Cultivating Meditative Hearing - Deep Listening

     "Meditative awareness is more akin to hearing well than seeing clearly. When looking intently at a visual object, we tend to aim a narrow beam of attention onto something outside of ourselves. But when we listen mindfully, we open our awareness in all directions in order to receive the sounds that pour in. Just as one develops a meditative ability to discern ever subtler tones and harmonies in this polyphony, so one can refine an empathic ability to detect ever finer nuances in the other's plea. As the deafening chatter of self-centeredness subsides, one recovers that silence wherein one hears more sharply the cries of the world."

        Batchelor S. “Living with the devil. A meditation on good and evil.” Riverhead Books, NY, 2004. www.stephenbatchelor.org

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A Crack in Everything - That's How the Light Get's In

     “When we reach our limit, if we aspire to know that place fully – which is to say that we aspire to neither indulge nor repress – a hardness in us will dissolve. We will be softened by the sheer force of whatever energy arises – the energy of anger, the energy of disappointment, the energy of fear. When it’s not solidified in one direction or another, that very energy pierces us to the heart, and it opens us. This is the discovery of egolessness. Reaching our limit is like finding a doorway to sanity and the unconditional goodness of humanity, rather than meeting an obstacle or a punishment.”

       Chodron P. “When things fall apart. Heart advice for difficult times.” Shambhala, Boston, 2000. 

Listen in Stillness to Silence

     “... learn to listen to the inner harmony of things ...”         Jon Kabat-Zinn

      “... wisdom cannot be told, but it is to be found by each of us in the direct experience of silence, stillness ...”           Joan Halifax

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Pain is a Pain & Teacher

     Pain during a meditation retreat is relatively easy to see as part of one's practice. Such pain, which can be amazingly severe, at least tends to end at the end of each sitting.
     Right now I'm not on retreat, yet have been experiencing frequent unpredictable jabs of severe lancinating pain, up to 5 seconds at a time, over a two-week period from piriformis syndrome (compression of the sciatic nerve by the psoas muscle). Recently there have been hours of this same pain elicited during the last half of each in-breath - a real attention-getter! Sleep has been compromised. It's difficult not to guard, especially "in the grip of pain," but once again I've come to directly realize that guarding actually intensifies & prolongs pain! The recommended exercises have not helped so far.
     The most helpful thing has been to accommodate to the pain - to accept it as a temporary visitor, knowing that everything changes according to its own nature. And if this were to remain as a permanent guest, I would learn to accommodate to that too. What better alternative is there?
     When pain is not a signal to look after disease or injury, but a harmless "guest", whose departure time is indeterminate, one has to give up behaving like a B&B owner with OCD. We must learn to stop "crying wolf" internally and externally! While Acute pain = injury & risk of death = a call to immediate effective action; Chronic pain = just another guest in our large home. We need to accept the guest, accommodate him, but let him look after his own affairs while we live our lives.

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The Middle Way Home

     “For we are not angels but men and women of clay. All of us will be pulled off-center, we will be shaped by both disaster and delight. So we need to learn the art of returning home, returning to center, letting go of all that binds us too tightly to both fear and hope, letting go of our attachment to both doom and reward, letting go of all that leaves us wobbling. When we learn to return home in this way, we will return bearing gifts.”

       Simmons P. Learning to fall. The blessings of an imperfect life. Bantam Books, NY, 2000.

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Perceptions of Time

     “If eternity includes all time, then we are living in eternity now. But we must widen our angle of view enough to see it. When we do, we feel in touch with life’s unchanging essence, the bedrock beneath the flowing stream. We enter the eternal life beneath the surface of this passing one.

     Shamans and nuclear physicists know that our limited everyday understanding of time is a result of our particular cognitive and perceptual faculties. Other forms of consciousness and thus other descriptions of reality are possible. But you don’t have to beat a drum or use a particle accelerator to see multiple periods of time at once. Simply look into the heavens on a clear night. Looking at a star one hundred light-years away, you see it as it was one hundred years ago. In the same moment you’re seeing the more distant star next to it as it was one thousand years ago. You’re not just looking into the past but into multiple pasts. Then look into the blackness between stars (you really need a radio telescope to do this) and you can look back 15 billion years to the beginning of the universe, detecting there the residue of the big bang, a uniform background hiss reaching us from the edge of all that is.”

       Simmons P. Learning to fall. The blessings of an imperfect life. Bantam Books, NY, 2000.

MBSR has More Breadth & Depth than Assumed

     "The overall goal is to enable clients to relate in a non-identificatory and flexible way to experience ...  The ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy) model holds that psychopathology is due to relating to thoughts as literal truths (cognitive fusion), as well as maladaptive attempts to escape from or control unwanted experience (experiential avoidance). The strategies in ACT include metaphors, experiential work, exposure in the service of valued goals, as well as traditional mindfulness exercises to promote non-judgmental and non-reactive awareness of internal experiences."

       Vollestad J, Nielsen MB, Nielsen GH. Mindfulness- and acceptance-based interventions for anxiety disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Br J Clin Psychol 2012; 51(3): 239-60.

      All of the above is included in Jon Kabat-Zinn's MBSR, particularly if the facilitator makes skillful use of the language of Western psychology. The components of MBSR form an organic whole, the purpose of which is identical to Buddhist practice ie awakening. The effectiveness of any of these practices is inversely proportional to how goal-oriented (to self-regulation***) the participant remains, regardless of what brought them to the practice. See also: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/01/intention-shifts.html

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