Accepting This Difficult Truth Might Rescue Your Currently Shallow Practice Of Mindfulness
I call it the beautiful bliss of being boring.
When the Buddha describes mindfulness of breathing, he calls it ‘an ambrosial dwelling,’ one that can take us right to the end of the path.
But when we try it, our minds quickly get bored. They jump into distractions. Or we sleep.
Why is that? Why can’t our intention be strong enough to ride the waves of stormy weather?
We can certainly practice wielding our attention.
We can be as mindful of our motivation as the thing we’re focusing on – and improve moment by moment.
But that doesn’t answer the question: what is it about the mind that just refuses to be still?
I recently spent an entire day meditating.
Non-stop, even when doing routine activities. At one point I left my front door and simply stood outside, breathing in the afternoon breeze. Totally resting in outer and inner stillness.
My mind felt no reason to think about this or that. It was simply satisfied; happy; utterly fulfilled dwelling in a spot where time and space seemed to be made irrelevant.
