Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Some of you might be struggling with silent meditation practice. Here are a few suggestions for you to use. Hope this helps! 

Establish a formal meditation time when and where you have minimal of distraction. It is crucial to sit regularly. Mornings are great, evenings are good too. Sit in the same place each time. You will associate that space with tranquility and therefore look forward to sitting. 

The very act of sitting still in silence and solitude will settle your mental clutter and recharge your battery. Let the practice grow gradually and gently. Even ten minutes of silent meditation daily is very beneficial. 

The purpose of Mindfulness Meditation is to transform your living experience. You now know  the difference between sensation, conscious thought, and emotion. You are learning how to meditate in the midst of an ordinary day. You are learning the skill of witnessing yourself while you are meditating. Try to continue the mindful watching as you wash dishes, prepare breakfast, eat, drink, walk. For this year, let your resolution be to achieve a routine in which there is no difference between seated meditation and the rest of your day.

Accept yourself just as you are. Be full of kindness toward yourself. Make peace with your shortcomings. Let the power of loving friendliness (metta) saturate your entire body and mind. Such practice will strengthen your heart. You will automatically respond to people with loving friendliness and sincerely wish for their happiness.

Mindfulness is your safety net. When someone says something hurtful, stay with your thoughts of metta toward that person. People will push your buttons but meditation will help you develop mindfulness. And mindfulness gives you time, time gives you choice. Make a wise choice, every single time.  

“You search for the things you call “me” but what you find is a physical body and how you have identified your sense of yourself with that bag of skin and bones. You search further, and you find all manner of mental phenomena, emotions, thought patterns, and opinions  and see how you identify the sense of yourself with each of them. . . . You endlessly hunt for “me.”

You find thoughts but no thinker, you find emotions and desires, but nobody doing them. The house itself is empty. There is nobody home.. . . Under the penetrating gaze of mindfulness, the feeling  of self, an “I” or “being” anything, loses its solidity and dissolves. . . .  A great burden is lifted. There remains only peace.” (Bhante Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English)