Mindfulness

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moment after moment. For many of us, emotional life is an area of difficulty.

It may be that painful feelings are frequently present—grief, shame, fear,

anger. Or it may be that we have an uneasy awareness of the power of emotions,

and so do our best to minimize their presence in our lives in general. Or we

may feel that we have to follow every pull of emotion, and find ourselves

exhausted from being dragged around. The Buddha gave great importance to

bringing mindfulness to feelings. In his teaching on the practice of

mindfulness he identified four foundations—the body, feelings, mind-states, and

mind-objects. "Feelings" here has a special meaning. It refers to the feeling

tone that accompanies every sense experience, including mental events. These

feeling tones are of three kinds—pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

Within himself, the individual can get fulfillment. The within is accessible

always; it is ever responsible. There is pain only so long as attachment for

outer forms remains. Ultimate relief from pain can come only with the loss of

ego, the neutralisation of that which reacts to something as pain and something

else as pleasure, whose memory, whose conditioning, helps to recognise the

dualities of joy and grief. - Baba The special importance of the feeling

tones is how they condition our mind-states, which include emotions and

thoughts. For instance, if the feeling tone is unpleasant, it is very easy for

us to be carried off into feeling annoyed, angry, or rageful—feeling some form

of hatred and aversion for whatever is connected (or even unconnected) with that

unpleasant feeling. If a pleasant feeling tone comes up, it is fertile ground

for the greedy, grasping mind that wants the pleasant feeling to continue and

to increase. If the feeling tone is neutral, our tendency is to tune out the

experience, or be confused by it, or do something to change it into pleasant or

unpleasant, which we can then react to in a more familiar way. Learn to

let all the conflicts spawned by the mind play themselves out, and cancel each

other out. Be the witness to the holocaust. The ultimate solution to the

conflict is not decision or even choice, but passive being. Dare to remain

inconclusive. See the endless quandaries of the mind as a divine leela, God's

sport, as the natural

function of the bundle of desires called mind. Do not believe in mind; do not

rally to its assertions and appetites. Watch the mind from a distance; do not

get involved in its tumblings and turnings. Then everything becomes

insignificant. When everything recedes into meaninglessness, you are in the

hub, in equanimity. - Baba When we bring mindfulness to feelings and

emotions, we bring awareness to the flow of experience, without being carried

away by it, without trying to force it to be different, without trying to

escape from it. Because of our long habit of running toward the pleasant and

running away from the unpleasant, and fuzzing out on the neutral, this is a

radical practice, and it requires both courage and stability. Strong emotions,

particularly painful ones, can seem unbearable to simply be with. But the

practice of mindfulness can help us see that we don't need to be frightened by

powerful emotions, that they are only one aspect of who we are, that they are

constantly changing, and that we have the capacity to experience emotions

without being overwhelmed by them. When our mindfulness is strong enough, it

can safely hold even very powerful emotions. To experience this is enormously

liberating—to stay present, aware, and non-interfering as an emotion arises,

peaks, and then quiets down. - Michael O'Neal It is your reaction to

restlessness that is bad, not the restlessness itself. Restlessness is only the

rise and fall of a wave on the ocean that you are. Nothing matters, so long as

the depths are secure. Success is not important: failure does not matter. The

river of eternity is flowing ever into the ocean of the Supreme Will. - Baba

When I was a child my family would go every summer to Fenwick Island, a beach

resort off the coast of Delaware. There my brother and I would happily play for

days in the golden sand and the shining waves. When I was very young my father

taught me the proper way to meet the waves. "Put your body in this shape and

your arms like this," he said, showing me how to put my hands together and make

a little bow facing the waves, so I wouldn't be knocked down and could enter the

waves smoothly. "Don't flinch — just dive right in," he called after me, as a

really huge wave appeared. Many years later Dainin Katagiri

Roshi gave me instructions for sitting meditation and for meeting the waves of

my life. Make a stable base; be upright, open, and balanced; don't lean; don't

move; don't meddle with your thoughts; just be present with things as they are.

"Don't lean" means not to cling to our preferences; "don't move" means to

stay with what's happening, even if it's very very hard. If we try to stop the

wave, we will suffer. If we meet the wave in the right posture of body and

mind, our suffering will be alleviated. The wave is not separate from the

ocean, and we, the wave, and the ocean, are all part of the great ocean of

being, arising and falling in each moment, never separate. - Joen Snyder

O'Neal Sourced from: http://www.oceandharma.org/DharmaTalks.htm

http://www.saibaba.ws/articles1/aconversationwithsaibaba.htm