"The root [of mindfulness practice] is experiencing the itch as well as
the urge to scratch, and then not acting it out."
Pema Chödrön

Thoughts from Jack Kornfield
Thoughts from Jon Kabat-Zin
Alice Walker on Meditation
A Simple Meditation
Links

Thoughts about Mindfulness Meditation from Jack Kornfield:

One of the benefits of practicing mindfulness is learning the practice of being in the moment, the practice of letting go of our hold on the past or of our obsession with trying to figure out the future. Whenever we try to fix on a particular state, maintain an image, or hold onto an experience, our personal life, our professional life and our spiritual life suffers. When we try to repeat what has been in the past, whatever it is, we lose the true sense of life as an opening, a flowering, an unfolding, an adventure. It is in the opening that we touch the mystery. Working with distraction is the heart of meditation practice.

Jack Kornfield says in his book, A Path With Heart, "To mature spiritually is to let go of rigid and idealistic ways of being and discover a flexibility and joy in our life." He lists the characteristics of spiritual maturity as follows:

1. Non-idealism - doesn't seek perfection of the world
2. Kindness - based on a fundamental notion of self-acceptance
3. Patience - which allows us to awaken to that which is beyond time
4. Immediacy - spiritual awakening is found in our own life, here and now
5. A sense of the sacred that is integrated and personal - Integrated in that we don't create separate compartments of our life, divide that which is sacred from that which is not. Personal in that we honor spirituality through our own words and actions - an understanding that the personal and universal are inextricably connected - that how we live is our spiritual life.
6. Questioning - we make our own investigation into truth - This is a discovery of what is true through my own experiences of what is sacred and liberating for me.
7. Flexibility - we respond to change and the world with our understanding and our heart - knowing that there is no one way
8. Embracing opposites - we are able to hold the contradictions of life in our hearts, seeing that it is possible for contradictions to co-exist
9. Honoring all we meet in relationship - honoring all things, all people and understanding that politics and money are also part of our sacred relationship to all things
10. Ordinariness means a simple presence in this moment - breathing, walking, the trees, with family: emptying, opening, honoring

Top of Page

Thoughts on Mindfulness Meditation from Jon Kabat-Zin

Meditation -- It's Not What You Think
By Jon Kabat-Zinn

It might be good to clarify a few common misunderstandings about meditation right off the bat. First, meditation is best thought of as a way of being, rather than a technique or a collection of techniques.

I'll say it again.

Meditation is a way of being, not a technique.

This doesn't mean that there aren't methods and techniques associated with meditation practice. There are. In fact, there are hundreds of them, and we will be making good use of some of them. But without understanding that all techniques are orienting vehicles pointing at ways of being, ways of being in relationship to the present moment and to one's own mind and one's own experience, we can easily get lost in techniques and in our misguided but entirely understandable attempts to use them to get somewhere else and experience some special result or state that we think is the goal of it all. As we shall see, such an orientation can seriously impede our understanding of the full richness of meditation practice and what it offers us. So it is helpful to just keep in mind that above all, meditation is a way of being, or, you could say, a way of seeing, a way of knowing, even a way of loving.

Second, meditation is not relaxation spelled differently. Perhaps I should say that again as well: Meditation is not relaxation spelled differently.

That doesn't mean that meditation is not frequently accompanied by profound states of relaxation and by deep feelings of well-being. Of course it is, or can be, sometimes. But mindfulness meditation is the embrace of any and all mind states in awareness, without preferring one to another. From the point of view of mindfulness practice, pain or anguish, or for that matter boredom or impatience or frustration or anxiety or tension in the body are all equally valid objects of our attention if we find them arising in the present moment, each a rich opportunity for insight and learning, and potentially, for liberation, rather than signs that our meditation practice is not "succeeding" because we are not feeling relaxed or experiencing bliss in some moment.

We might say that meditation is really a way of being appropriate to the circumstances one finds oneself in, in any and every moment. If we are caught up in the preoccupations of our own mind, in that moment we cannot be present in an appropriate way or perhaps at all. We will bring an agenda of some kind to whatever we say or do or think, even if we don't know it.

This doesn't mean that there won't be various things going on in our minds, many of them chaotic, turbulent, painful, and confusing, if we start training to become more mindful. It is only natural that there will be. That is the nature of the mind and of our lives at times. But we do not have to be caught by those things, or so caught up in them that they color our capacity to perceive the full extent of what is going on and what is called for (or color our capacity to perceive that we have no idea what is really going on or what might be called for). It is the non-clinging, and therefore the clear perceiving, and the willingness to act appropriately within whatever circumstances are arising that constitute this way of being that we are calling meditation.

It is not uncommon for people who know little of meditation except what they have gleaned from the media to harbor the notion that meditation is basically a willful inward manipulation, akin to throwing a switch in your brain, that results in your mind going completely blank. No more thought, no more worry. You are catapulted into the "meditative" state, which is always one of deep relaxation, peace, calm, and insight, often associated with concepts of "nirvana" in the public's mind.

This notion is a serious, if totally understandable, misperception. Meditation practice can be fraught with thought and worry and desire, and every other mental state and affliction known to frequent human beings. It is not the content of your experience that is important. What is important is our ability to be aware of that content, and even more, of the factors that drive its unfolding and the ways in which those factors either liberate us or imprison us moment by moment and year in, year out.

While there is no question that meditation can lead to deep relaxation, peace, calm, insight, wisdom, and compassion, and that the term "nirvana" actually refers to an important and verifiable dimension of human experience and is not merely the name of an aftershave lotion or a fancy yacht, it is never what one thinks, and what one thinks is never the whole story. That is one of the mysteries and attractions of meditation. Yet sometimes even seasoned meditators forget that meditation is not about trying to get anywhere special, and can long for or strive for a certain result that will fulfill our desires and expectations. Even when we "know better," it can still come up at times, and we have to "re-mind" ourselves in those moments to let go of such concepts and desires, to treat them just like any other thoughts arising in the mind, to remember to cling to nothing, and maybe even to see that they are intrinsically empty, mere fabrications, however understandable, of what we might call the wanting mind.

Another common misconception is that meditation is a certain way of controlling one's thoughts, or having specific thoughts. While this notion, too, has a degree of truth to it, in that there are specific forms of discursive meditation that are aimed at cultivating specific qualities of being such as lovingkindness and equanimity, and positive emotions such as joy and compassion, and equanimity, our ways of thinking about meditation often make practicing more difficult than it needs to be, and prevent us from coming to our experience of the present moment as it actually is rather than the way we might want it to be, and with an open heart and an open mind.

For meditation, and especially mindfulness meditation, is not the throwing of a switch and catapulting yourself anywhere, nor is it entertaining certain thoughts and getting rid of others. Nor is it making your mind blank or willing yourself to be peaceful or relaxed. It is really an inward gesture that inclines the heart and mind (seen as one seamless whole) toward a full-spectrum awareness of the present moment just as it is, accepting whatever is happening simply because it is already happening. This inner orientation is sometimes referred to in psychotherapy as "radical acceptance." This is hard work, very hard work, especially when what is happening does not conform to our expectations, desires, and fantasies. And our expectations, desires, and fantasies are all-pervasive and seemingly endless. They can color everything, sometimes in very subtle ways that are not at all obvious, especially when they are about meditation practice and issues of "progress" and "attainment."

Meditation is not about trying to get anywhere else. It is about allowing yourself to be exactly where you are and as you are, and for the world to be exactly as it is in this moment as well. This is not so easy, since there is always something that we can rightly find fault with if we stay inside our thinking. And so there tends to be great resistance on the part of the mind and body to settle into things just as they are, even for a moment. That resistance to what is may be even more compounded if we are meditating because we hope that by doing so, we can effect change, make things different, improve our own lives, and contribute to improving the lot of the world.

That doesn't mean that your aspirations to effect positive change, make things different, improve your life and the lot of the world are inappropriate. Those are all very real possibilities. Just by meditating, by sitting down and being still, you can change yourself and the world. In fact, just by sitting down and being still, in a small but not insignificant way, you already have.

But the paradox is that you can only change yourself or the world if you get out of your own way for a moment, and give yourself over and trust in allowing things to be as they already are, without pursuing anything, especially goals that are products of your thinking. Einstein put it quite cogently: "The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them." Implication: We need to develop and refine our mind and its capacities for seeing and knowing, for recognizing and transcending whatever motives and concepts and habits of unawareness may have generated or compounded the difficulties we find ourselves embroiled within, a mind that knows and sees in new ways, that is motivated differently. This is the same as saying we need to return to our original, untouched, unconditioned mind.

How can we do this? Precisely by taking a moment to get out of our own way, to get outside of the stream of thought and sit by the bank and rest for a while in things as they are underneath our thinking, or as Soen Sa Nim liked to say, "before thinking." That means being with what is for a moment, and trusting what is deepest and best in yourself, even if it doesn't make any sense to the thinking mind. Since you are far more than the sum of your thoughts and ideas and opinions, including your thoughts of who you are and of the world and the stories and explanations you tell yourself about all that, dropping in on the bare experience of the present moment is actually dropping in on just the qualities you may be hoping to cultivate -- because they all come out of awareness, and it is awareness that we fall into when we stop trying to get somewhere or to have a special feeling and allow ourselves to be where we are and with whatever we are feeling right now. Awareness itself is the teacher, the student, and the lesson.

So, from the point of view of awareness, any state of mind is a meditative state. Anger or sadness is just as interesting and useful and valid to look into as enthusiasm or delight, and far more valuable than a blank mind, a mind that is insensate, out of touch. Anger, fear, terror, sadness, resentment, impatience, enthusiasm, delight, confusion, disgust, contempt, envy, rage, lust, even dullness, doubt, and torpor, in fact all mind states and body states are occasions to know ourselves better if we can stop, look, and listen, in other words, if we can come to our senses and be intimate with what presents itself in awareness in any and every moment. The astonishing thing, so counterintuitive, is that nothing else needs to happen. We can give up trying to make something special occur. In letting go of wanting something special to occur, maybe we can realize that something very special is already occurring, and is always occurring, namely life emerging in each moment as awareness itself.

Copyright © 2005 Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. Excerpted from the book Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Copyright © 2005 Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. (Published by Hyperion; January 2005; $24.95US/$34.95CAN; 0-7868-6756-6)

Author Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., is the founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, as well as Professor of Medicine emeritus. He leads workshops on stress reduction and mindfulness for doctors and other health professionals and for lay audiences worldwide. He is the bestselling author of Wherever You Go, There You Are and Full Catastrophe Living, and, with his wife, Myla Kabat-Zinn, of a book on mindful parenting, Everyday Blessings. He was featured in the PBS series Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers, as well as on Oprah. He lives in Massachusetts.

Top of Page

A Simple Meditation Exercise from Jon Kabat-Zin:

Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed and practice the following for several minutes each day:

• Assume a comfortable posture lying on your back or sitting. If you are sitting, keep the spine straight and let your shoulders droop. Close your eyes if it feels comfortable.
• Bring your attention to your belly, feeling it rise or expand gently on the in-breath and fall or recede on the outbreath.
• Keep the focus on your breathing, "being with" each inbreath. Every time you notice that your mind has wandered off the breath, notice what it was that took you away and then gently bring your attention back to your belly and the feeling of the breath coming in and out.
• If your mind wanders away from the breath, then your "job" is simply to bring it back to the breath every time, no matter what it has become preoccupied with.
• Practice this exercise for fifteen minutes at a convenient time every day, whether you feel like it or not, for one week and see how it feels to incorporate a disciplined meditation practice into your life.
• Be aware of how it feels to spend time each day just being with your breath without having to do anything.

Top of Page

Alice Walker Article on Meditation

Alice Walker: After 20 Years, Meditation Still Conquers Inner Space
(New York Times, Monday October 23, 2000)
By Alice Walker

It a recent weeklong silent retreat I had the insight that if I had not divorced my very admirable husband and suffered horribly the irrevocable loss of his friendship, I might never have discovered meditation. Although the ancient Chinese alerted us to the fact that one house move is equal to three fires, no one had told me how difficult it would be to separate from someone I loved deeply but did not wish to live with anymore.

I came to meditation, then, as most people do: out of intensity of pain. Loss, confusion, sadness. Anxiety attacks. Depression. Suicidal inclinations. Insomnia. A good friend told me about it, and I almost didn't listen because I knew she was having an affair with the teacher of meditation she so heartily endorsed. Still, the pain was unresponsive to everything else I tried.

I remember sitting on my cushion thinking this will never work, and then gradually, later in the night, realizing that I wasn't quite so jumpy, and that mornings no longer made me want to draw the covers over my head. I could listen to the radio, to music at least — which my soul had banned — almost normally, and in general it began to seem as if my inner vision had cleared.

After a week of lessons there was a ceremony announcing my mastery of technique. To my surprise at this event, during meditation, I felt myself drop into a completely different internal space. A space filled with the purest quiet, the most radiant peacefulness. I started to giggle and then to laugh. I knew I'd got it. And what I'd got was that meditation took me right back to my favorite place in childhood: gazing out into the landscape, merging with it and disappearing.

> This is not what meditation is for everyone, of course. During a public dialogue with a master Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron, I mentioned the joy of this "disappearing act." I said that it was probably what being dead would be like, and that you'd be surprised how much you enjoyed it. She said for her it was just the opposite. She felt, while meditating, totally present, aware of everything around her. Actually this has become more of what meditation is like for me as well, and though the Buddha teaches us not to cling, and especially not to cling to transitory states of consciousness, I do sometimes miss those brief moments of ego-absent bliss.

As I settled into meditation nearly 20 years ago, there in my 2 1/2-room apartment, having given up the 11-room house I'd lived in along with the admirable husband, I was surprised to find how many and how varied one's transitory states can be. There were sittings that were amazingly sexual, for instance, as if my kundalini energy had been waiting for me to sit down.

There were times when I wept copiously as old sorrows from the past put in their final bids for my undivided attention. There were times of pure joy, as I felt the lightness of heart that comes from knowing you've found something truly reliable and helpful.

> Meditation has been a loyal friend to me. It has helped me write my books. I could not have written "Possessing the Secret of Joy" (about a woman who is genitally mutilated) without it; writing "The Temple of My Familiar" (my "great vision" novel of how the world got to be the way it is) would have been impossible. "The Color Purple" owes much of its humor and playfulness to the equanimity of my mind as I committed myself to a routine, daily practice.

It has helped me raise my child. Without it the challenge of being a single parent would have overcome me. It has made many losses bearable. Not just that of my former friend, the man I married, but the loss of other loved ones, communities, cultures, species, worlds in this time we live in, in which to honor our broken hearts, by peering quietly and regularly into the expanded opening, is to nurture a beginning to the re-creation of hope. And the magic of meditation remains.

It is a time when ancestors sometimes appear.

At the same silent retreat at which I understood how my early loss had led to a cherished gain, I became deeply engaged in metta, "loving kindness" meditation. We were being guided to send metta to a loved one, a benefactor, a neutral person and a difficult person. The difficult person is always rather amusing to choose, because the moment you do so, you begin to see how much that person resembles yourself.

> But it was the benefactor that proved momentarily difficult. The metta that one sends is: "May you be happy. May you be safe. May you be peaceful. May you have ease of well being." The trouble was, I had so many benefactors to choose from.

I thought of two of my teachers, Howard Zinn and Staughton Lynd, historians and activists, who, while I was in college, taught me with the caring and patience of older brothers. I thought of Charles Merrill, a man who has made good use of the money his father (of Merrill Lynch) left him, by giving a lot of it away; some of it to me when I was a poor student, without even a pair of warm shoes. I thought of Marian Wright Edelman (of the Children's Defense Fund), whose work helping children benefits our whole society.

For a while all four of these people merged. But then just behind them rose the face of my poetry teacher, the woman I always said, behind her back of course, dressed like Henry VIII. Because she wore huge Russian-inspired hats made of fur, substantial boots and black-and-green clockwork tights. Muriel Rukeyser. Poet, rebel, visionary, life force.

It was the clearest I had been able to see her since I'd known her at Sarah Lawrence, and she looked nothing like she had — pale and weakened — in the years, much later, before she died. She looked ruddy and mirthful, and she was laughing. At Sarah Lawrence she had sent my very first poems to The New Yorker to be published. They were rejected; and just up from rural Georgia, I had no idea what The New Yorker was. But that she'd done it, instantly, on reading them, endeared her to me.

> Later she would find an agent for me and introduce me to one of the great loves of my life, Langston Hughes. She would be the godmother to my first book of poems, as Hughes would be godfather to my first short story.

These two are prime examples of "the American race" I refer to in the dedication of my new book.

With much gratitude and emotion in my heart I began to send metta to Muriel.

May you be happy, I said.

I am happy, she said.

May you be safe, I said.

I am safe, she said.

May you be peaceful, I said.

I am peaceful, she said.

May you have ease of well-being, I said.

I have ease of well-being, she said.

May you be joyful, I added, just to be sure to cover everything.

I am joyful, she said. As if to say:

I'm in heaven, of course I'm joyful.

Heaven. Now there's a thought. Nothing has ever been able, ultimately, to convince me we live anywhere else. And that heaven, more a verb than a noun, more a condition than a place, is all about leading with the heart in whatever broken or ragged state it's in, stumbling forward in faith until, from time to time, we miraculously find our way. Our way to forgiveness, our way to letting go, our way to understanding, compassion and peace.

It is laughter, I think, that bubbles up at last and says, "Ho, I think we are there." And that "there" is always here.

Top of Page

Some links to meditation sites:

• More about meditation from Jack Kornfield.
• Instruction for the Practice of Zazen (zazen refers to the practice of sitting cross-legged in concentrated meditation)
• The Daily Zen Journal gives free tips on how to deepen your own daily practice and includes talks and readings. is a site created by the Zen Mountain Monastery on how to meditate.
• The Four Foundations of Mindfulness are detailed by Peter Carlson, a psychotherapist and meditator.
• Meditation cushions and other aids.
  
  

Return to Home Page

Jan's training and experience expanded

Jan Fable
203.255-5055
Fairfield, Connecticut

If you want to contact me, you can email me at JFable at forhealing.org
(There's no link to avoid spam)

I Home I Back to Articles and Poetry I Jan Fable's Training & Experience I Individual & Couples Therapy I Intervention Services I
I Thought Field Therapy I Thought Field Therapy Explained I Personal & Career Coaching I Book Reviews I
I Questions & Answers I More Articles and Poetry I Why Psychotherapy? I Helpful Links I