of this definition is that of suddenly deciding that most of our mental states, not being positive, are somehow wrong and to be disowned.

However, meditation is also about being in the present moment, with whatever it is we are experiencing. In practice we start to see the patterns to our thoughts, feelings and emotions as they arise and pass away again. If we can begin to see that when we put our focus and mental energy into our thoughts they stay with us and increase, and if we just allow our thoughts to pass through our minds like clouds in the sky, they disappear over the horizon of our awareness, we are laying the ground for a sense of equanimity and positivity.