When we welcome mindful practices like yoga and meditation into our lives, we learn about the myriad benefits they can bring. We might feel them physically: less pain, more energy, softness, strength. We might feel them on a mental or emotional level: less stress and anxiety, greater ease and calm. Pay attention to the present moment, and all of these benefits can unfold for us. It sounds so simple, and yet I am often reminded that ‘simple’ does not make it ‘easy’.
When we practice mindfulness, we seek to pay attention to the present moment in an open and receptive way, without judgment or attachment. However, as human beings we unconsciously form judgments about all that we experience – good, bad, pleasant, unpleasant, happy, sad, the list goes on. Mindfulness does not stop the judgments altogether, but it makes us aware of them when they arise, and more importantly, it teaches us to release our attachment to those judgments; we learn to accept what arises just as it is without attaching a story to it, without getting carried away from the present moment in that story. Again, this sounds simple enough on the surface, but learning to release our attachment to the narratives we create can be very challenging, especially when those narratives come from deep-seated places and experiences within us.
When our attention rests fully in the present, we are witness to all that arises in that moment. For example, when we attend to sensation in the body, we begin to notice that sensations ebb and flow moment by moment – an itchiness here, a tingling there, warmth on my back, coldness in my feet. When we attend to the breath we might notice that inhales and exhales differ in length and breadth and depth, and the breath moves differently in different areas of the body. When we attend to our thoughts we might notice more busyness some days than others, or that certain thoughts come back again and again, and others seem to appear out of nowhere. As we deepen our practice of mindfulness, we notice more and more about each moment’s experience, and we cultivate the ability to do so with less and less attachment.
In the Buddhist tradition, it is said that the root of all suffering is attachment. We are attached to the desire to have (craving what is good, pleasant, happy) and the desire to not have (aversion to what is bad, unpleasant, sad). We get attached to our judgments and perceptions of people and places and things. When something arises in our experience, two things can happen: we can react automatically based on these preconceived notions that we have developed over our lifetime, or we can respond from a different place, a place that is open and receptive, a place of compassion and equanimity. If we respond from this place, we can view the experience through a different lens and observe its nuances without those old judgments colouring our perception and causing us suffering.
When we sit down to meditate and we open our awareness to the changing experience of each moment, at some point we will inevitably be confronted by the suffering of our judgments and attachments. We attend to the sensations in our body and a sharp pain arises. Most of us would naturally feel an aversion to the pain; we might also attach a unique story to this particular pain – a story about an injury or illness, a story about something stressful, a story that makes us feel fearful of this pain. There is a Buddhist parable about two arrows, and the first arrow is this initial sharp pain. After we have been struck by this first arrow, would we intentionally shoot ourselves with a second arrow? Of course not – and yet we do this through our unconscious reaction to the pain and our attachment to the story we create around it. It is this reaction that is the second arrow of suffering, and while we cannot always control the first arrow, we can definitely work on stopping the second one – or at least reduce its impact.
The first arrow could appear in our practice as a physical sensation, as a mental or emotional sensation, or perhaps as something we perceive as energetic or spiritual. We practice mindfulness so that we can cultivate resources like compassion, lovingkindness, acceptance, and equanimity. We often think of directing these resources to our loved ones and those in the world around us, but it is vitally important that we also direct them towards ourselves. When the first arrow strikes, we call upon these resources to help us respond consciously in a balanced way. We feel that sharp pain – or deep loss, betrayal, anxiety, humiliation – and we reach into our heart and tap into our compassion and lovingkindness. We sit with the pain and we accept it as part of this moment’s experience. We resist the stories that want to attach themselves to the pain and carry us away from the experience of it.
Mindfulness is not an easy practice when we start to peel back the layers of our experience, but it is one that is full of rewards and enduring benefits. Mindfulness helps us come home to ourselves, to create a place within us that is warm and welcoming and compassionate and accepting of all the many facets of who we are. Indian spiritual leader Osho reminded us: “Drop the idea of becoming someone because you are already a masterpiece. You cannot be improved. You have only to come to it, to know it, to realise it.” Mindfulness helps us find our way to this realisation, recognising our innate wisdom and beauty and letting it guide us in the way we treat ourselves, others, and the world around us.
In Canada, today is a day of giving thanks for all of the blessings in our life. We have so much to be grateful for on any given day, even in times of challenge and duress. I am deeply grateful to all of you for your kindness and support, and as a gift on this day of Thanksgiving, I offer you a new meditation called 
Each of us has the right, the possibility to invent ourselves daily. If a person does not invent herself, she will be invented. Be bodacious enough to invent yourself. ~Maya Angelou
It’s easy to get so caught up in the day-to-day challenges of our life that we forget to open our eyes to the myriad gifts that surround us. It’s easy to let our attention become so sharply focused on the future and what we want to acquire, achieve, accomplish, that we neglect to look in the periphery of our present and acknowledge what we already have. At any given time on our path we could be standing triumphantly on a peak, mired in a deep valley, or walking steadily somewhere in between. No matter where we find ourselves, whether the path seems clear or hazy, it is exactly the right time to practice gratitude.
The present moment is a gift. Unfortunately, it is one we often neglect as our thoughts rush headlong into the future, planning and worrying, or they get mired in the past, reliving and regretting. When we allow ourselves to connect fully to the present moment, something magical happens – we open ourselves to its possibilities. Our kind attention gives us new eyes through which to experience the world around us and we awaken to all that moment has to offer.
mushrooms of all shapes and sizes were peering out from fallen limbs and leaves. The forest floor was alive with these little gems, and had I been hurrying along lost in thought, I would have missed their marvelous show.
This was the sublime view from my meditation cushion this morning. I am on holiday, so my ‘cushion’ was a rolled towel set upon the rocks by the lake. Meditation doesn’t require any special tools or circumstances – all that is required is a willingness to show up and explore the present moment, with an open mind and a compassionate heart. I was serenaded by birdsong, felt the cool morning air on my skin and the texture of the rocks beneath my seat – such a simple yet beautiful way to begin the day with mindful awareness.
Sitting on the streetcar recently I felt a tightening in my stomach. I breathed into the sensation and recognised it immediately – anxiety. I sat with the sensation, stayed connected to my breath, allowed myself to simply be with the anxiety without attachment or mental drama carrying me away. I attuned to the sensation with openness and curiosity and my attention revealed its source: an Alice in Wonderland feeling I have experienced several times before.