Mindfulness in Plain English
Mindfulness in Plain English
Why Meditate?
READ FULL SUMMARY OF MINDFULNESS IN PLAIN ENGLISH
READ FULL SUMMARY OF MINDFULNESS IN PLAIN ENGLISH
READ FULL SUMMARY OF MINDFULNESS IN PLAIN ENGLISH
READ FULL SUMMARY OF MINDFULNESS IN PLAIN ENGLISH
Many of us find life continuously unsatisfying. We can distract the nagging feeling for a time, but it inevitably comes back. We must have more. Things must be better. We get stuck in “if only” wishful thinking mode - “if only I had X, all my problems will be solved.”
There is no satisfying this impulse. You will never have enough. You equilibrate so quickly to your environment that nothing is ever satisfying enough. The only winning move is not to play.
Is there another way to live? You can control your mind to step outside the endless cycle of desire and aversion. You can learn not to stop wanting what you currently crave, to recognize desires but not be controlled by them.
Meditation is the path to this level of understanding and mental peace. It purifies the mind of “psychic irritants,” bringing you to a new state of tranquility and awareness. It makes you deeply aware of your own thoughts and actions.
What Meditation Is
Meditation involves concentration, like prayer and yogic meditation. But concentration is a means to an end - the ultimate goal is awareness, or mindfulness.
Awareness is the ability to listen to our own thoughts without being caught up in them.
- So much of your thought is automatic that you cannot be said to have real control of your thinking. Up pops a stimulus (an attractive person, the smell of food, annoying party music) - and immediately you react with a feeling.
- The first step to avoid this is to realize what you are doing as you are doing it, to stand back and quietly watch. You learn to scrutinize your own perceptual process with precision. You decouple the perception of a stimulus with the arising of thought.
- With meditation, you examine the very process of perception. You watch the feelings that arise and the changes that occur in your own consciousness.
For much of your life, you have given in to your impulses out of habit. When you’re mindful you see through the “hollow shouting of your own impulses” and pierce their secret. Your urges yell at you, coaxing, beckoning, threatening, but you realize they have no power at all.
The Mindset of Meditating
Meditation is very sensitive to the mental attitude you bring to the activity. Here’s the right attitude to have while meditating.
Don’t expect anything. Sit back and see what happens. See it as an experiment. Let the meditation move along at its own speed and in its own direction. Throw away your preconceptions of what it should feel like and what it should achieve.
Don’t strain or rush. Counter-intuitively, the more you force things, the further you’ll be from your goal.
Accept everything that arises. Don’t condemn yourself for having feelings you wish you didn’t have. Accept them. This is the first step to removing yourself of them.
Don’t ponder. Thinking won’t free you from the trap. Meditation purifies the mind naturally by mindfulness, without using thoughts or words. Don’t think. See.
How to Start Meditating
Determine how long you are going to meditate. Beginners can start at 10-20 minutes. But do not worry about attaining any particular goal within a particular time period - this will just be distracting and counterproductive.
Sit in a comfortable pose. Do not change the position again until the time you determined at the beginning. Shifting positions will avoid giving you a deep level of concentration.
- Sit with your back straight. The spine should be erect, with the head in line with the spine. Be relaxed, not stiff. Have no muscular tension.
- Your clothing should be loose and soft. Don’t wear clothing so tight it restricts blood flow or nerve sensation. Take your shoes off.
- You can choose to sit on the floor on in a chair.
Sit motionlessly and close your eyes.
Your mind is like a cup of muddy water. Keep it still, and the mud will settle down and the water will be seen clearly.
The mind must focus on a mental object that is present at every moment. The book recommends starting with focusing on your breath.
Take 3 deep breaths. Then breathe normally and effortlessly, focusing your attention on the rims of your nostrils where the air is flowing through.
- Simply notice the feeling of breath going in and out. You may notice mindfully that there is a brief pause between inhaling and exhaling - but don’t obsess over this.
Keep focusing your attention on your breath.
Do not verbalize or conceptualize anything. Simply notice the incoming and outgoing breath, and notice as the breath lengthens as you relax.
When your mind wanders and gets distracted, bring it back. The book suggests counting in a variety of ways, basically to distract your mind back to breathing:
- Count 1 when inhaling, 2 when exhaling. Repeat to 10 then repeat.
- Count 1 to 10 quickly when inhaling, and again when exhaling.
- Once your mind is focused on the breath, give up counting.
When distracted, gently but firmly return to your focus. Do not get upset or judge yourself from straying. Do not force things out of your mind - this adds energy to the thoughts that will make them return stronger.
Over time, your breathing will become shallower and more subtle. This is an indicator of concentration.
- You will develop a new more subtle “sign” - which appears differently to different people (a star, a long string, a cobweb, the moon, a flower). Over time, master this so that whenever you want the sign, it should be available.
The mind must keep up with what is happening at every moment, so do not try to stop the mind at any one moment. This is momentary concentration.
When you feel in a state of concentration, the mind can then move to other sounds, memories, or emotions, one at a time. As they fade away, let your mind return to the breath.
How to Continue Meditating
Establish a formal practice schedule. Set aside a certain time.
- Meditating in the morning is a good start to the day. Wake up fully, then sit down to meditate. Don’t get hung up in the day’s activities.
- Evening before sleep is another good time. It clears your mind of mental rubbish throughout the day.
Once a day is enough when you begin.
Start with 20-30 minutes for sitting. Over time, you can lengthen this, so that regular practitioners can sit for others.
Wishing Kindness On Others
It is tradition to begin meditation with a few recitations. They have a practical purpose for psychological cleansing and aren’t meant to be dogmatic rituals. Here’s one that wishes well on yourself and others.
“May ___ be well, happy and peaceful. May no harm come to ___. May they always meet with spiritual success. May they also have patience, courage, understanding, and determination to...
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Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Shortform Introduction
If you haven’t ever tried meditating, parts of this summary will sound hokey, too ethereal and wishy-washy. “Loving friendliness? Nonconceptual awareness? Hogwash!” You can redefine these terms in your own words in a way that’s satisfying to you.
You might be resistant to trying meditation, thinking it’s too contrived or it’ll “make you lose your edge.” If you’re perfectly content with how you react to life, have great emotional control, and are strongly fulfilled, then you might not benefit much from mindfulness. But if...
Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Chapter 1: Meditation: Why Bother?
Many of us find life continuously unsatisfying. We can distract the nagging feeling for a time, but it inevitably comes back. We must have more. Things must be better. We get stuck in “if only” wishful thinking mode - “if only I had X, all my problems will be solved.”
There is no satisfying this impulse. You will never have enough. You equilibrate so quickly to your environment that nothing is ever satisfying enough. The only winning move is not to play.
Popular media invokes the emotions of jealousy, suffering, stress, and anger. People who are at peace with themselves do not feel these feelings.
The culprit of dissatisfaction lies in categorization of experiences as good, bad, and neutral.
- For good experiences, we hope to freeze time at that moment and keep it from escaping. When that fails, we keep chasing this high. But even in these moments, we feel the tension that no matter what, this moment will end.
- For bad experiences, we reject those experiences. We run from pieces of ourselves instead of confronting and acknowledging them.
- For neutral experiences (which comprise the majority of life), we see it as drudgery and ignore it.
When we endlessly chase pleasure, flee from pain, and ignore most of our experience, is it any wonder life tastes flat?
Satisfaction through Mindfulness
Is there another way to live? You can control your mind to step outside the endless cycle of desire and aversion. You can learn not to stop wanting what you currently crave, to recognize desires but not be controlled by them.
Consider another frame of mind - we crave things, not for the goals themselves, but as a means to an end. We eat food so that we satiate hunger and satisfy the drive. We earn money so that we can relieve our...
Shortform Exercise: Examine Your Own Emotions
Think about where you feel unsatisfied.
Do you identify with the feeling that you find life continuously unsatisfying? What does that feel like? What do you feel you don’t have enough of?
Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Chapters 2-3: What Meditation Is and Isn’t
Mindfulness in Plain English deals specifically with vipassana meditation (or insight meditation), with roots in Theravada Buddhism.
What Meditation Isn’t
There are other forms of meditation, and misconceptions about meditation, that this book is not dealing with:
- Meditation is not just relaxation or euphoria. You can achieve a deep and blissful relaxation (eg through samathameditation), but this is only temporary. The goal of vipassana is further: awareness.
- Meditation is not going into a trance. In a trance, you lose control of yourself and are susceptible to control by another party. In deep concentration, you maintain control of yourself.
- Meditation doesn’t let you have psychic powers.
- Meditation is not selfish. It clears the mind of selfish intent and opens the path to compassion for others. In contrast, there are plenty of bad deeds done in the name of good that are actually ego-driven (the Spanish Inquisition).
Furthermore, meditation is not mindless, automatic, and predictable. It should be an experiment every time. If you reach a feeling of predictability in your practice, you have stagnated and gone off track. Look at each second as though it were the first and only second in the universe.
What Meditation Is
Meditation involves concentration, like prayer and yogic meditation. But concentration is a means to an end - the ultimate goal is awareness, or mindfulness.
Awareness is the ability to listen to our own thoughts without being caught up in them.
- So much of your thought is automatic that you cannot be said to have real control of your thinking. Up pops a stimulus (an attractive person, the smell of food, annoying party music) - and immediately you react with a feeling.
- The first step to avoid this is to realize what you are doing as you are doing it, to stand back and quietly watch. You learn to scrutinize your own perceptual process with precision. You decouple the perception of a stimulus with the arising of thought.
- With meditation, you examine the very process of...
Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Chapter 4: The Right Attitude
Meditation is very sensitive to the mental attitude you bring to the activity. Here’s the right attitude to have while meditating.
Don’t expect anything. Sit back and see what happens. See it as an experiment. Let the meditation move along at its own speed and in its own direction. Throw away your preconceptions of what it should feel like and what it should achieve.
Don’t strain or rush. Counter-intuitively, the more you force things, the further you’ll be from your goal.
Accept everything that arises. Don’t condemn yourself for having feelings you wish you didn’t have. Accept them. This is the first step to removing yourself of them.
Don’t expect the same thing every time. Every meditation is an experiment, and the feeling is just momentary. You will stagnate your practice.
Investigate for yourself. Don’t take any word as scripture. Even Buddha was a nonconformist, avoiding dogma. Discover your own insights and...
Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Chapter 5: Starting Your Practice
Next, Mindfulness in Plain Englishintroduces the starting steps to practicing meditation:
Determine how long you are going to meditate. Beginners can start at 10-20 minutes. But do not worry about attaining any particular goal within a particular time period - this will just be distracting and counterproductive.
Sit in a comfortable pose. Do not change the position again until the time you determined at the beginning. Shifting positions will avoid giving you a deep level of concentration.
Sit motionlessly and close your eyes.
Your mind is like a cup of muddy water. Keep it still, and the mud will settle down and the water will be seen clearly.
The mind must focus on a mental object that is present at every moment. The book recommends starting with focusing on your breath.
Take 3 deep breaths. Then breathe normally and effortlessly, focusing your attention on the rims of your nostrils where the air is flowing through.
- Simply notice the feeling of breath going in and out. You may notice mindfully that there is a brief pause between inhaling and exhaling - but don’t obsess over this.
Do not verbalize or conceptualize anything. Simply notice the incoming and outgoing breath, and notice as the breath lengthens as you relax.
When your mind wanders, bring it back. The book suggests counting in a variety of ways, basically to distract your mind back to breathing:
- Count 1 when inhaling, 2 when exhaling. Repeat to 10 then repeat.
- Count 1 to 10 quickly when inhaling, and again when exhaling.
- Count 1 to 5 when inhaling, 1 to 6 when exhaling, and so on up to 10, then repeat.
- Count 1 at the top of your inhalation, then exhale. Then count 2 for the next breath. Go up to 10, then back down to 1.
- After inhaling and exhaling, count 1. Do this up to 5, then back down to 1.
- Once your mind is focused on the breath, give up counting.
(Shortform note: Don’t beat yourself up over getting distracted. Don’t fixate on the goal of achieving some desired end state. Don’t feel like a failure for not meeting mindfulness. Instead, think...
Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Chapter 6: What to Do with Your Body
The author is clear to say that you should learn by doing, not by following dogmatic prescriptions. However, there are certain meditation practices that have been optimized over millennia, and they’re worth trying out.
The body position is meant to provide stability to remove distractions and create immobility of the mind.
Sit with your back straight. The spine should be erect, with the head in line with the spine. Be relaxed, not stiff. Have no muscular tension.
- Straightness invites alertness. Slouching invites drowsiness.
Your clothing should be loose and soft. Don’t wear clothing so tight it restricts blood flow or nerve sensation. Take your shoes off.
You can choose to sit on the floor on in a chair.
When sitting on the floor:
- Use a cushion that is relatively firm, at least 3 inches thick when compressed.
- Sit close to the front edge of cushion, and let your crossed legs rest on the floor in front. Use some padding to protect shins and ankles from pressure.
- Sitting too far back causes the front edge of cushion to press into thigh and pinch nerves.
- Fold your legs in a style you’re comfortable with. In ascending order of preference:
- Native American style - right foot tucked under left knee, left foot under right knee.
- Burmese style - both legs lie flat on floor from knee to foot. They are in...
Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Chapter 7: What to Do with Your Mind
The state you are aiming for is where you are aware of everything that is happening in the moment, observing your thoughts forming and disappearing without engaging in the thoughts.
This is different from thinking about all thoughts that come up, which is akin to daydreaming.
There is a difference between being aware of a thought and thinking a thought. The “texture” is different.
- Being aware of a thought is light in texture, arising lightly as a bubble, and the thought passes without giving rise to the next thought in the chain.
- Normal conscious thought is heavier in texture - “ponderous, commanding, compulsive.” It leads straight to the next thought in the chain.
The object is to use breathing as the focus of concentration. Your breath is the reference point from which the mind wanders and is drawn back. Distractions, by definition, are deviations from a central focus. From this central focus of breathing, you then go on to note all physical and mental other phenomena that arise.
Why focus on breathing, and not any other thought or sensation? The author recommends breathing as the object of focus because:
- It is portable, cheap, and freely available.
- It happens automatically for most of the day, so being aware of it is subtly challenging. You’ve got to work at it to focus on it, but not focus too hard.
- You need to learn to focus on your breathing without manipulating it. There are lessons to be learned here on the nature of will and desire.
- Analogy: when sawing wood, you don’t watch the saw blade. You watch the line you’re cutting along.
- There are many variations of breathing (length, depth, smoothness) that are interesting to observe.
- But you must observe it without thinking about it, without verbalizing your thoughts about it. Don’t think: “my breath is smoothening out! What’s going to happen next?” Return merely to focusing on the breath.
- Breath is universal to all living things, so it also connects you to the rest of the living world.
- The breath is naturally a present-moment process. Once it...
Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Chapter 8: Structuring Your Meditation
Meditation requires continuous practice, and so it benefits from structure.
The environment: Sit in a quiet, secluded place where you won’t be disturbed. Don’t be on display or feel self-conscious. Avoid places with music or talking. Ideally sit in the same place each time.
When to Sit
Establish a formal practice schedule. Set aside a certain time.
- Meditating in the morning is a good start to the day. Wake up fully, then sit down to meditate. Don’t get hung up in the day’s activities.
- Evening before sleep is another good time. It clears your mind of mental rubbish throughout the day.
Once a day is enough when you begin.
Don’t overdo it so you feel like it’s a chore, or so you expect magical results when you apply it too intensely.
Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Chapter 9: Set-up Exercises
It is tradition to begin meditation with a few recitations. They have a practical purpose for psychological cleansing and aren’t meant to be dogmatic rituals.
(Shortform note: similarly, there is a commonly accepted way to swim the breaststroke or hit a golf ball or do long division - meditation should be no different despite it being a mental rather than a physical activity.)
Try these out and if they don’t work for you, then discard them.
Recitation 1
“I am about to tread the very same path that has been walked by the Buddha and by his great and holy disciples. An indolent person cannot follow that path. May my energy prevail. May I succeed.”
This recitation is used to overcome the hesitation when facing the large task ahead of you. Your mind is a jumble, and overcoming that looks like climbing a massive wall. Knowing that others have struggled with the same issues and succeeded should imbue you with confidence.
Recitation 2
This wishes loving kindness on others.
“May ___ be well, happy and peaceful. May no harm come to ___. May they always meet with spiritual success. May they also have patience, courage, understanding, and determination to meet and overcome inevitable difficulties, problems, and failures in life. May they always rise above them with morality, integrity, forgiveness, compassion, mindfulness, and wisdom.”
Repeat this recitation multiple times, replacing the blanks with these in order: I | my parents | my teachers | my relatives | my friends | all indifferent persons | all unfriendly persons | all living beings.
Benefits of this Recitation
Mindfulness is egoless awareness. If you start with ego in full control, it is difficult to get mindfulness started. If your mind is in fury, it’s hard to focus during meditation.
This recitation overcomes the ego. Balance the negative emotion by instilling a positive one. Giving confronts greed; benevolence confronts hatred.
First you banish thoughts of self-hatred and self-condemnation, letting good wishes flow to yourself.
Then you expand out to other people,...
Shortform Exercise: Wishing Loving Kindness
Try the recitation to practice loving kindness to people you don’t usually wish it for.
The recitation: “May ___ be well, happy and peaceful. May no harm come to _. May they always meet with spiritual success. May they also have patience, courage, understanding, and determination to meet and overcome inevitable difficulties, problems, and failures in life. May they always rise above them with morality, integrity, forgiveness, compassion, mindfulness, and wisdom.”
Repeat this recitation multiple times (out loud or in your head), replacing the blanks with these in order: I | my parents | my teachers | my relatives | my friends | all indifferent persons | all unfriendly persons | all living beings. You can also picture specific people with whom you have problems.
How do you feel afterward? Do you sense any changes in someone you previously felt friction with?
Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Chapter 10: Dealing with Problems
Sometimes your meditation will feel like hitting a brick wall. These are opportunities to develop your practice. Instead of running away, you confront the problem head-on, examining it to oblivion. If you can deal with issues that arise in meditation, it will carry over to the rest of your life.
Buddhist philosophy: “pain is inevitable. Suffering is not.” Bad things happen to everyone. How you deal with it and interpret it determines how you are affected emotionally by bad things.
For all problems that arise, the general approach is to observe it mindfully without getting engaged. Watch the problem form, peak, and dissipate. Notice its intensity and how it affects the body. The problem will naturally dissipate. And you will find that many of our day-to-day emotions are simply superficial mental states that have no control over you.
The common problems that arise:
Physical pain
- Get rid of physical pain before meditating (eg medicine for a headache).
- Wear loose clothing and relax your posture. Keep your arms and neck muscles relaxed.
- If pain remains, make the pain the object of your meditation. Explore the feeling.
- You will observe there are two things - the pain itself, and your resistance to that pain. This is a barrier between “me” and “the pain.”
- You will feel the physical resistance to the pain through muscle contraction. Relax those muscles one by one.
- Mentally, you will find a “I don’t like this feeling” sentiment. Locate this and relax it too.
- Once this barrier has vanished, you will find yourself merging with the pain. At this point, it no longer hurts - suffering is gone.
- Don’t make the mistake of finding it hard to be mindful when you feel pain. In fact, mindfulness never exists by itself - it always has some object.
- These techniques will carry over into the rest of life, including anxiety and sadness.
Drowsiness
- Apply your mindfulness to the state of drowsiness itself. This awareness will evaporate drowsiness.
- Try to eat lightly before meditating
- Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Chapter 11-12: Dealing with Distractions
It’s easier to concentrate in areas without distractions, hence why Buddhist monks go to meditation halls free of the other gender, noise, and daily concerns like food.
Example distractions are sounds, sensations, emotions, fantasy. Emotions include desire, aversion, self-condemnation, agitation, doubt.
For all distractions that arise, the general approach is to observe it mindfully without getting engaged. Watch the distraction form and dissipate. Notice its intensity and how it affects the body. Notice how long it lasts. Don’t help or hinder the thought. The distraction will naturally dissipate.
The ideal you’re going for is to experience each mental state fully, adding nothing to it nor missing a part of it. Example: with pain, there is a pure, flowing sensation. You don’t reject it, attach words to it, or think about it. You don’t picture a colored diagram of the leg with lightning bolts shooting at where it hurts. Instead, you simply become aware of it and watch it come and go.
Thoughts are often verbalized as “I have a pain in my leg.” You add the “I” to the experience, identifying with the pain. Leave “I” out of it - then pain is not painful, it’s simply a surging energy flow.
Don’t force the distraction away. Switch your attention to it briefly. It will eventually go away. “Fight with them and they gain strength. Watch them with detachment and they wither.”
Ponder these things wordlessly. While at first you’ll need to ask your questions in words, soon you will do it by second nature and then return to the breath. It’s a nonconceptual process.
Do not condemn yourself for having distractions that detract from mindfulness. Mindfulness requires a target of focus, and distractions are a secondary object of attention taking you away from breathing. Distractions are an exercise to get through, much like a hurdle in a race. They are the very object of practice.
Trickiest of all is positive mental states - happiness, peace, compassion. Depriving yourself of this makes you feel like a traitor to humanity. But treat them like any other...
Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Chapter 13-14: What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is difficult to attach words to, as by nature it is presymbolic (it exists beyond the use of symbols to represent it). But the author tries to describe what characterizes mindfulness:
- The feeling of pure non-conceptual awareness before you conceptualize the thing and turn it into conscious thought.
- Nonjudgmental, without any preconceived notions.
- It’s impossible to observe what’s going on if you don’t accept its occurrence. It’s important to accept your negative emotions without judgment to deal with them fully.
- Present-moment: it takes place here and now. Thinking about the past or the future requires conscious thinking that is not mindfulness.
- Non-egotistic: it does not refer to the self. No “I” or “me.” It merely observes what is there.
- For example, “I have a pain” is distorting the sensation.
- Aware of change.
- It watches phenomena decay and die.
- It watches how a sensation affects the body.
- It sees the mind change from mindfulness to conscious thought.
- It has a light, clear energetic flavor. In contrast, conscious thought is heavy, ponderous.
- Sees things as they are, without adding anything or subtracting anything.
- Conscious thought loads us down with concepts and ideas, attaches emotions.
- Mindfulness is mere awareness: “ah, this...and this...and now this.”
- Total nonattachment and lack of clinging.
- Sees directly the three Buddhist truths of experience: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, selflessness.
Practically, mindfulness clears your mind of psychic irritants by allowing you to become aware of them, observe them objectively without emotion, recognize their destruct impact, and allow them to dissipate without their taking over you.
Mindfulness vs Concentration
Concentration and mindfulness are different things.
- Concentration is applied force to focus on a single thing. It is...
Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Chapter 15: Meditation in Everyday Life
The ultimate goal is to be mindful in every waking moment outside of meditation. Meditation is merely practice for this ultimate goal, instilling new habits. What’s the point if you feel at peace during meditation but return to the real world with anger?
It’s essential to apply effort to connect meditation with the rest of your existence. Otherwise, the carryover will be slow and unreliable without dedicated effort. The below exercises allow you to practice little bits of mindfulness outside the sitting meditation. You go into a meditative state when doing everyday activities - walking, drinking tea, breathing, waiting - and develop mindfulness outside sitting meditation.
With time, you will pleasantly find that you’re meditating without thinking about it - driving down the freeway or brushing your teeth.
Walking Meditation
Sitting meditation is by nature still, but conscious life is all about motion. To translate mindfulness practices over into the conscious life, Bhante recommends practicing meditation while walking slowly.
Here’s how to do it:
- Find a secluded place where you’ll be free from observation and be able to take 5-10 steps in a straight line.
- At one end, stand attentively for one minute. Hands can be held in front, back, or at your sides.
- Then, while breathing in, lift the heel of one foot. While breathing out, rest that foot on its toes. Repeat.
- After reaching the other side, turn around, pause one minute, then repeat.
- Observe the sensations of taking a step - lifting, swinging, coming down, touching, pressing. Register every nuance of the movement. Don’t think about the sensation or the concept of feet.
Postures
For a few seconds periodically, examine your body from head to toe. How is your body arranged? How are you holding it? What is sore? What else do you feel?
The purpose is not to correct your posture or admonish yourself for having bad posture. Instead, it’s a break from the day.
Slow-Motion Activity
Slow down an everyday activity to 10x the time it normally takes to complete. Witness...
Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Chapter 16: Benefits of Meditation
What tend to be the benefits of meditation?
Selflessness - many psychic irritants are centered around the ego: “I feel pain. I want more. She’s better than me.” There is a clear partition between you and the world. Through meditation, you necessarily let go of the ego as you observe your feelings come and go. You see greed, resentment, anger for what they are and what they do to you and others. Eventually you internalize the damage of negative emotions, and you avoid it unconsciously, much like a child who is burned by a fire avoids fire.
Everything looks bright and special again when you actually observe the present. You enjoy each passing moment by being aware of it. Everything seems to be in constant transformation. There is joy in this change. You accept pain, old age, and death as part of reality.
You become aware of when you are mindful and when you are not. You’ll notice when you become mired in emotional thought, twisting reality with your mental color instead of merely observing it.
You see the source of your...
Mindfulness in Plain English Summary Afterword: The Power of Loving Friendliness
Metta is loving friendliness. When you project it out to other people, you feel more at peace yourself. You become calm and peaceful, with your anger and resentment fading away. Your words and your deeds become warmer, and you live with others in harmony.
In contrast, wishing ill on others or acting immorally is poisoning yourself.
The Buddha defines four sublime states: loving friendliness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. A good analogy for understanding this is the evolution of how a parent views her child:
- Loving friendliness - in the beginning, there is pure love and caring for the child. It is limitless and unconditional.
- Compassion - as the infant makes mistakes and feels pain, the parent feels pain as well. This is not pity, which distances people - compassion is the hope that the pain should stop and the child not suffer.
- Appreciative Joy - as the child begins achieving things - making friends, earning awards - the parent is full of happiness, not of resentment or jealousy.
- Note that we can celebrate all people’s achievement, even when their success exceeds our own.
- Equanimity - as the child becomes an adult, the parent must sit back, knowing they have done all they could for their child. They can no longer steer the child’s life.
Even for the most ornery and unpleasant people you know, wish them peace and discover their potential for loving friendliness.You don’t know their background or experiences, and you may be misinterpreting their behavior.
The following recitations are excerpts from the book.
Start With Yourself
Start by showing loving friendliness to yourself. Make peace with your shortcomings. Embrace your weaknesses.
“May my mind be filled with the thoughts of loving friendliness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. May I be generous. May I be gentle. May I be relaxed. May I be happy and peaceful. May I be healthy. May my heart become soft. May my words be pleasing to others. May my actions be kind.
_May all that I see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think help me to...
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