For a year, I took upon myself an intention to stop hurrying. This didn’t mean that I couldn’t move quickly, but I discovered how much hurrying is a state of mind.

Do we find ourselves in that state of mind where we’re leaning forward into the next moment, into the next thing we need to do? Can we, instead, move as needed, slowly or quickly, without being hostage to that state of mind? Can we begin to notice the beginnings and endings in our day, rather than accumulating too much unfinished business? 

Things do have endings, but it doesn’t mean that they’re completed or finished. When we end a telephone call, an activity, a conversation, or something that we’re doing, we tend to then turn our attention towards something else. Can we pause in those moments to know those endings, rather than carrying one activity into the next moment where it is not needed? 

Whatever we practice, we get better at, whether it’s the skillful or the unskillful.

Try to give yourself moments in the day to connect with spaciousness. To step outside, to see the space around the trees, to look at the sky at night, to calm the body, to feel your feet touch the ground. Can you attend wholeheartedly to the meal that needs to be cooked? To the activity of walking? 

We are always practicing something in our lives. If we’re not practicing calm abiding, it is highly possible that we are practicing agitation, restlessness, craving, or ill will. It is clear in the development of this path that we need to be aware of what we are practicing in any moment. Because whatever we practice, we get better at, whether it’s the skillful or the unskillful. 

Can we be comfortable with non-doing? 

We can, at times, find refuge or a sense of meaning, identity, and purpose in always being engaged in doing. But there may be moments in our day when we simply are resting in non-doing and connected to the mind body of this moment, still and present without any agenda or any plan.

Can we appreciate the taste of collectedness, of samadhi, in our bodies and minds? The taste of calmness and stillness? Can we make peace with the unarguables: that change is part of all of our lives? It’s not emotionally neutral. At times we welcome it and at times we fear it. 

Can we make peace with the reality that we will never arrange the conditions of our lives where there is none of the difficult or unpleasant? This is woven into our being as a human: We will have losses and gains, we will age, we will sicken and we will die, and we will lose things. Can we make peace with this? Can we make peace with stepping out of the agenda of becoming a perfect self? When we can make peace with the unarguables, much as the agitation of our lives begins to calm. 

Samadhi may be a choice. Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, said, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our power to choose our response. In our power to choose, lies our growth and our freedom.” 

The well-collected heart knows how to make that space and knows how to make wise choices about what we practice and what we cultivate in any moment. 

It’s also about what we don’t practice and what we don’t cultivate. This is a journey, as the  Buddha described it, of swimming against the tide—swimming against the tide of the norms in our culture that lead to unskillfulness, over-busyness, or delusion. It is very often swimming against the tide of many of our own habit patterns of agitation. Then we find the coolness and the stillness of the waters. We discover a mind and heart that delights in calm abiding, stillness, and collectedness. We meet and develop a mind that is a friend. 

⧫

Excerpted from Christina Feldman’s Tricycle Meditation Month Video “Samadhi as a Life Practice”. Watch the full video here and learn more about Meditation Month here.

The post Hurrying Is a State of Mind appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Every morning after I wash up, I sink into my meditation cushion and turn my attention toward the breath, breathing in, breathing out. But as I settle into my practice, my thoughts almost immediately turn toward whatever is plaguing my life. In times of underemployment, I count sent cover letters and imagine a rosy image of economic security. When I am dating someone, I circle around previous ghostings and question the right approach with my current intrigue. Past thought, future thought, remember the breath, repeat—a practice full of clinging and grasping. 

Initially, I perceived my insatiable state as a hindrance of sense desire. The five hindrances—sense desire, ill will, dullness, restlessness, and doubt—are states of mind that hinder our clear-seeing, our experience of freedom, and our emotional stability. My mind was consumed with trying to get what I want, constantly calculating the right move to reach my desired outcome or yearning for a particular experience. Being in sense desire is to be with longing, the urges of the body and the covetousness of an object. It is to be constrained by a mind governed by compulsion in search of completion and fulfillment. The Buddha compared sensory desire to a pool of water mixed with many colors. 

Amongst the various shades of my mind were ceaseless inquiries: How do I find comfort? What am I not seeing in my relationship patterns? If I find the ‘right’ practice will it heal me? Despite years of asking questions, I rarely arrived at a satisfying conclusion. In my practice, I began to pull back and notice when my mind turned to question, and I realized that I had been misinterpreting the subtle textural differences of the hindrances. What I thought was sense desire was actually doubt. With sense desire the mind is pulled by the compulsion to be absorbed by pleasure, while doubt is characterized by questioning and interrogation.

With the hindrance of doubt, we are overcome with uncertainty. The mind can become obsessive in its pursuit of insight. I would catch myself circling around a problem  trying to figure it out, telling myself, If I just think about it the right way I will find the “right answer.” The Buddha compared the doubtful mind to a pool of water that is darkened by mud. 

Yet, questions themselves are not unskillful. There are positive lines of questioning, dhamma vicaya, which is a positive investigation that leads to wisdom and clarity. It is when we allow the mind to get mired in the ceaseless search for answers that we risk mental well-being. In fact, the Buddha would seemingly have us leave many questions unexamined. In the Buddha’s discourse “The Arrow of Birth, Aging, and Death”, the Venerable Maluhkyaputta approaches the Buddha declaring he will abandon his training if he does not learn whether the world is eternal, if the soul is one thing and the body another and whether or not a Tathagata exists after death: 

Maluhkyaputta, if there is the view ‘the world is eternal,’ the spiritual life cannot be lived; and if there is the view ‘the world is not eternal, ‘the spiritual life cannot be lived. Whether there is the view ‘the world is eternal’ or the view ‘the world is not eternal,’ there is birth, there is aging, there is death, there are sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and despair, the destruction of which I prescribe here and now.

—In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon, Bhikkhu Bodhi

The inclination to know rests deeply in my bones. The acquisition and holding of knowledge is a cloak that—if I’m not being mindful of—I can wrap myself in as a defense against actually being with my difficult feelings. However, the inevitability of feeling has a way of coming forward one way or another. Instead of searching for something to grasp, we can repeatedly turn the mind toward what is known: all things are of nature to change. Our only inheritance is impermanence and the truth that conditions will rise and fall. 

If samadhi is the gathering and collecting of attention, doubt is the dispersal and distribution of attention. When I stay in the questions of doubt that my mind proliferates, it is unbearable. When I allow the questions to rise and fall, I experience relief. In this way, the hindrance is the path. Our meditation practice is the perfect training ground to experience the immediacy of impermanence. We can experience each breath entering and exiting the lungs with objectivity. Our thoughts, feelings, and questions are objects too. They arise in the present moment, just like the breath, and then disperse into emptiness, just like the breath. By recognizing doubt as an object, I am removed from the identification with the confusion it would otherwise bring forward. Noticing the rise and fall, impermanence helps me to know that no matter how lost I may feel in a particular moment, that state will pass. Even the most intense moments of confusion, when a boulder of an experience sits heavy on my chest, is of the nature to change.

We all have a hindrance that weighs heavy on us. Our experiences of the hindrances are unique for each of us, as unique as our pattern of thinking, our relationships to feelings, and our relationship to our practice. The ability to use this discernment and remove the identification from the hindrance cultivates stability and emotional balance. After all, samadhi training is not an effort to shut everything out. We enter and exit states of samadhi as we come into contact with the living world, just as we experience all the hindrances. This is necessary. In the practice of looking directly at our hindrances, we can open a gateway toward samadhi, which provides relief from those muddy dwelling places of the mind.

The poet Cathy Park Hong writes, “being awake is not a singular revelation but a long-term commitment fueled by constant reevaluation.” I have found this to be true. Clear-seeing is not a constant state. We awaken continually. Cultivating lasting emotional stability requires a willingness to look and look again. My patterns are going to show up. And when they do, I can welcome them in. When I greet doubt as my best friend, I can ask her what she wants me to know when she inevitably arrives. In this way, my hindrance is not only my best friend, but my greatest teacher.

The post Doubt Is My Best Friend  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Resistance to meditating is familiar to all meditators. This is one of the main obstacles to practice. Usually, it manifests most strongly when we are moving toward the cushion. Suddenly, I may realize that I have forgotten to take out the trash. It’s Thursday and the garbage must go out. I decide to do that first, and while taking out the trash, I notice that the garden is really dry, and it is supposed to be a hot day! I try to turn the water on, but I can’t remember how to override the automatic irrigation system. So I place a call to the irrigation expert, and so on, until pretty soon the 45 minutes I had set aside for meditation are gone. I console myself that I can meditate tomorrow. Of course, some chores are important and must be taken care of, but we need to keep our meditation time nonnegotiable.

Avoiding or resisting spiritual practice arises for many reasons, but there are common threads. We might feel intimidated by the idea of meditation, thinking, My mind is too busy; I will never be able to do this. One part of us might be determined to meditate, while another part may feel: No way, I might lose my incentive if I simply let go and sit. If I’m meditating, I’m not getting anything done. Or we might wonder, Is it really okay to take time for myself? These types of thoughts are often semiconscious. Many times we don’t even know why a part of us doesn’t want to meditate. Underneath these thoughts and feelings is often fear of some kind. Usually people need to exert extra willpower in order to just start meditating. One lama I know says, “You might as well just put out two cushions for your meditation sessions—one for you and one for your resistance. It will accompany you a lot of the time.” That is, it’s important to acknowledge any resistance: Give it some space, and move on with the meditation.

As our meditation becomes more of a daily habit, new patterns form. If we treat our daily meditation as non-negotiable, like brushing our teeth, this can help—the same way a child might resist going to school until she realizes school is unavoidable, and so she settles down and accepts going every day. Meditating with others once a week or more is also helpful. Somehow, if we have a schedule to meditate with others, the ego often relaxes into the program. In a group, the combined intention of the meditators supports each individual to do it. Being accountable to our group, even if we only meet with them once a week, can help sustain our commitment to meditate.

Related: Why Can’t I Get to the Cushion?

Another option is to take some time off the cushion to inquire into the resistance. Sit quietly and ask yourself, What is coming up for me? Without trying to analyze it, simply listen carefully to what answer pops up. Keep questioning. Ask yourself, Tell me more. Don’t reject any response. Just listen and keep inquiring. Responses that arise from the subconscious often don’t make sense initially, but in my experience, if we keep following the threads without judgment, it all eventually becomes clear. An important point is to meet yourself with kindness, be present with your human self, just like you would be patient and kind with a small child you care about. Criticizing yourself simply adds to the difficulty.

We may think, These instructions are too nebulous, too abstract, and besides, I don’t know how to let go! The instructions are abstract because they are trying to point to something that we need to discover for ourselves. Letting go is a skill that we need to develop. First, we can catch the times when we let go naturally, like when we drop onto the couch after a hard day at the office, when we reach our hiking destination and take a break, or when we lounge on our towel at the beach. If we consciously stay present during these experiences, we can see that we do know how to let go, but we need to cultivate this ability so that we can employ it anytime.

Another issue that often arises more specifically with this step is that the ego can feel afraid of disintegrating or dissolving. The ego has worked hard since early childhood to create a strategic operating structure. It can feel threatening to the ego to engage in spiritual practice. If we treat ourselves with kindness, it’s easier for the ego to feel comfortable and learn to relax with the process. Nothing bad is going to happen! We are not going to suddenly lose ourselves. or dissolve into nothingness. The ego eventually learns that it doesn’t have to be in charge all the time. It learns that it’s nice to have a break!

Related: Hang On to Your Ego

Trying to keep everything in its own compartment is another issue in our spiritual work that can come up. For example, we might have our spiritual work in its own box that doesn’t integrate with the rest of our life. Many times, clients have described to me a father who was abusive at home to his wife and children but who acted like a model citizen out in the world. People at their church and in the larger community thought he was wonderful. In different ways, we may also keep different parts of ourselves compartmentalized, so that we show a different face at church, at work, in the community, and at home. Resting in openness comes right up against this hypocrisy and compartmentalization. The ego is trying to do what’s best for us, but the ego lacks essential information. It formulated its strategies at a young age. The early experiences we have gone through develop our core beliefs, and then we operate on that basis. We need to be willing to bring awareness to ourselves, inquiring deeply into our operating system and what is underneath it. Over time we see our core beliefs, and when we see and understand their erroneous nature, we can release them. This is a process that takes time and commitment.

As we become more familiar with meditation, we can drop into a less triggered, less reactive, more skillful way of being whenever we are upset. Our activity can become more potent through openness, unbiased intelligence, and love. We can see new possibilities. As we train on the cushion, our mind gets used to new ways of perceiving, new ways of being, and an increased presence.  As we integrate our meditation into daily life, it increasingly manifests in our moment-to-moment flow of experience and is carried into the whole of our lives. We act with more love, compassion, and wisdom.

♦

Excerpted from the book Love on Every Breath. Copyright © 2019 by Lama Palden Drolma. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.

[This article was first published in 2019]

The post Tips for the Procrastinator Practitioner appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Tranquility is both a gift of meditation practice and a support for deepening the practice. As a gift, it can be healing and confidence-producing. As a support, it provides a sense of well-being that nourishes concentration and mental harmony. Meditative tranquility is a compelling state that can involve feelings of peace, calm, serenity, contentment, and deep rest. In the body, tranquility is like a deep, clear lake with a wide, still surface. In the mind, it’s like the soft, quiet, fresh air over the lake at dawn.

Tranquility supports mindfulness, and in turn mindfulness is a support for tranquility. As agitation decreases with greater tranquility, mindfulness can become more stable and insightful. And as mindfulness recognizes agitation with a clear, non-conflictive awareness, tranquility grows.

While tranquility can be conducive to sleepiness, well-developed tranquility is an invigorated state similar to waking up refreshed from a good nap. Sometimes partial tranquility slides into complacency, but full tranquility comes with an alert presence. And while the idea of tranquility can seem boring to those unfamiliar with it, in reality it is quite engaging for those who experience it.

In the Buddha’s teachings, tranquility is a supportive condition for happiness that can be characterized as “peaceful happiness.” In meditation, the state of tranquility provides contentment and peace that are the basis for a deep and sublime sense of well-being. This is a happiness that’s not possible when the mind is restless or preoccupied. Tranquility removes the excitement from joy so joy can transform itself into a more satisfying state of happiness.

Tranquility is born when agitation calms down, when conflict is put to rest, and when desires are reduced. Relaxing the body is a primary practice for cultivating tranquility. We can soften the face, release the shoulders, and loosen any tension in the belly. We can also let go of thoughts and relax the “thinking muscle,” letting go of any physical tension, pressure, or agitation associated with thinking. As the body relaxes, anxiety abates. As thinking quiets down, agitation decreases.

The Buddha said that tranquility is the nourishment for tranquility. This can be translated into the idea that tranquility is fostered by paying attention to tranquility, that peace grows by noticing what is peaceful, and that relaxation expands by appreciating relaxation. Being aware of even the smallest amount of tranquility, peace, or relaxation can foster more of these same states. Observing them in others can evoke them in ourselves. Perceiving the tranquility and peace of particular places can suffuse the body with these qualities. Visiting locations with strong atmospheres of tranquility can be medicine for releasing tensions and preoccupations.

In addition to meditation, other supports for tranquility are spending time alone or in nature. Being around calm people also helps. Avoiding multitasking by doing just one thing at a time reduces agitation; doing one thing at a time in an unhurried and undistracted manner can be deeply calming. For some people, talking less or talking more slowly promotes relaxation.

An axiom about tranquility is, “If you need wisdom, try tranquility first.” The more we value being wise in our life, the more valuable it is to be tranquil. With the support of tranquility, what is wise will often be obvious and simple. This is especially true in meditation; everyone has the ability to be wise in meditation provided we are not too agitated to recognize it.

While tranquility is not the ultimate purpose of Buddhist meditation, it is an important part of the path to liberation, which is the ultimate purpose. Tranquility sets the stage for the final stages on the path to liberation. It is considered a factor of awakening that prepares the ground for deep concentration and equanimity. It also prepares the mind for liberation by doing some of the initial work of letting go of what keeps the mind agitated. Becoming tranquil by relaxing tension, quieting agitation, and letting go of discursive thinking is exercising the mind’s capacity to release its attachments. When that capacity is mature, the mind can let go fully. This ultimate letting go comes with a profound sense of peace and happiness that is the greatest fruit of tranquility.

♦

This teaching was originally published on the Insight Meditation Center’s blog.

The post A Satisfying State of Happiness appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Letting go is an important practice in everyday life, as well as on the path of liberation. Daily life provides innumerable small and large occasions for letting go of plans, desires, preferences, and opinions. It can be as simple as when the weather changes, and we abandon plans we had for the day. Or it can be as complex as deciding what to sacrifice, when pulled between the needs of family, friends, career, community, or spiritual practice. Daily life provides many situations where letting go is appropriate, or even required. Learning how to do so skillfully is essential to a happy life.

Buddhist practice leads to a letting go that is more demanding than what ordinary life usually requires. Beyond relinquishing particular desires and opinions, we practice letting go of the underlying compulsion to cling to desires and opinions. The liberation of Buddhism is not just letting go of outdated and inaccurate self-concepts; it also involves giving up a core conceit that causes us to cling to ideas of who we are or aren’t. Liberation is releasing the deepest attachments we have.

The practice of letting go is often mistrusted. One good reason for this mistrust is because, without wisdom, it is easy to let go of the wrong things; for example, when we let go of such healthy pursuits as exercising or eating well, instead of our clinging to those pursuits. Another reason for mistrust, is that letting go, or renunciation, can suggest deprivation, weakness, and personal diminishment if we think we have to abandon our views and wishes in favor of the views and wishes of others.

It is possible to let go either of a thing or of the grasping we have to that thing. In some circumstances, it is appropriate to give something up. In others, it is more important to let go of the grasping. When someone is addicted to alcohol, it is necessary to renounce alcohol. However, when someone is clinging to the past, it is not the past that needs to be abandoned, rather it is the clinging. If the past is rejected, it can’t be a source of understanding. When there is no clinging to it, it is easier to learn the lessons the past provides.

At times, it is important to understand the shortcomings of what we are clinging to before we are able to let go. This may require investigation into the nature of what we are holding on to. For example, many people have found it easier to let go of arrogance when they see clearly the effect it has on one’s relationships with others. When we see clearly what money can and can’t do for us, it can be easier to let go of the idea that money will give us a meaningful life.

Sometimes it is more important to understand the shortcomings of the grasping itself rather than the object of grasping. Grasping always hurts. It is the primary source of suffering. It limits how well we can see what is happening. When it is strong, clinging can cause us to lose touch with ourselves. It interferes with our ability to be flexible and creative and it can be a trigger for afflictive emotions.

By investigating both the grasping itself and the object of our grasping, it becomes possible to know which of these we need to let go of. If the object of grasping is harmful, then we let go of that. If the object of grasping is beneficial, then we can let go of the grasping so that what is beneficial remains. Helping a neighbor, caring for your own health and welfare, or enjoying nature can be done with or without clinging. It is accomplished much better without the clinging.

The Buddhist practice of letting go has two important sides that fit together like the front and back of one’s hand. The first side, which is the better known, is letting go of something. The second side is letting go into something. The two sides work together like letting go of the diving board while dropping into the pool, or giving up impatience and then relaxing into the resulting ease.

While letting go can be extremely beneficial, the practice can be even more significant when we also learn to let go into something valuable. From this side, letting go is more about what is gained than what is lost. When we let go of fear, it may also be possible to let go into a sense of safety or a sense of relaxation. Forsaking the need to be right or to have one’s opinions justified can allow a person to settle into a feeling of peace. Letting go of thoughts might allow us to open to a calmer mind. By letting go into something beneficial, it can be easier to let go of something harmful. At times, people don’t want to let go because they don’t see the alternative as better than what they are holding on to. When something is clearly gained by letting go, it can be easier to do so.

A wonderful result of letting go is to experience each moment as being enough, just as it is.

We can see the Buddhist emphasis on what is gained through letting go by how the tradition understands renunciation. While the English word implies giving something up, the Buddhist analogy for renunciation is to go out from a place that is confined and dusty into a wide-open, clear space. It is as if you have been in a one-room cabin with your relatives, snowed in for an entire winter. While you may love your relatives, what is gained when you open the door and get out into the spring probably feels exquisite.

One of the nice things about letting go into something is that it has less to do with willing something or creating something than it does with allowing or relaxing. Once we know how to swim, it can be relaxing to float by allowing the water to hold us up. Once we know how to have compassion, there may be times when we not only let go of ill-will but also let go into a sense of empathy. Letting go of fear, may then also be resting back into a sense of calm.

A wonderful result of letting go is to experience each moment as being enough, just as it is. It allows us to be present for our experience here and now with such clarity and freedom that this very moment stands out as something profound and significant. We can let go of the headlong rush into the future, as well as the various, imaginative ways we think, “I’m not enough” or “this moment is not good enough,” so we can discover a well-being and peace not dependent on what we want or believe.

A fruit of Buddhist practice is to have available a greater range of wholesome, beautiful, and meaningful inner states to let go into. In particular, one can come to know a pervasive peace, accessible through both letting go and letting go into. The full maturity of this peace is when we let go of our self as the person experiencing the peace. With no self, there is just peace.

♦

This teaching was originally published on the Insight Meditation Center’s blog. For an audio practice by Gil Fronsdal, listen to “The Joy of Letting Go.” 

This article was originally published on January 1, 2022. 

The post What We Gain When We Learn to Let Go appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Another driver cuts you off, and you feel a surge of rage. A coworker gets the promotion you think you deserve, and waves of jealousy wash over you. The pastry display in the grocery store beckons, and you sense your willpower dissolving. Anger. Impatience. Shock. Desire. Frustration. You spend your days bombarded by emotions.

These emotions are often negative—and if you act on them, they can derail you. You know: That email you shouldn’t have sent. The snappy retort you shouldn’t have verbalized. The black funk that permeates every experience and keeps you from feeling joy. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way. You can learn to recognize harmful emotions in the moment—and let them go.

Choosing the karma you create

Past karma shapes your experience of the world. It exists; there is not much you can do about it. Yet you are also constantly creating new karma, and that gives you a golden opportunity. With your reaction to each experience, you create the karma that will color your future. It is up to you whether this new karma is positive or negative. You simply have to pay attention at the right moment. Think of how karma operates as if it were a key ring. It seems solid; you can move your key seamlessly around the circle. Yet there is actually a start and an end to the key ring—and a gap. If you know the gap is there, and you have the skill, you can extricate your key from the ring. Similarly, earlier karma creates your experience of events. Your reaction, based on your experience, triggers new karma and a new cycle of creation and experience. You can allow that cycle to continue in an endless sequence. Or you can find the gap, gain the skill, and extricate yourself from the cycle, simultaneously building your compassion and enhancing your sense of inner ease.

The Buddhist tradition is rife with teachings: on compassion, on why we should avoid hatred and jealousy, and on the power of a positive outlook. These teachings are extraordinarily valuable. They clarify and deepen our understanding—and they inspire us. But teachings and their explanations require logic to parse. In the heat of an emotional exchange, you may not have the luxury of logic, because logic requires time and an unbiased mind. Pressure creates a crisis. You don’t have time to think, only to react. So you need a well-honed, quickly deployed skill, something that is short, easy to use, and effective. This is the Third Moment Method, a practical tool that in many ways embodies the core of Buddhist practice.

Understanding the three moments

Life is composed of a series of experiences, and each of these experiences can be broken into three moments.

The First Moment
SENSING
In the first moment, your sensory organs—your eyes, ears, nose—perceive some sort of input. This moment between, for instance, a sound reaching your ear and your ear perceiving it, is instantaneous. It is also effortless, because it is hardwired into your system. In this moment, if someone says “lemon,” you have heard the sound, but you haven’t yet recognized what that sound means.

The Second Moment
ARISING
In the second moment, you recognize the sound—or other sensation—and you have an instant, subconscious reaction, classifying it as good, bad, or neutral. This, too, is automatic, based on prior experience: memories and understanding stemming from your ingrained cultural beliefs, religious beliefs, and linguistic perceptions. It happens so quickly that you may even think it is part of the first moment. You have a physical manifestation of your thought as your body responds to positive, negative, or neutral input—although a “neutral” reaction usually leans slightly toward positive or negative.

Maybe someone is describing a juicy lemon they’ve just sliced. You connect the sound “lemon” to an idea stored in your memory. It evokes a shape, a color, a scent, a taste. Your memory invites an emotional reaction. You love lemons and your mouth salivates; you find lemons sour and you cringe.

The Third Moment
REACTING
In the third moment, you have the choice of accepting your memory’s emotion-tinged invitation or not.

Your reaction may be mental, verbal, or physical. If you have classified something as good, you are drawn to it, even though it may not be beneficial. If you have classified something as bad, you push it away, sometimes with more force than is appropriate or necessary. In either case, you may do a lot of damage that you will later need to try to undo.

Let’s think of “lemon” in a different context. What if your mechanic says that your brand-new car is a lemon? How would you feel? Furious? Foolish? Frustrated? What might you say to the person who advised you to buy it? The third moment provides you with the space to determine your response.

You have a choice about the kind of life you lead. You can let your environment dictate your experience, in which case, unless you solve all the problems of every person with whom you interact, you will always face some unhappiness. Or you can take control over your own experience of life. To me, this seems like a better path.

Practicing the Third Moment Method

The Third Moment Method helps you take this path. In it, you use the Third Moment not to react but to watch—in a very specific way.

At the very instant an emotion arises, pause. Notice the emotion you are experiencing. The timing is very important. You need to be focused and aware before your emotion connects with a thought and becomes solidified. You want to simply see the emotion for what it is.

By widening the gap between action and reaction, you can gain some distance from your automatic responses and also gain an opportunity to know your emotions.

You may be tempted to trace the source of your emotion; that is logical, but in this instance it is not helpful. Instead of focusing on who did what to whom, simply look into your emotion. Don’t do this as an observer, with duality between yourself and the emotion, as though it were external to you. Instead, watch your actual experience; try to feel it directly. Feel your emotion as if it were an inflated balloon, filling your insides. Don’t pay attention to the balloon itself; pay attention to what’s inside it. What does it feel like? No rationalizing. No reasoning. What is at the very core of the balloon? Just space. This is not relabeling your emotion as space. It is simply awareness that the emotion itself does not exist in the way we believe it does, as something fixed and solid. Over time, as that awareness grows, you will begin to feel ease, and maybe even joy.

By widening the gap between action and reaction, you can gain some distance from your automatic responses and also gain an opportunity to know your emotions. You can stop being ruled by these emotions and instead begin to rule your experience of life.

To really enjoy this freedom, though, you need to practice. If you can practice the Third Moment Method frequently and deeply enough, you can experience the unconditional joy that breeds lovingkindness and compassion.

Of course, in the heat of the moment, it can be difficult to remember a practice that is not yet ingrained. You can try practice drills—mentally creating scenarios that evoke strong emotions, then using the Third Moment Method to diffuse them. This will begin to create a mental muscle memory. However, in your mind you still know the experience isn’t real, so in many ways the effect is not real either. The best practice is real life.

Benefiting from the results

Remember: The Third Moment passes very quickly, and it is easy to miss. You find it in the instant between seeing a nasty email and ringing off a reply, hearing a criticism and retorting, seeing a gooey dessert and reaching for it. This is the time to stop and practice the Third Moment Method.

If you truly experience this once—if you really catch the moment—you will find that the Third Moment Method is not only easy but also something you will want to do often. So try to be conscious of your emotions, and seize every opportunity to practice.

If you do this, you will find that your mind is cooler, clearer, and less biased. You are more connected to the present moment. You are aware that your emotions are not reality. That, in turn, affects how you interpret your experiences. You may also find not only that you interact with the world more easily but also that your relationships are better—starting with your relationship with yourself.

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2017 issue of Tricycle magazine. 

The post The Power of the Third Moment appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In every moment in our lives, as we move through the world, we are flooded with a torrent of sensory impressions: sights, sounds, sensations, scents, taste, touch, and thoughts. Most of this we do not control and we’re asked to meet. 

An image that is used in the Buddhist tradition is of a house with five open windows and an open door. Through the open windows and the door flows this world of sensory impressions. And out from the open windows and the door flows our inner world of responses or reactions. What we learn to do is to place calm abiding and skillful intentions on the windowsills and the door sill of that house. We learn we can practice some restraint at the sense doors. 

If we truly wish to develop samadhi, or inner collectedness, this element of restraint is quite crucial. Not pursuing every sight, not hungering for more sights, more sounds, more sensations, and more stories. We learn to put down that hunger and practice some restraint at the sense doors. 

The Buddha speaks so much about the wisdom of guarding the sense doors. And this doesn’t mean defensiveness. It’s not about shutting out the world or trying to flee from the world. It’s about being aware of how we are present in the sense doors. Are we practicing craving or aversion? Are we practicing a mind that says, “More, more, more?” Or do we appreciate what a crucial point this is, of the meeting of our sense doors with the sensory world around us? We can learn to re-perceive with appreciation and sensitivity, to see, listen, and touch fully, and to be wholehearted in our interactions.

We can’t always choose what flows into the sense doors, but we have many choices about what flows out. 

Here is where the cultivation of a well-trained heart, a well-trained mind, and the cultivation of collectedness is deeply important. We can learn to respond with appreciation and sensitivity. To see fully, listen fully, and to touch fully. To be wholehearted in our interactions, with appreciation and care. 

The world simply doesn’t need more craving, agitation, or ill will. We realize that we are a conscious participant in how our world at the moment is being shaped. Samadhi is crucial in knowing what is happening within us—to know what to feed and what to fast. To know in all the moments of the flooding of the sense doors that we have the capacity to collect and gather ourselves and to be clear in our intentions.

The Buddha speaks of wise intention as not grasping at the sensory impression or the associations with it. With intentional samadhi, we have the choice to not build a narrative about what is seen, heard, or touched. We keep the front door open—receiving the world with calm abiding, sensitivity, and wise intention—but we also keep the back door open, allowing this world of sensory impression to flow through rather than to be clung to or grasped at. 

In the midst of a life that is filled with responsibilities, expectations, and doing, the cultivation of calm abiding and inner collectedness offers a way of living that is graceful, steady, and uncluttered.

Yes, cultivating samadhi in our lives is challenging, but it’s also deeply rewarding. We may need to experiment with changing some of the habits and familiar ways of living.

Do our lives need more simplicity? Are they too cluttered? Can we consider what is essential to our well-being? What is inessential? Can we learn to calm down some of the rhythms of our days to create space for stillness? Can we learn to bring more stillness into our narrative-building and the agitations we may encounter? Can we sit on the bus or in our car without having the radio on? Without the plan of arriving? Do we find ourselves too busy? 

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Excerpted from Christina Feldman’s Tricycle Meditation Month video “Samadhi as a Life Practice”. Watch the full video here and learn more about Meditation Month here.

The post Restraint at the Sense Doors appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

With samadhi, there is a space to investigate and understand Mara, the personification of the patterns of mind that bind us to distress. We can begin to do this with applied intention and attention. We set the intention to be present with just one breath, one moment, but we find that our attention does slip away. So we reapply it. We renew those intentions. We don’t make one intention to be kind or one intention to be patient and think that that’s it. We learn to apply and reapply, moment to moment, with an effort that is calm and caring.

Attitude is so important. We are on a path that requires depths of patience and caring, and it is a path that has a direction: awakening and the end of distress.

Take this quote from the Digha Nikaya. The Buddha says: 

When there is appreciation, joy is born. When the mind is joyful, the body calms down. When the body calms, it feels happiness, and when there is happiness, the mind gathers.

Through the willingness to apply and reapply intention and attention, we begin to see the emergence of our capacity to sustain intention and attention, and the possibility of samadhi. This has profound implications, not only just for our practice but also for the whole of our lives.

A well-trained mind is one that is no longer governed by Mara but is guided by sustained intention. It is a mind that has the capacity to see clearly and reflectively. 

The Buddha speaks of the three wise intentions to cultivate and sustain: the intentions of kindness, compassion, and nonclinging. These intentions can guide our speech, thoughts, and actions. They also have extended families. A well-trained mind is a mind that’s a true friend. A place of ease, stillness, spaciousness, and responsiveness. 

A Practice

Settle into a posture where you can feel easeful and wakeful, where the body feels to be a friend. Establish a sense of groundedness, collectedness, and gatheredness. Intentionally cultivate calm abiding in the midst of all things, whatever agitations might be present, whatever sense of contractedness or busyness might be present. 

Introduce that clear intention to cultivate calm abiding with kindness, compassion, and nonclinging. With each out-breath, breathe out agitation, breathe out busyness. Allow the mind to settle in, to join the body in this cultivation of calm abiding. 

Just listen to the mind-heart of the moment, sensing whether any of the veiling factors are present. Is there a sense of discontent, of wanting a better moment, a better body, or a better mind? Is there a pattern of ill will, frustration, impatience, tightness, pushing away, or resisting? Is there a mood of agitation, worrying, busyness, or restlessness in the body or mind? Is there a pattern of dullness, numbness, or disconnection? Is there a mood or a pattern of doubt, uncertainty, or floundering? 

It is in the midst of these factors that we cultivate clear intention and wise attention. In the midst of this, we give greater authority to our intentions and attention rather than to whatever mood or veiling factor is present. In the midst of this, we can settle in the groundedness of the body. In the midst of this, we can cultivate a mind-heart of kindness, compassion, and nonclinging. We explore what it is to be undiverted, to not feed those patterns of thought. We let them be: arising and passing, applying and reapplying the intention to be present in the body of the moment, to calm the agitations, to cultivate stillness, wellness, and easefulness. 

We apply and reapply those intentions and attention many times. In all the moments we find ourselves diverted or forgetful, we come back. 

We discover we can return, celebrating and appreciating a capacity to return, to come back, to collect, and to gather. Begin to steady those intentions and attention. Appreciate what it is to abide in calmness, collectedness, and gatheredness; to be ungoverned by Mara; to be ungoverned by patterns of reactivity; to calm the storms. 

Breathe in and out with kindness. Breathe in and out with care. Breathe in and out with the clarity of intention, to know this moment just as it is; to know this breath just as it is; to know this body, mind, heart, and moment just as it is. 

Continue with this practice, if you wish, or emerge if that is appropriate for you, not leaving behind that sense of gatheredness and collectedness. Not leaving behind that field of skillful intention.

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Excerpted from Christina Feldman’s Tricycle Meditation Month video “A Well-Trained Mind.” Watch the full video here and learn more about Meditation Month here.

The post Why Intention Is So Important in Meditation appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

We can have so many wise and skillful intentions in our lives—to be generous, to be patient, to be kind, and to live compassionately. Yet we can feel so frustrated when our intentions are forgotten or sabotaged. The greatest saboteurs of intention and attention are the veiling factors of craving, ill will, agitation, worry, dullness, and doubt. In the teachings, this collection of patterns is often referred to as Mara, the personification of the habit patterns that lead to creating and recreating the world of distress. 

Each of these patterns has an extended family. Craving carries with it deep beliefs in insufficiency—in not being enough, not having enough, and not being good enough. Ill will has an extended family of impatience, frustration, jealousy, anxiety, and the need to be in control. Numbness is not just about falling asleep on a meditation cushion. Dullness, numbness, and dissociation arise when we don’t want to feel, or when we don’t feel resilient enough to be connected with the world, both inwardly and outwardly. Doubt carries images of a self that is incapable and powerless and needs certainty in an uncertain world. The Buddha speaks of these patterns as being at the root of our psychological and emotional storms. They are the root of generating the stories that too easily become our nightmares. 

A meditative journey to the development of a well-trained heart and mind is a journey through these patterns. They are our classroom, our curriculum. This is where we learn to sustain attention and intention. We learn to be undiverted in our intentions to gather, to calm, to still, and to cultivate calm abiding in the midst of these patterns arising. 

In a climate of collectedness, calmness, and stilling, the habit patterns of Mara cannot find a foothold in the mind.

This journey begins by developing an emotional literacy that knows craving as craving, aversion as aversion, restlessness and worry as restlessness and worry, dullness as dullness, and that truly knows doubt as doubt. We learn not to feed these patterns with thought. They don’t have an independent self-existence. When they are not fed, they begin to lose their power. The Buddha used the image that if you want a fire to keep on burning, just throw logs on it. If you want the fire to begin to cool, stop feeding it. 

We see the ways in which story and narrative set up, reinforce, and deepen these patterns of reactivity. But when they are not fed, we see them arise and pass instead. We develop an emotional literacy, and we’re able to ask the question: What does this pattern need? What would be helpful? Is it a greater cultivation of contentment or kindness? Is it a greater sense of energy? Or is more investigation needed? 

Calming and stilling are the willingness to commit to just being wholeheartedly present in one moment at a time, to commit to one breath, to commit to the sense of our feet touching the ground. To know this, we begin to train the mind. We begin to train the heart. We give greater authority to our intentions than to Mara. We give greater authority to our intentions than the mood of the moment or the mental state of the moment. 

Samadhi does not uproot Mara. The Buddha was very clear on this. But samadhi blindfolds Mara. Samadhi blindfolds Mara in the sense that in a climate of collectedness, calmness, and stilling, the habit patterns of Mara cannot find a foothold in the mind. Samadhi creates a space to investigate and understand those habit patterns. 

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Excerpted from Christina Feldman’s Tricycle Meditation Month video “A Well-Trained Mind.” Watch the full video here and learn more about Meditation Month here.

The post Blindfolding Mara appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Our sense of time is linear and bounded. We check our watches and count the days. Time is something to be quantified and measured. We set our timers and will ourselves not to look at minutes ticking away.

In some mystical traditions, there exists a different kind of time. The Aranda people [also known as Arrernte, Arunta, or Arrarnta] of Australia describe a time out of time, or the Dreamtime. This is the time in which ancestors live eternally. There’s a similar idea in Buddhism: in the practice of refuge, we call on our spiritual ancestors to be present, beyond space and time.

Buddhists also have the notion of a timeless time. Twelfth-century Tibetan meditation master Longchenpa called this the “fourth time,” the past being the first time, the present the second time, and the future the third time. The fourth time is a time beyond time or a time out of time. The timeless time doesn’t lean on the past or the future. It is an absolute nowness that is unbounded and radically present.

The radical present is not something that we create. It is always happening, spontaneously. Even when we’re ruminating on the past or anticipating the future, there is an unfolding in the present that is always happening—even when we’re missing it, when we’re distracted by our thoughts about the past or the future.

The doorway into the fourth time is not dreaming, but rather meditation. In meditation, we enter into this absolute nowness that has no beginning, no middle, and no end. One of the reasons that meditation is so powerful is it’s constantly encouraging us to land back into the moment. The ordinary mind that is our thinking mind or ruminating mind tends to resist being in the present—we’re always just a little bit ahead or a little bit behind. And our mind likes the ideas of minutes and days; it gives us a security and a grounding.

So how is it that meditation helps us come into the now? The bridge for coming into the now is the body. The body exists in the radical present. Paying attention to it has the power to draw us into this present moment and to show us how to settle into the vividness of our own experience as it is unfolding.

This is why the timeless time is the body’s time. The body does not live in the past and not in the future, it is feeling, experiencing, and breathing right now. This is the body of the radical present. To come into relationship with the radical now, or absolute now, or the timeless time can be as simple as just coming into contact with a sensation that is happening in the body. And that moment we go from being caught up in the past and the future into just now, just being.

Being in the Body’s Time: A Practice

We can begin by closing our eyes. Notice a sensation happening right now in your feeling body. It could be something as simple as the feeling of the air on your skin. Whatever that feeling is, allow it to draw and absorb your attention so that you’re not focusing on the feeling so much as you are allowing the feeling to draw you in. You’re not so much paying attention to the feeling as you are letting attention saturate the feeling in the same way that a sponge draws up water. Notice how this feeling is not happening in the past. It’s not happening in the future. It’s unfolding in the now—fresh, vivid, and awake.

See if you can relax into that feeling without needing to go anywhere other than where you are. You might try asking the question: has there ever been anything other than this?

When you practice in this way, it’s not hard to notice how the ruminating mind and the feeling body are operating in two different dimensions of time. The mind’s dimension is linear, tugging away from the present. The experiential body’s dimension is now, zeroing in on the present. As long as that lateral tug is happening there’s a sense of alienation, a pulling apart of the mind and the body.

This is the duality of yogic understanding. Not an existential dualism of a subject and an object, but a somatic dualism, body and mind being a little out of sync with each other. To heal the pain of that dualism begins with the act of inviting the mind to pay attention to the body’s time so that the mind can learn a simple truth: there is just now. The mind notices that this is all there is and that draws us into a peaceful gap, the place where wakefulness is found.

This article was originally published on March 06, 2021.

The post Being in Body Time  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.