Session Details - March 7th, 2016 - Discussion on Jon Kabat-Zinn's attitudes of mindfulness
The formal practices for this session were an open awareness followed by an imagery practice adapted from Paul Gilbert - finding your place of peace and contentment and your compassionate seat.
As mindfulness truly needs to swim and breathe in the virtuous and nurturing attitudes that Jon covers in his book 'Full Catastrophie Living' - we discussed them in relation to our practice and our lives.
The attitudes of; non-judgement, patience, beginner's mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance and letting-go. We all agreed that these are ongoing practices, alignments of the heart more so than destinations.
"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploration will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." -T.S. Elliot
1. Non – Judgement - Paying close attention to your moment to moment experience while, as best you can, not getting caught up in opinions, comparisons, likes and dislikes. Judgements lead to separation – easing off judgement leads to acceptance / connections. This kind of view point allows for seeing things more clearly for what they are, it can create more space.
2. Patience - Patience is one of the greatest forms of wisdom. It can bring acceptance and a sense of things being more fluid as opposed to so solid. The power of patience is that it is the antidote to anger, a way to learn to love and care for whatever we meet along the journey of a life truly lived. By patience, we do not mean enduring—grin and bear it. In any situation, instead of reacting suddenly, we could chew it, smell it, look at it, and open ourselves to seeing what’s there. The opposite of patience is aggression— the desire to jump and move, to push against our lives, to try to fill up space. The journey of patience involves relaxing, opening to what’s happening, experiencing a sense of wonder.
3. Beginner’s Mind - A mind that is willing to see everything – as if for the first time. Practicing this can bring awe and wonder back into our lives, with little ‘ordinary’ things having the potential for being extraordinary! Freedom comes when we become familiar with own habitual thoughts, opinions and reactions – from this point we can then truly choose to take a fresh gaze, as the words below suggest.
4. Trust / faith - Trust is a perfect antidote to fear, developing a basic trust in yourself and your feelings is a key part of meditation practice. No one else has your mind / body / history of experiences etc. that has led you to this point. Why not start honouring your feelings and being your own best authority on your life.
5. Non-Striving - In mindfulness meditation the best way to achieve your goals is to back off from trying and striving and instead focus on allowing and letting be. Committing to paying kindly and patient attention to each moment, so with practice the moving towards goals becomes more of an unfolding that you are inviting to happen through acceptance, trusting and patience.
6. Acceptance - Seeing things as they actually are in the moment, often this clear seeing is reached only after we have gone through very emotion filled periods of denial and anger. These stages are natural movements in the process of moving to acceptance. However a journey of a thousand miles starts with just one step, so starting with the small and trusting in the ripple effect within life.
7. Letting Go - In meditation practice we intentionally put aside that natural tendency to elevate some aspects and reject others; instead we work at equanimity with observing from moment to moment, the natural flow of all things in transition. We all practice this ‘letting go’ every night when we go to sleep. Another example is the way we gracefully accept the uncertainty of the weather. We can no sooner control the weather than we can many of our life events, we have let go of control and certainty and instead trust in the universal law of all things being in transition.
As well as these 7 attitudes there are other qualities that naturally arise from them; non-harming, generosity, gratitude, forgiveness, kindness, compassion, gentleness, joy and equanimity.
