This post was written on October 22, 2017.

I recently returned from a ten-day meditation retreat. I walked away from the retreat with important reminders and new experiences. I gathered intellectual knowledge of the teachings. I was reminded of how to practice the technique properly. I gained experiential wisdom and insight into the inner-workings of the mind through the practice of the technique. All of this and more, I’d like to share with you.

As servers, we sit and meditate with the students for three to four hours a day. It’s much less than the student’s ten hours of sitting per day. Nonetheless, it gives servers the unique opportunity to simulate life outside the walls of a retreat center; a life of busy-ness and responsibility, a life grounded in meditation.

When one sits for even a few hours a day, one can see just how crazy the mind is. For instance, a person enters into sitting with the intention of placing their attention on a single task. Minutes (or seconds) later, we’re swept away thinking about what’s for dinner or what gift we’re going to buy for our loved one’s birthday next week (you’re welcome).

To recondition the mind, we’re taught to observe the body’s sensations. During this task, it’s guaranteed that thoughts will arise. The sit becomes a constant tug-of-war between the mind pulling us into thought and the task we’ve given it, of examining the body’s sensations.

When the mind begins to pull, I see how much I plan for the future and ruminate on the past. I see how loving and how evil the mind’s thoughts can be.

In fact, the more I observe the mind, the more I realize how much work there is to be done.

And that’s okay. It’s important to accept where I am in life, not to degrade myself and not to dignify myself, but to look at things as they really are. To think that the mind can be mastered in a few days or even a few months time is beyond foolish. Purifying the mind will take the whole life and beyond.

I am still young but eventually, I will not be. I will grow old. Time and again I’m told by elders that life passes them by so quickly. I am already experiencing this.

That’s why it’s important not to get bogged down in anything. It’s okay if there’s more work to be done.
There will always be things left unfinished, words left unsaid and stories left untold. A wise man would do his best for this not to be the case, but it’s the mind’s job to create things for us to do. So long as the mind is around, I know I’ll never run out of things to do.

So when I leave this body, there will be things left undone. All the things I’ve done in this life, as important as I might think them, will one day disappear. Accepting that has helped me love where I’m at in life. To love being over doing.

I’m not telling myself not to stop doing altogether, but it’s important not to generate negative thought, emotion or action in life’s journey. These things will only take us farther from our goal. It’s also important not to cling to wealth or success or events outside myself as the answer to life’s moments.

It turns out that as hard as I try sometimes, I cannot control the world. It’s hard enough to control our loved ones (yeah, impossible)! Even the most powerful man in the world will have problems arise in his life. We can only do our best to control ourselves. Only then, through leading by example, may we have an influence over others. Sometimes it’s nice knowing that being is enough.

I’ve been placing my attention on love.

I spend ten minutes a day loving myself and loving others, known and unknown. I practice this in my mind. I find that this helps to condition my thoughts and actions, to overcome difficult moments and make tough decisions. Too often I get caught up in my own happiness. Happiness is beautiful, but happiness is also fleeting. Love, on the other hand, is eternal. One can love both their happiness and sadness. It is within our control to give love to another, but we cannot give them happiness. That is their choice alone.

Again, this is all well and good, but it’s important to note that what I’ve said thus far is all intellectual information and…

Life is not an intellectual game.

I’ve found that I continue to make the same mistakes over and over again despite “knowing” in my mind what is right. Too often I fall right back into the same traps I’ve experienced before.

Why is this?

It is because my mind remains conditioned. If I do not train the mind, if I do not practice taming it, if I do not re-wire the mind’s habit pattern at the deepest level, how do I expect to improve?

A basketball player must practice his free throw a million times just so at the end of the game, when the points really matter, he is primed and ready for the opportunity. Even then, if his mind is not calm, he is susceptible to missing. Novak Djokovic, currently the number one ranked professional tennis player in the world for nearly four straight years said: “it is the point between points which matters most.” He realizes that at that level of performance, it is not the body or skill level, but the mind that separates the players.

I feel it my responsibility to do by best to rewire the mind to accept pain and pleasure as fleeting. To love all experiences equally. To free myself as the prisoner of the mind’s habit pattern. This is where meditation practice comes into play.

I know my mind’s habit-pattern is to react.

I react with attachment to pleasant feelings. I react with aversion towards unpleasant feelings. I often wonder if I will achieve such a goal, to purify the mind of negativity, but so long as I am taking steps there is nothing more I can do! The journey must be enjoyed.

A short story for you:

During an afternoon sitting at the meditation center, I entered into a deep concentration. I felt like a stone statue. A loud cough from a student echoed throughout the room and sensations flowed from the top of my head throughout my entire body.

At the surface level, one might believe the cough as being the disturbance to the sitting. On the deepest level, one can experience that we are only reacting to ourselves, to our own sensations arising and passing throughout the body.

It was then that I experienced at a deep level the truth of how nothing outside ourselves can cause us to react. This is something I’ve known at the intellectual level for some time but not yet experienced. Nothing outside can bring us happiness or sadness. This is a choice we make, first at an intellectual level and next by reinforcing the knowledge through practice and discipline.

Another really short story for you:

As servers, we sit in the front row of the meditation hall to set an example for the students. One of the students sitting in the second row right beside me was burping constantly. It was one of those burps which he held in his mouth too, which made it strangely even more disturbing. It seemed at every sitting he would belch into his mouth like five to ten times! At first I was very disappointed in him: ‘He is eating too much!

Why is he doing that to himself and to us?’ After three days, I finally got the point. His burping was an opportunity for me to make use of the technique. Instead of reacting with anger, I began choosing to smile every time he burped. Within a couple days I found myself automatically smiling when the burp or a cough or a sneeze echoed throughout the hall. Such is conditioning! Still to this day, a week later, I find myself randomly smiling at the honking of cars in traffic. It’s quite strange and I don’t know how long it will last, but I must say smiling is much better than generating negativity in myself.

It is said that as one progresses on the path, a change in the life must occur. Some change for the better. Above all, one develops the volition to serve others. I have this volition, but I often get bogged down in scale. I want my change to be big! So I feel that helping one person is not enough. Such madness!

If we can help just one person take steps in their life then we have done so much good.

Our good deeds multiply. That person whom we have touched comes in contact with so many people. It’s like a beautiful disease! If this person is lighter, the volition spreads to help another. Such is the domino effect, the law of multiplication.

I’m still unsure about how to handle a social media platform.

I see others who post that do so much unconscious destruction to themselves and others. They take their misery and they spread it onto others. They spread what they hate and not what they love. They offer many problems but few solutions. I feel such love and compassion for these people and I hope that one day they see what they are doing, how they are making themselves miserable and that they come out of this cycle.
I can’t focus on these people. I can only do my best and try to be the best person I can be. I think we are all trying to do the best we can in this life.

I look back on some of my work, some of what I’ve said and I see how ego-centered I’ve been. It’s difficult for me to explicitly say it, but at some level, I seek attention.

My intention is that the attention is placed on ideas, not on a personality.

I am of two minds when it comes to attention. At times I write because the ego wants attention. I want to do my best to have that attention directed at the ideas. I don’t want me to spread. I want ideas, happiness, and love to spread.

Life is a… lifelong… journey.

Too often I want results fast when in reality growth is a slow roll. It requires daily practice and conditioning. It’s so easy for me to abandon ship before it has ever set sail. Instead of reading and discussing and intellectualizing about ships, just climb on aboard! Begin to move from the intellectual level to the experiential level. Be grateful and spread love.

Today I wish you fair sails and good winds in your journey. May they take you farther from where you ever thought you could be.

Love,
David