Decision Fatigue

Lately, I’ve been connecting with a feeling I’m not super used to: decision fatigue. In my pre-woods life, while of course I experienced stress and overwhelm at times, my mode of operation as an organized-planner type, afforded me the ability to be pretty darn decisive. My systems were well honed, and I thrived on the routine I created for myself. But now that we’ve embarked on this new off-grid living journey, and are invested in slow-growing a rustic mindfulness practice center and wanting to encourage others to join us, the learning curve for what we’re doing is steep. I find myself maxing out regularly when confronted with the plethora of decisions needing to be made, and having such little practical experience and/or knowledge base on how to make them. 

I reckon that many people face the feeling of decision fatigue on a regular basis, even daily. It makes a lot of sense. There can so many decisions one must make in the course of a day! 

Here’s what I’m practicing right now, when it comes to decision fatigue (DF):

• Noticing. The first really important thing when it comes to anything really, is to take notice of what’s really going on. When I can pause and check in with myself when I feel frazzled, it helps me to create space so that I can see things more clearly. Simple recognition that Okay, I’m feeling decision fatigue right now, allows me to shine light on my present moment experience in a way that opens up some wiggle room for me to make a conscious choice about how to proceed, vs operating blindly and frantically.
• Befriending. After noticing, comes befriending. I consider this an advanced level skill to develop, and one that is well worth the effort. It never ceases to amaze me how the act of befriending entirely transforms a situation. Whole-hearted self-befriending is one of the most potent practices I’ve experienced. It’s a game changer. And it takes ongoing, consistent practice. 
• Shifting gears. Knowing when & how to shift energetic gears is crucial when it comes to self-care. Sometimes when I’m in DF overload, I find that what I am most in need of is a gear shift. And maybe that means I need to go and take a nap, or maybe it means I need to invest my time in doing an easy activity that doesn’t require a whole lot of brain power. Or maybe it means I turn on some music, and dance it out. Sometimes the best self-care involves knowing when to shift gears, and then, ya know, actually doing it. 
• Deep breathing. I’m not sure there’s anything I’ve encountered that isn’t beneficially aided by the practice of deep breathing. Breathing from my belly, so that my stomach rises and falls noticeably on my inhale & exhale, and not just from the shallow upper register of my lungs, offers an immediate surge of more easeful energy into my body & mind. I’m not saying it magically whisks away the feeling of DF overload, but it does promote a felt sense of groundedness, which I can gratefully lean into for support. 

On Not Gaining or Attaining

In my over 20-years of being a group facilitator and program director for my home sangha Be Here Now, which has been meeting every Monday night since the fall of 2002, I don’t recall ever hearing from someone that what prompted them to join our group (whether once, twice, or on-goingly) was that their life was going so amazingly well, and they had such an abundance of free time, that they decided to have a go at meditation just for the fun of it. I trust there are folks out there who fit this bill, but I haven’t met any of them. Also, I reckon this group of people is hella small.

What I’m saying is, most people (myself super included) approach the practice of sitting meditation with some kind of attainment-mind in active pursuit. We come to the cushion, or to a group of people on cushions, with a goal in mind. Maybe we want to be less stressed out, or feel more at ease in our own skin, or maybe we’re looking to heal after a breakup or the loss of a loved one. Maybe we feel lost, confused and/or lonely and we want to feel less lost, confused, and/or lonely. Or maybe we know we’re looking for something but we have no idea what that something is. Whatever it is that propels us to the cushion and/or to join a sangha, it’s a normal, natural part of the deal to start out with the idea of wanting to attain something, whatever that something is for us.

A bit of backstory to this post, before I proceed. I was inspired to craft a blog post on non-attainment based on a couple of well-paired readings I happened to engage with the other morning. The first was from Suzuki Roshi, in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: “If you make your best effort just to continue your practice with your whole mind and body, without gaining ideas, then whatever you do will be true practice.” The second was from Thich Nhat Hanh, in Your True Home: The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh: “The contemplation on non-attainment is every important.”

Okay, so, hearing these two Zen masters speak about not gaining or attaining, where does this leave us as meditation practitioners who likely started down the path we’re on wanting to gain & attain something? Whelp, here’s what I think the thing is. The thing is, while yes, we start out wanting to gain or attain something, at some point along the way, if we want to be a meditator and an active, involved sangha member for the long-haul, we must learn how to transform out of our grasping mind and into a state of sitting and showing up just to sit and show up. Chances are, if we start out meditating with a grasping mind and proceed to stay in our grasping mind, we’ll eventually stop sitting all together, because the thing we’re grasping for either never comes to fruition or comes to fruition but not in the way we wanted/expected it to or comes to fruition in the way we wanted it to but only for a short burst of time.

Separate Self

Spurred by a free online summit I’m participating in this week, entitled the Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Summit, I’m feeling called to dip a toe in the waters of what it means to operate in the world as though we were a separate self. 

Yesterday, as part of the summit, I enjoyed watching an interview with Dr. Dan Siegel. In the session, Dr. Siegel touched briefly on what he referred to as “the lethal lie of the separate self.” As a practitioner in the mindfulness tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh (who is often referred to as Thay by his students, which means ‘teacher’ in Vietnamese), I then thought of Thay’s teaching: We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.

So, what does it mean to think we have a separate self? What is the lethal lie or the illusion and what does it matter? Here are some things that come up for me around this area of investigation. 

Separate self = limited self

Limited self = limited world-view

Limited world-view = Friction & tension between the nature of reality and our experience of life

Now, I feel it’s relatively safe to say that when we’re operating from the viewpoint of having a separate self, most of us have no idea that’s what we’re doing, let alone what the ramifications are. In my way of thinking, when I’m navigating the world as though I were a separate self, I regard myself as being this static entity that doesn’t change (and isn’t supposed to!). I regard my way of thinking to be the right & only way of thinking and my actions to be the right & only way to do things. I am unable to see myself as I truly am, which is a collage of an endless parade of causes & conditions, joys & sorrows, influences & experiences; an entity that is perpetually part of a steady flow of impermanence. 

Meditation Isn’t For Everyone

I feel there’s something worth saying: Sitting meditation is not for everyone. In certain circles, I think there’s an underlying belief that meditation is a universally peaceful & pleasant activity that is inherently designed to meet anyone & everyone where they’re at. In my opinion, this way of thinking about meditation is not at all correct. 

Even our society at large is starting to adopt this kind of view. Scads of advertisements exist showcasing blissed-out looking skinny, pretty, white women sitting in a cross-legged meditation pose atop a mountain peak, or amid other romanticized settings, to help sell a variety of different products & services. 

This past June, my husband and I attended an event that featured a panel of speakers at the University of Montana. Among the speakers was Father Greg Boyle, who is the founder of one of the largest gang rehabilitation organizations, based in Los Angeles, CA in the U.S, called Homeboy Industries. One of the things he said that deeply resonated for me was: “Just because it works doesn’t mean it’s helpful, but if it helps, it will always work.”

Here’s how I would apply what Father Boyle said to the practice of sitting meditation: sitting meditation will only work if we find it helpful. There’s a way to sit on a chair or cushion and practice meditation and have a nightmare of a time. There’s also a way for the simple, basic practice of deep mindful breathing to not be a grounding, soothing place to hang out. Just because sitting meditation can work to give rise to qualities such as ease, spaciousness, and a genuine sense of connection for some folks, doesn’t mean everyone will find it helpful. 

But aye, here comes the rub. While everything I just said is true, it’s also true that if you’ve tried meditation and found it to be too boring or too difficult or too whatever, you MAY need to give yourself more time with it and/or find proper guidance to help support your efforts. I’m emphasizing MAY in that sentence in order to further drive home my point. I think we need to be careful about how we frame the practice of sitting meditation and I also think that people need to have certain information up front going into it. Sitting meditation is a challenging undertaking. It is not easy. Especially when starting out, in can be incredibly, and sometimes painfully, uncomfortable, on a number of different levels. 

Taking Refuge In Our In-Breath

In the catch-all closet inside the tearoom – here in Solidity Hamlet at Deer Park Monastery – is a stack of past editions of the Mindfulness Bell magazine. I’ve been enjoying reading them. The most recent one I read was the summer edition of 2004. In it are two articles I especially enjoyed, one from Thay (aka Thich Nhat Hanh), entitled: Taking Refuge in Your In-Breath and one from Dharma teacher Larry Ward, entitled: Be a Real Human Being. 

My favorite lines from Thay’s article:

“If you want to show your kindness to Thay and the Sangha, take refuge in your in-breath and become fully yourself. Take refuge in your steps and right in that very moment you will have solidity and freedom, you will have the capacity of getting in touch with the wonders of life…

“...We know that the first expression of enlightenment by our ancestral teacher Linji was, “Oh I see, there is not much in the teaching of my teacher.” If you can tell that to Thay, you are a good student. Thay only teaches breathing in and breathing out.”

My favorite lines from Larry’s article:

“If you want to do something with your life, be a real human being. If you want to do something for your children, your grandchildren, be a real human being. If you want to do something for America, be a real human being. In everything you need to be a real human being. And it’s already inside of us; it’s in every cell of our body. However, we have to be trained to develop it, cultivate it, and to apply it. This is one of the Buddha’s fundamental insights - that one has to be trained to live deeply. Most of us assume you have to be trained to be a doctor or a nurse or a pianist or a schoolteacher or a cabdriver or a cook. The idea that we have to be trained to live profoundly, seems to have never crossed anybody’s mind! You have to be trained to live. It’s one of the Buddha’s fundamental insights, and that training is lifelong.”

For me, these two passages compliment each other very nicely. As a student who dearly loves and respects my teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, his line prompting me to take refuge in my in-breath and to become fully myself as an act of kindness towards him and my sangha caught and held my attention. I’ve been reflecting on that line in particular for a couple of weeks now. And how is it that I can become fully myself? I can be a real human being. 

Morning Meal Verse

Meet my morning meal verse that I recite each day when I eat breakfast (above).

I regard connecting with and strengthening – on-goingly and on the daily – the quality of gratitude in my life as a top priority, and a fundamental element of staying well-balanced and well-rooted in what matters most.

I shorthand the above verse before I eat lunch and dinner to simply:

This food is the gift of the whole universe, the earth, the sky, and much hard work.

 

On Interbeing

If you’re like me, you appreciate having concrete ways in which to bring the practice of mindfulness and the teachings of the dharma to life in your daily activities. For example, if I encounter teachings about impermanence or compassion or gratitude or true happiness and I don’t have ways – or develop ways – in which to actually practice impermanence, compassion, gratitude, and true happiness, then I situate myself at the great risk of having the teachings just be ideas that sound good but never launch off the page to truly inform my everyday thoughts, speech, and actions.

Interbeing is another example of something that sounds good. And if I don’t delve more into it; become curious about what it really means and how to put it into play; ask myself questions; form a relationship with it, I’m side-stepping the real wisdom and possibility for insight that exists within it. If I’m like: yeah yeah, interbeing, I get it, we’re all connected, blah blah blah, then I’ve clearly missed the mark.

Here are some musings that have stirred up for me recently on the dharmic thread of the insight of interbeing:

Living with Chronic Pain

I just spent an hour or so crafting an email to a young woman looking for some support that I was connected with through a mutual friend. A young woman who lives with chronic pain and has tried using mindfulness as a tool to work with better managing her pain levels, with little success.

Knowing how best to respond to these sort of inquiries has been a challenge for me in the past. In my view, trying to take up meditation for the first time while in the midst of great difficulty (physical or otherwise) is just extremely difficult, if not near impossible. But I wound up finding an angle to share from that I feel pretty good about. Here is the email in its entirety, in hopes that it may offer benefit to other fellow folks who live with chronic pain as well.

Dear ________,

My apologies for the delay in getting back to you. Thanks for writing and feeling comfortable to share with me a bit about what you’re going through and your experience with mindfulness in relation to living with chronic pain.

I myself have a nerve condition called CRPS, which I developed when I was in my late 20’s (I’m now 40-years-old). I was on meds for a number of years which, as you said, took the edge off. I also walked with a cane for a few years as a result of my pain and challenges in moving. I’ve been off my meds now for a few years and only use my cane once in a great while, on my high pain days. I’m on disability for my condition but I am able to work very part time.

What you shared in regards to when your mind quiets it then floods with emotion/grief makes so much sense, I can totally understand that based on my own experience back in the beginning of my journey with living with chronic pain. Meditation is not a one-size fits all approach – and especially when it comes to living with chronic pain, I think it’s important to be aware that meditation can bring up more discomfort in our mind than it helps to alleviate in the body.

I can share from my own experience a couple of things that have been incredibly helpful – and I’ll share too that both of these things took me a long while to really “get” and truly understand in a way that I was able to benefit from them and experience a reduction in my physical pain levels.

1. Mind/Body Connection. As a mindfulness practitioner since my early 20’s, I was grateful to have some background in the practices of mindfulness and sitting meditation before the onset of my illness and pain AND it also took me a long while to really see how closely and intrinsically linked the mind & body are. After my injury (which is what led to my nerve condition) as time went on, I saw more and more clearly that the more I generated stories of thought about how bad the pain was, how awful it was that I’d be in this pain forever, how I’d never be able to do X Y Z again, and so on, the more these thoughts and stories amped up my physical pain. As soon as I started thinking about how bad the pain was and started running with that story, my pain was immediately worse. So a big game changer for me with my pain levels had to do with making friends with my body and with my pain when it kicked up – prior to making friends with my body, I treated it like an enemy with which to battle and fight against. I would literally say (internally) to my body: I hate you, I hate this, NO! And this fight mode increased my pain, every time. So I learned to start making friends with my body and my pain – when I was unable to do something I wanted to do, when I was bed ridden with pain, I would say to myself: It’s okay body, I’m here for you, I’m going to take good care of you. And this befriending process changed my experience with pain almost right away, because I wasn’t adding to the fury of it by tensing up and hating and fighting against my own body. I would also put my hands on the high pain area and send it kindness through light touch, helping to care for my body. And as hard as it oftentimes was, I would smile to my body when my pain was unbearable. These friendly approaches to my body were very helpful and an important part of learning how to better manage my pain.

 

2. The Art of Resting. Gosh this one took me a hella long time to embody. Friends who have known me for a long time will often ask me what changed in regards to my condition, as they saw how bad it used to be for me, walking with a pain and being incredibly limited in movement with high pain levels and now I’m at the point where no one would know I’m someone who lives with chronic pain and physical limitations. And the answer I give them is this: the greatest thing that has helped my condition is that I’ve learned the vital importance and power of the art of resting. It used to be that I fought against resting tooth and nail – No! I shouldn’t be resting, I should be doing something more important & productive!! Resting means I’m lazy and selfish and and and!!! Despite what my body was telling me very clearly, I would rally against resting, trying to push through with the no pain no gain sort of approach (which is just death and destruction to those of us living with chronic pain). And early on, even when I was laying down (because I had no choice but to lay down because my pain was so bad) I certainly wasn’t resting – my body was laying down but my mind was super spinning and fighting and hating the fact that I was in pain and laying down in the middle of the day. So for me, I learned that the art of resting involves resting both body & mind. It became absolutely necessary for me to learn how to rest without feeling guilty about it; without feeling like I should be doing something else. It took me a lot of practice – and it was worth every bit of the challenges I had learning how to do it. For me still currently, I regard resting/napping as my super hero power. I am able to do quite a bit with my time these days and it’s largely because I diligently manage and balance my time every single day in between activity and rest. I put a great deal of importance on the art of resting in my life. And I regard resting not as selfish but actually as one of the most altruistic acts I can do. Self-care directly translates to my ability to help care for others. When I’m miserable, so is my husband, so are my friends when they’re around me. Resting is what gives me ongoing strength and fuel to keep doing the things I am still able to do, even though what I can do is in some ways very different than what my pre-injury self could do.

Additionally, I will share the importance of finding/appreciating/investing in activities we are still able to do. Cultivating joy is so important – so trying to activate energy in the direction of the things we can still do vs. what we can no longer do was really important for me. I have had many different kinds of gratitude practices I’d done over the years too and have gotten so much benefit from strengthening my gratitude muscle – I have a daily and active practice of connecting with gratitude and it deeply enriches my life and my relationship with myself and the world around me. Perhaps something fun for you to do is something I’ve done in the past where I had a gratitude buddy to share with once a week or once every 2-weeks – so we checked in with each other and each shared our recent gratitudes, with maybe a little commentary about why we were grateful for the things we mentioned.

I’m a big proponent of starting small to work big, as I like to call it. Starting with small small super doable steps sets us up for success when it comes to bringing on board anything new in the way of change work/growth work. And I would encourage this approach with meditation too, if that is something you are interested in cultivating in your life. Please don’t feel like you have to sit for some long hellish amount of time in order to do it right or that you have to sit in some particular position. If you do want to start a meditation practice, I would suggest you start with 2-minutes. And be in a position that is comfortable for you, or as comfortable as you can get. It might be laying down. It might be sitting on your couch. Set a timer for 2-min and see if during that 2-min you can offer yourself kindness and practice to enjoy your in-breath and out-breath for just a breath or two. If silence is too much for 2-min, put on some ambient music you enjoy and have that accompany you for the 2-min, to help your mind settle. If the 2-min feels doable, continue sitting (or laying) for 2-min maybe 3-5 days a week and then feel things out for yourself – maybe you feel ready to increase to 4 or 5-min after a couple of weeks, and maybe not. The point is to start with a really doable amount of time in sitting meditation and not to set goals that are near impossible to stick with – consistency is more important than the length of time you sit for. There are some meditation apps I’ve heard great things about too that might be helpful – Insight Timer is one of them. Smiling Mind and Stop, Breathe & Think are others I’ve heard good things about. These are also all free, or have free options involved with them. 10% Happier might also be worth looking into (which is an app and podcast). Having guided meditations (and keeping them short) can be helpful.

I hope some of this was helpful. Please know I’m happy to chat more with you and I’m here if you simply want to connect with another sister living with chronic pain, which can be helpful in and of itself, as those without direct experience with chronic pain, while often well-intentioned, can only understand so much and I’ve found that friends/family can say things that really show how little they get it (and how could they?!).

With care,
Nicole

 

New study about mindfulness apps

There I was in my car, on the way to visit a hospice patient yesterday morning, when I stumbled across a DJ on the radio talking about meditation. He was chatting up the findings of a recent study about mindfulness apps and cell phone games, declaring, in his own words, that participants in the study who meditated felt worse the more they meditated, whereas the game players felt better and more relaxed. His conclusion: playing games on your cell phone will leave you feeling relaxed and meditation is over-rated.

Um…what?

I decided to look up the study. Not only am I disappointed with the DJ’s account of the study but I am also unimpressed with the study itself, as it fails to take into account actual meditation/mindfulness practitioners. The study focuses instead on newbies to mindfulness and gives them only an app by which to learn from and practice with.

To be clear, I have nothing against cell phone games. However, I also find little benefit in playing the comparison game, as in: Digital games may beat mindfulness apps at relieving stress, new study shows, which is the name of an article I found when looking up the study.

In my view, there can be benefits to using the mindfulness apps and there can be benefits of playing cell phone games. Why they need to be compared and judged better/worse, I don’t know.

What I do know is that while I am a big proponent of teaching & using mindfulness in a secular fashion – even though for me personally it’s a spiritual path – there are ways to approach mindfulness that can be more harmful than helpful, when it comes to laypeople wielding it around with little understanding and experience. There is such a thing as over-secularizing, where mindfulness is stripped down to the fast-food approach to living. When mindfulness is used as a gimmick to reduce stress in acute situations, I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of potential for benefit.

To experience the fruits of mindfulness and/or meditation – such as ease and relaxation – it must become an active, engaged, and ongoing practice. When comparing mindfulness apps to digital games to see which has the power to relax more people after work, it makes total sense to me that the participants felt more stress relief after playing a game. People who are approaching mindfulness or meditation with a quick-fix mentality are going to be disheartened with it in short order. There’s a reason most people do not stick with meditation as a mainstay in their daily lives. It’s freakin hard. And it takes a number of things that most of us are not very interested or invested in, such as: patience, self-reflection, diligence, will-power, openness, and an ability to be with our own self, without distracting or distancing our attention from the here and now.

Most of us have no idea how to spend time with our self. We’re not comfortable in our own skin. And if we’re not comfortable in our own skin, then of course being tossed into a mindfulness app just for the sake of a study has the great potential to produce a less than ideal outcome.

Mindfulness and the practice of meditation is not a quick-fix sort of deal. It’s not even a long-term fix sort of deal. Mindfulness and meditation aren’t about fixing what’s “broken” in our lives. The daily practices of mindfulness and the practice of sitting meditation are about being with what is happening in the here and now – and once we can be with it, then we can start the work of understanding, accepting, and embracing.

Please do not make the same mistake as the morning shock jock made on our local radio station yesterday, concluding that meditation is bunk. If you’re truly interested in enfolding meditation or mindfulness into your life, it’s worth finding a sangha or a qualified teacher or, at the least, highly respected books or online resources in which to learn and get support from.

There’s nothing wrong with approaching mindfulness in a secular fashion, using it as a possible tool to reduce stress and feelings of overwhelm, just be sure you’re not looking for quick-fix solutions to long-term or ongoing challenges, as that has a high likelihood for being a recipe for disaster.

Beginner’s Guidance

Last week at our local sangha, affectionately named Be Here Now (BHN), we offered a beginner’s guide to the practice, as part of our regular evening’s format.

Here’s what our format was and what we covered:

• Start: 7:30pm
• Introduction to sitting meditation, 5-10 min (Nicole)
• Guided sitting meditation, 10 min (Amy)
• Intro to walking meditation, 2-3 min (Amy)
• Walking meditation, 10 min
• History of BHN & Introduction to our practice tradition, 5 min (Nicole)
• Secular vs. spiritual practice, 5 min (Nicole)
• Introduce and explain the usage of the Five and the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings, 5-10 min (Linds)
• Intro to sharing circle (Nicole)
• Open sharing circle
• Closing circle
• End: 8:45pm

My prep notes:

Introduction to Sitting Meditation:

To listen to the audio file of this first portion of our evening, please click here.

Here in a few minutes, Amy is going to lead us in a guided seated meditation session and offer us some instruction during our sit tonight – but before we do that, I’d like to offer a little bit of instruction on posture for sitting meditation. Here at BHN we like to emphasize physical comfort when we sit and we like to encourage folks to simply sit in any way they feel works for them. And while that is still the case, I’d like to offer some additional guidance for those of us who may be looking to delve more into the development of a sitting meditation practice. If we resonate with the practice of sitting meditation and really want to enfold it into our daily/weekly routine, posture is an important component to address. When we sit in meditation, it’s encouraged that we sit upright and solid but not “at attention.” So we’re looking to find that balance where we can be both upright and relaxed; not stiff or rigid or locked in place. To sit upright, we want to have three points of contact. If we’re sitting on a cushion, that means our sit bones on the zafu (round cushion) and both knees on the zabutan (square mat) – and if our knees don’t touch the mat, then we want to support them with other small pillows or blankets, as we don’t want our knees to hover. If we’re sitting in a chair, that means our sit bones on the chair and both feet flat on the floor – and we want to have our backs not leaning against the chairback. So in both cases, we want to sit on the front 1/3 of our cushion or chair, if we’re physically able. And of course if you need back support then please use it. It’s also important to mention that our cushions and chairs are sans inferiority/superiority complex, so they happily reside together in the sangha. There is no better or less better seating apparatus when it comes to cushions and chairs, they are on the same sitting field. So please don’t get caught in the false view that sitting on a cushion will usher you someplace that a chair cannot.

Our eyes can be open or closed and our hands can be relaxed in our lap or on our knees. If our eyes are closed, we want to try to relax all the muscles around each eye and in our face. If our eyes are open, we can keep our gaze pointing downward, about 2-3 feet in front of us. We want to try to keep our shoulders relaxed and not scrunched up and tight.

Developing proper posture when sitting in meditation supports us in a couple of key ways. When we sit upright, with both solidity and relaxation, it allows our belly to have the space it needs to fully expand and contract, which is necessary in order for us to breathe deeply from our diaphragm. This sort of posturing also helps us to start training the mind to quiet and settle down. It’s much easier to still the body than it is to still the mind. And in order to start working on stilling the mind, we need to cultivate some discipline and support in our physical body. If our body is too loose and too relaxed, our mind will have a much harder time in becoming settled and concentrated. If our posture is lazy, our mind will be lazy too. So we start in our body, developing good posture for meditation, and over time – slowly slowly – our mental chatter will start to settle down.

When we first start sitting in meditation, it’s very common to feel as though our mental chatter actually picks up when we sit down on the cushion. But really what’s happening is that we are creating enough stillness to put on conscious display how active our minds really are. So it’s not that our minds are becoming more active necessarily, it’s simply a matter of noticing it in a way that we’re not used to.

Our root teacher Thich Nhat Hanh (often referred to as Thay, which means teacher in Vietnamese) says that we must learn the correct spirit of sitting. In an interview with what was formally called Shambhala Sun magazine, Thay offered that sitting should be pleasant and that we must learn how to sit without fighting (January 2012). So when we sit, we practice to simply sit and enjoy our sitting 100%. To be gentle and kind with our self in body and mind. If we sit in such a way where it feels like hard, taxing labor, Thay goes so far as to say that we are wasting our time in meditation. He said: the problem isn’t whether to sit or not to sit, but how to sit.

So how do we sit? What are we doing when we’re in meditation? Well, to start, what we are NOT doing is trying to wrestle our mental chattering into submission. And if we have the goal of sitting without the presence of any mental chatter – if we think having zero thoughts is a thing – we’re in trouble, because that’s impossible. We’re human and mental chattering is part of the deal. What we’re looking to do instead during sitting meditation is to redirect our focus and attention onto something else other than the spinnings of our thoughts. So our practice is simple but not at all easy: it’s to notice when our mind is trailing off into the past or future and to gently, with kindness, invite it to reconnect with the sensations of our breathing or the sensations of our body and sensory experience. And when it wanders off again, which it will, we practice to notice and return again. Notice and return, notice and return. This is the practice of sitting meditation. It’s a mental training ground. And it takes practice. It takes ongoing, diligent, continual practice. Our mind is a muscle and the practice of sitting meditation is rather akin to going to the gym to strengthen our physical muscles.

So, now we will segway into practicing all of this together as a sangha (which means spiritual community in Buddhism), and Amy will offer us some guidance along the way.