Short practice reminders to take with you
Practice reminders
- Stabilise your physical posture.
- Generate loving kindness and compassion towards everyone (impartial love): your meditation is not only for yourself, but for the benefit of all others.
- Use the breath as an anchor for our mind: natural breathing or counting the breath.
- Let go of expectations and your hidden agenda during the meditation.
- Maintain a balance between concentration and relaxation, both physically and mentally.
Keep an eye on obstacles
Recognise agitation as soon as possible, this is when your mind is wandering, scattered, destructive emotions or discursive thoughts. Without any reaction to your thoughts, simply go back to the breathing, again and again.
Recognise when your mind is not clear and then put more focus on the breathing.
The essence of meditation = awareness
Recognise awareness within, it is your innate nature, it is always there. By this awareness, watch what is happening here and now, without being overshadowed or swept away by emotions or thoughts.
- Accept = let it come –> free from hope or fear, no hidden agenda.
- Observe = let it be –> No matter what comes up, don’t follow it, just touch and go: gentle observation, like a butterfly: when it arises, we just recognise it, and then it goes by itself.
- Let it go & focus on the breath
- Calmness: be free from: expectations and fighting, craving, trying to reach a certain mental state or pushing away.
- Clarity: when drowsiness occurs: put more focus on the breath and apply the antidotes
- Equanimity: just stay open and observe, no matter what comes up. Everything is subject to change.
Prolong staying in a state of non-distraction = calm abiding