Rox Does Yoga

Yoga, Wellness, and Life

Quote of the Day: Compassion Meditation April 29, 2014

Filed under: meditation — R. H. Ward @ 3:17 pm
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Today I wanted to present a quote from the book I’ve been reading. I myself haven’t had any time to try to practice this meditation, but I wanted to make sure I had it saved here on the blog for future reference. It sounds like a beautiful practice. Maybe reading about it will help someone else out there.

“So… let us meditate on compassion today. Begin by visualizing a person who is acutely suffering, someone who is in pain or is in a very unfortunate situation. For the first three minutes of the meditation, reflect on that individual’s suffering in a more analytic way–think about their intense suffering and the unfortunate state of that person’s existence. After thinking about that person’s suffering for a few minutes, next, try to relate that to yourself, thinking, ‘that individual has the same capacity for experiencing pain, joy, happiness, and suffering that I do.’ Then, try to allow your natural response to arise–a natural feeling of compassion towards that person. Try to arrive at a conclusion: thinking how strongly you wish for that person to be free from that suffering. And resolve that you will help that person to be relieved from their suffering. Finally, place your mind single-pointedly on that kind of conclusion or resolution, and for the last few minutes of the meditation try to simply generate your mind in a compassionate or loving state.”

– His Holiness the Dalai Lama, quoted in The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living, page 129

 

Links: How to Meditate Daily October 8, 2013

Filed under: meditation,yoga — R. H. Ward @ 12:39 pm
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A few weeks back, a friend of mine shared this link: How to Meditate Daily. My friend was excited to find instructions for meditation that didn’t make it sound overly complicated. This is what I keep trying to tell people about meditation – it’s not complicated! Also, if you think thoughts while you’re meditating, you are not doing it wrong! Thoughts happen. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just sit and breathe.

(Just a reminder: yoga class tonight! 7:30 pm, Wellness on Park, hope to see you there!)

 

Gayatri Mantra April 30, 2013

Filed under: meditation,music — R. H. Ward @ 1:51 pm
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I really enjoyed listening to this version of the Gayatri Mantra during savasana at the end of last night’s yoga class, so I thought I’d share it with you:

Here’s a transliteration of the Hindu text, which is drawn from the Rig Veda:

Om bhur bhuvah svah
tat-savitur varenyam
bhargo devasya dhimahi
dhiyo yo nah pracodayat

I looked around for a few different translations. Wikipedia has several nice ones, but they’re all male-centric, referring to the creator deity as a “he”. Here’s a non-gendered one I’ve read before:

Embracing Earth, Heaven and Beyond
The sacred source is revealed
Evoking the resplendent flame
The all-pervading light venerates us all.
(From The Secret Power of Yoga by Nischala Joy Devi, page 108.)

Devi actually connects the mantra to Gayatri as a female creator and the mother of the Vedas (see pages 107-116). Devi writes, “From Divine Light, she creates all life.” I like thinking of the mantra in that spirit (especially since I used it for savasana during a prenatal yoga class!).

And another, simpler, translation that I quite like:

Let us meditate on the light of the sun which represents God, and may our thoughts be inspired by that divine light.
(From Sanskrit.org.)

 

Books: Happiness, by Matthieu Ricard March 15, 2012

Filed under: books,meditation,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 7:06 pm
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As a book on meditation, Mathieu Ricard’s Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill is the best of both worlds, presenting both a spiritual and a scientific perspective. Ricard left a promising career in biology and genetics to become a Buddhist monk, so he uniquely understands both perspectives and is fascinated by the scientific study of the brain and how meditation affects, on a biological level, the way we think. Happiness is at once a guide to how meditation can improve our lives and help us to become happier and a thorough description of why it works, written in language accessible to any reader.

In the first few chapters, Ricard opens the book with discussion of happiness in general: is happiness the purpose of life? What does it mean to be happy, and how do we recognize happiness when we have it? Can we actively cultivate happiness in our lives? Concluding that happiness is possible and that cultivating it is worthwhile, Ricard then considers the problem of suffering. How can we be happy when we suffer; further, how can compassionate beings be truly happy when faced with the suffering of others? Ricard tackles this question, presenting stories of those who have suffered true hardship and examining the root causes of suffering. While we cannot control the events that happen to us, we can always control our responses to those events, and here is the real key to being happy under any circumstance. Over several chapters, Ricard discusses how we can use meditation in order to overcome ego, negative thoughts, and disturbing emotions, the obstacles within ourselves that prevent us from being happy no matter what occurs.

Ricard speaks from his own and his teachers’ experience that when we can lessen the influence of the ego and negative thoughts and emotions, we feel more freedom and happiness in our lives. He then goes on to discuss happiness from the perspective of sociology, psychology, and psychiatry, citing laboratory studies of experienced meditators whose brains have been shown to function differently than ordinary people’s brains. Meditation over long periods literally changes brain chemistry, leading to great benefits in quality of life. Ricard as both a scientist and a talented writer, in these chapters and throughout the book, is able to describe a variety of scientific studies and their results in terms a layman can understand and appreciate.

In the later chapters, Ricard examines positive attributes like altruism, humility, and optimism, and describes how cultivating these attitudes can help us to be happier. He cites evidence that those who are kind, humble, and optimistic tend to be happier than those who are not. By modifying our behavior to act more altruistically in daily life, or by being aware of pessimistic thought patterns as they arise, we can begin to make progress toward increasing happiness.

In the book’s final chapters, Ricard addresses several difficult issues: appreciating versus wasting time, ethics and the dichotomy of good and evil, and how to be happy in the presence of death. Ricard’s wisdom truly shines in these chapters; his advice is inspirational, practical and uplifting. The concluding chapter rounds out the book by describing the challenges and great rewards of following a spiritual path. Ricard promises that with regular practice and dedication, we can each not only live happier lives but become kinder, wiser, and more compassionate. Developing these qualities can lead us, as it led Ricard, to a life of great meaning, freedom, and joy.

 

books: The Joy of Living, by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche December 20, 2011

Filed under: books,meditation — R. H. Ward @ 2:12 pm
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Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret & Science of Happiness is an excellent and informative book and a good practical manual for meditation. A wide variety of meditation techniques are discussed, in language that makes them accessible to even the most un-Buddhist of readers. Mingyur (Rinpoche is an honorific given to respected teachers) is a kind and encouraging teacher; his writing style is very natural and conversational, helping you feel as if he’s right there beside you to help along the way.

The book is divided into three main sections. Part One: The Ground begins by describing Mingyur’s early life and training in meditation and his journey toward overcoming anxiety. He’s an engaging storyteller, and it’s comforting to hear that even a monk who grew up meditating from childhood can still struggle with his mind. This section also discusses the connection between the ancient Buddhist practices of meditation and modern advances in neuroscience, physics, and biology. Raised in isolated monasteries, Mingyur is fascinated with Western science and has worked with many scientists to learn about the brain’s workings and the structure of the universe and compare them with the Buddhist understanding of the mind and reality. While interesting, this area was not as strong as other sections – these discussions could have benefited from a scientist coauthor to help refine and make specific Mingyur’s comparisons. However, Mingyur does make a good case for meditation as valuable and needed in the West, and his ideas here are well worth reading.

In Part Two: The Path and Part Three: The Fruit, Mingyur is at his best, carefully walking the reader through the basics of meditation. He provides a firm foundation for beginners, with examples from his own history as guidance. Beyond the basics, he details a variety of different meditation techniques that will appeal to new and experienced students alike. He asserts that it is the intention to meditate that is most important, not the actual time spent on it or whether your mind wanders off in the middle. Mingyur strives to make meditation available to everyone.

I began reading this book back in February 2011 and just finished it this month, but the long reading time is due to my own crazy schedule this year, not any failing of Mingyur’s. I’ve actually posted about this book on several other occasions because as I read I found his words so encouraging and insightful. I highly recommend this book to anyone hoping to begin or deepen a meditation practice.

 

Meditation and Emotions November 28, 2011

Filed under: meditation,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:39 pm
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We spent a lot of time last month talking about how yoga can help us deal with strong emotions. Meditation is another great tool we can use to work with and through strong emotions, and we can even use those emotions to strengthen and deepen a meditation practice. Positive emotions, such as love, compassion, forgiveness, and friendship, can naturally help to put us in a state of mind conducive to meditation. After all, these are the sorts of emotions we want to use our meditation practice to cultivate! On the other hand, there are negative emotions like fear, anger, sadness, jealousy, or shame that tend to weaken the mind and distract us from meditation. However, we cans till find ways to channel these emotions into something useful.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche advises us (in The Joy of Living, pp. 168-9) that with positive emotions, we can focus on both the object of the emotion and on the emotion itself: for example, if we’re experiencing love for a child, we can picture the child in our minds and concentrate on the feeling of love. The image of the child keeps us feeling love, while the feeling of love helps us to focus on the image – the emotion and its object serve to support each other in our meditation.

With negative emotions, though, its best to place our attention only on the emotion. If a coworker makes you angry, don’t picture your coworker: it’ll just make you more angry. Instead, rest your attention on the feeling of the anger. Try to detach it from its source; forget about your coworker’s stupid face and the extra work he dumped on you and just look at the anger. Don’t analyze the emotion, don’t try to hold onto it or block it or do anything with it – just observe the anger, by itself, separate from the person/event that caused you to feel that way. Observing the emotion on its own will probably serve to shrink it down, so that the anger won’t see as big or powerful as it did before (p. 169).

Looking at the anger, fear, sadness, or anxiety this way, we begin to see it for what it is: not an all-encompassing emotion, not an insurmountable obstacle, but just a series of images, sensations, and thoughts, and we can notice how other thoughts come along and interrupt the emotion easily. (For example, imagine a thought pattern like this: ANGRYANGRYANGRY hey let me email George ANGRYANGRY what’s for dinner tonight? ANGRYANGRYANGRY…) If we’re aware of those little interruptions, we can try to look for them, finding the spaces between the moments of anger and focusing on those instead of on the anger itself. In this way, we grant our emotions less power over us.

According to Rinpoche, there’s an old proverb that goes, “Peacocks eat poison, and the poison they eat is transformed into beautiful feathers” (170). Often we can’t help eating poison – unhappy evens, frustrations, and annoyances come into our lives every day and inspire strong emotions in us. But like the peacock, we can learn to use that poison to grow, and turn it into something lovely.

 

Okay, People, Monkeys Can Do It November 10, 2011

Filed under: meditation — R. H. Ward @ 12:51 pm
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Fascinating news today: Marmosets can meditate. Apparently researchers have been working with a technique of showing people what their brain waves look like when they meditate, to help people to recreate that state, and it worked for marmosets too – they were able to get the marmosets into a state of meditation, show them what their brain waves looked like, and then the marmosets could do it again. The marmosets want marshmallows to do it, but who cares? If we all gave ourselves a marshmallow after meditation practice, we’d still be doing ourselves way more good than harm.

 

Meditation: Minding the Gap October 28, 2011

Filed under: meditation,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:08 pm
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So I’m not making a lot of progress in reading Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s The Joy of Living, because every three pages he says something amazing and I want to go write a blog post about it. Today, what inspired me is the idea of minding the gap.

In London, there’s a gap between the subway platform and the train, such that when you get on the train you have to pay attention as you step over the gap. There’s also a gap between one thought and the next thought in our minds. Most of the time, we coast right along from one thought to the next to the next, not even noticing the gap in between, just the way that a frequent subway traveler steps right onto the train without looking at her feet. But the gap is still there, and being mindful of it can help us be safer on the subway and more present in our daily lives.

Rinpoche tells us that it can be a form of meditation just to notice the gap between our thoughts. He writes,

Watching thoughts is a bit like running to catch a bus. Just as you reach the bus stop, the bus is pulling away, so you have to wait for the next bus to come. In the same way, there’s often a gap between thoughts – maybe it lasts for just a split second, but still, there’s a gap. That gap is the experience of the complete openness of natural mind. (163)

When we meditate, we can just rest our minds in conscious awareness. Thoughts will come and go – there’s no way to stop them. We just pay attention to the thoughts and notice the gaps between them, and see what it feels like in that gap. The complete openness of natural mind! Sounds nice. Rinpoche goes on to say that, when you practice paying attention to that gap, you can start to extend it, to put a little more time between one thought and the next, spending a little longer resting in your natural mind. Like any other type of meditation, recognizing and resting in the openness of our natural mind will help us develop calm, peaceful attitudes that we can carry throughout the day.

Rinpoche uses another metaphor that I like a lot: that of watching TV or a movie. He writes, “On the TV or movie screen, lots of things may be going on, but you are not actually in the movie or on the TV screen, are you? There’s a little bit of space between yourself and whatever you’re watching” (165). In the same way that movies and TV shows (and commercials!) play on our TV screens, thoughts play across our minds. We can become very wrapped up in our thoughts, just as we’d get wrapped up in a good movie, forgetting that we’re not actually part of the action. Then we hear a noise, the phone rings, or we run out of popcorn, and suddenly we’re back in the living room in the present moment, not a part of the movie after all.

Our thoughts sweep us up and carry us away in the same way that movies do, but if we’re able to take a step back from the Thought TV and come back to the present moment, acknowledging the gap between our thoughts and us, we can avoid getting all worked up. After all, movies are really fun to watch, but they can be intense, scary, and upsetting too – and it’s the same with our thoughts. Sometimes part of the fun is getting caught up in all the emotion, but our goal in meditation is to keep our minds calm and peaceful. That doesn’t mean we have to stop having thoughts and emotions, or stop enjoying the thoughts and emotions we have. We’re going to have thoughts and emotions no matter what. But if we can mind the gap between one thought and the next, between our thoughts and ourselves, we can learn to live with a little more peace and calm. It’s one more technique we can use in our meditation practice and our yoga practice.

 

Meditation Update October 4, 2011

Filed under: books,meditation — R. H. Ward @ 3:46 pm
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I’m still meditating almost every morning. I generally do some pranayama breathing first, usually alternate nostril breathing, which I’ve really grown to love (to my surprise). Then I do a little meditation. On a busy morning, I’ll take just a few minutes and do a counting meditation; when I have more time, I’ll do passage meditation, or a meditation on sound that I learned from a book. I’m still trying to move forward with meditation reading, although that’s hard to do with all my other yoga work, but the book I’m reading now is The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, a Tibetan monk. I’ve been reading it at bedtime since probably February (which gives you an idea of how sleepy I am when I go to bed, I’m making very little progress!). Rinpoche has a very kind writing style, and I like his ideas about meditation.

Rinpoche writes, “If you’ve ever flown in an airplane, you’ve probably witnessed that above any clouds, mist, or rain, the sky is always open and clear. It looks so ordinary. In the same way, Buddha nature is always open and clear even when thoughts and emotions obscure it” (139). By “Buddha nature”, he means your true Self, your spirit. It remains unchanging, no matter what stormy emotions drift by. Once you get past all the clouds, you see the same peaceful Self that was there all along.

But there’s no use feeling guilty about all those emotional stormclouds. Rinpoche tells us, “It’s impossible to keep your mind from generating thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Thinking is the mind’s dominant function, just as it’s the natural function of the sun to produce light and warmth…. We can’t stop our thoughts any more than we can stop waves in the ocean” (131). I like that idea, that our thoughts are like waves in the ocean. We can’t stop the waves, but maybe we can change their intensity: the difference between a hurricane and the calm after the storm.

About meditation, Rinpoche tells us not to criticize ourselves when we find ourselves getting distracted. It’s easy to berate ourselves – I was supposed to be meditating, but I’m sitting here worrying over the grocery list! – but that condemnation isn’t necessary or helpful. The fact that you caught yourself wandering off is enough to bring you back to your meditation in the present moment. As Rinpoche says, “Your intention to meditate as you engage in practice is the crucial factor” (141). I like this kind, gentle perspective on meditation. Reading these lines has helped me and I hope has helped you too! Next time I’ll share the listening meditation technique I learned from this book.

 

Dealing with ups and downs August 30, 2011

Filed under: meditation,reflections,yoga lifestyle,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 2:59 pm
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I’ve been trying for a while to wrap my head around a concept mentioned in Eknath Easwaran’s book Passage Meditation, and I think I’ve finally figured it out. Mr. Easwaran  talks about excitement and emotional ups and downs, and how a true yogi will work to eliminate these. Of course we all want to get rid of the lows we experience in our moods, but getting rid of the highs too will help us to be more balanced, calm, and peaceful. Mr. Easwaran explains it as follows:

You will find excitement played up everywhere today… and everywhere today you will find depressed people. Hardly anyone sees a connection. Hardly anyone realizes that the old truth “What goes up must come down” applies to the mind too…. In other words, excitement makes us vulnerable to depression. When I say this, you may think that I am trying to wrap a wet blanket around you. But actually, when we reduce the pendulum swings of the mind, we enter a calm state of awareness that allows us to enjoy the present moment most fully…. Learn to prevent low moods altogether by repeating your mantram when you first feel yourself becoming excited…. bring yourself back to the present moment so you can avoid disappointment if future events take an unexpected turn…. free yourself from the tyranny of strong likes and dislikes – all those preferences, aversions, fixed opinions, and habits that make us soar when things go our way and crash when they do not.” (86-87)

That was a long quote, condensed down from a much longer passage, but I thought Mr. Easwaran explains his point well. Also, thinking about strong attachments and aversions is part of our assignment this month, so this passage is interesting in that light as well. I read this passage probably two months ago now, but set it aside at the time because we were busy moving. It’s been in the back of my mind since then.

I tend to get excited easily, about big things and silly things both. I just like things. Getting excited about stuff seems like a part of who I am. Do I need to give that up to make spiritual progress? I can see Mr. Easwaran’s point about the high highs making us vulnerable to the low lows – I definitely have my low lows, probably more than a more stoic person might have. For example, my husband is much more even keeled than I am – he plugs along pretty contentedly while I bounce around, up and down. That’s not to say he doesn’t have low moments like anyone else, but it takes a lot to shake him up, whereas I can go from the heights of joy to the depths of self-loathing in the space of ten minutes. I’ve worked really hard to get a semblance of control over that, but maybe if I work on controlling my up times too, I’ll be more balanced overall. But when I think about this, something in me gets upset – I like liking things, and I like who I am. Swami Satchidananda would say that “who I am” is just a construct built by my ego and I should let go of it anyway, but still, I wasn’t sure how to feel about this or what to do.

However, I think that, from Mr. Easwaran’s perspective, he would acknowledge a difference between “excitement” and “enthusiasm”. Excitement gets you all juiced up for something that could never come close to what you’ve built it up to be, so you feel let down afterwards. Then you go seeking more and bigger things to get excited about, but none of them ever truly fulfill you. Enthusiasm, I think, is different. When you’re enthusiastic about something, you know what it is and what you’ll get from it, so you can feel happy and pumped up about it without feeling let down afterwards. I think that what I am is (for the most part, anyway) enthusiastic, not excitable.

Here’s a classic example. I love using my EZ Pass to go through toll plazas on the highway. I’ve had my EZ Pass for at least five years, yet I still yell “Go EZ Pass!” as I coast past the toll booth. It never fails to delight me. And that’s not the sort of excitement Mr. Easwaran is talking about, that’s taking genuine joy in my world. I get excited when I go out for a nice dinner with my husband, but afterwards I don’t feel sad that it’s over; instead I spend the train ride home talking about what a nice time we had and how good the food was and how happy I am. I dance to the theme song for Doctor Who every time the credits roll (every. single. time.) because I always love that show no matter what happens. If we go out for a walk in the park, I get all excited like a puppy and start chanting “The park the park the park!” but I’m still happy the whole way home afterwards. I even get excited when it rains because it means I get to wear my yellow raincoat.

These are all things I feel genuinely enthusiastic and happy about. They’re not going to disappoint me later; they are experiences that I find satisfying in my everyday life. I could certainly do a better job of controlling mood swings, and doing so would help not just me but my husband and family. But I don’t think I need to change my core, my enthusiastic personality. Part of the point of yoga is being fully present in the moment, and if I’m doing the Doctor Who dance or singing about my EZ Pass, I can pretty much guarantee that I’m right there in the present moment.