Meditation & Relaxation in Plain English by Bob Sharples

Author:Bob Sharples
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780861717064
Publisher: Wisdom Publications, Inc.

chapter 7

Deepening the Practice of Mindfulness

The practice of mindfulness meditation focuses on our actual life experiences rather than a single object of concentration. Mindfulness takes the experiences of our life and helps us to establish a meditative understanding of, and relationship with, these experiences. As we build confidence in this practice two things start to stand out. Firstly, we become more skilled at noticing what is present in our life. In mindfulness meditation, the instruction is to keep coming back to the present moment, observing what is here rather than what we would like to be here. Secondly, we notice what happens to all the experiences of our life as we observe them. We begin to see that things don’t last very long. The breath never stays the same; sensations in the body come and go, and increase and decrease in intensity; emotions are fluid and constantly changing; the mind is forever moving between the past and the future with only the briefest stops in the present.

In the practice of mindfulness meditation we cultivate a willingness to be open and present to all the parts of our life experience. In the previous chapter we looked at the first foundation of the practice of mindfulness meditation: mindfulness of the body. We have to learn how to be at home in our body as that will support us in being at home in the present moment. Focusing on the physical sensation of the breath gives us a method to stay in the present moment. The practice of coming back again and again to the touch and the feel of the breath, being centered on the breath, enables us to stay in the reality of the present moment. In this way our meditation begins to be very practical, a way of being rather than a formal repetitive exercise.

When we attain a degree of stability in our focus on the breath, we can then move on to deepen the practice of mindfulness by working successively with mindfulness of feelings and sensations, mindfulness of moods and emotions, and finally mindfulness of the mind. With each step we broaden the meditation focus toward the goal of being able to maintain a stillness in the midst of all our life experiences. Nothing is excluded; nothing is considered to be unmanageable. We do not have to create ideal conditions in order to meditate. We no longer use our meditation as a kind of subtle aggression against ourselves in the never-ending pursuit of change and self-improvement.

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