Episode 75 - Peaceful In Challenging Times (Repost)

04/20/20 • 35 min

What if we could tune our body and mind, like a fine instrument, to peacefulness? What if we could be calm, relaxed and peaceful all the time? In this episode we return to a simple, effective mindfulness practice to de-stress. We also try to strengthen our motivation to become a peaceful person beyond ourselves alone.

Mindfulness Practice to De-stress

Aspire to become a calm and peaceful person, even in challenging situations.
Try to be mindful of whether you’re feeling calm and when you start to become tense.
Calm yourself. When you start to feel tension or stress, turn toward calming yourself—rather than doing anything to affect the situation. This is vital.
When you notice tension and stress, start breathing deeply from the diaphragm, feeling your stomach expand. Or, if possible, close your eyes and begin a brief breathing meditation (see below).
Breathe deeply and say to yourself “calm” “relaxed”. Try to tune your body to these feelings...calm...relaxed.
Continue this Diaphragmatic breathing or a breathing meditation until you feel relaxed. This might take only a minute or it might take much longer.
Remember the world is empty and dreamlike.
Put a little smile on your face. Try to have fun and find joy in things.
Keep trying this mindfulness practice and calming technique whenever you need it. You’ll get better at with practice, and eventually you will be able to tame your mind and be calm all day.

Relaxing Meditation

If you find yourself getting stressed—and have time and space for a five minute meditation—this can help you reset your state to calm and relaxed.

Close your eyes.
Check that you have a nice straight back.
Breathe through nostrils.
You can put your hands in the mudra of meditative equipoise. Place your hands in your lap, the right hand resting in the left, and the thumbs gently touching forming a bridge.
Breathe deeply from your diaphragm.
Count, starting at one, as you breathe in. 1....2....3....4....5
Count as you exhale, but exhale more slowly as your breathe out. 1....2....3....4....5....6.....7....8.....9....10
You can meditate for only as long as it takes your body and mind to enter a more peaceful state.
When you arise from your meditation, look at your experiences as a projection of your mind, like a dream.
Try to stay peaceful. Relax. Enjoy.

Hunger is the foremost illness;

Saṇkhāras the foremost suffering.

For one who knows this as it really is,

Nirvana is the foremost happiness. (203)*

References

Buddha. The Dhammapada, translated by Gil Fronsdale. (2011). Shambala, pp. 54.

Mindfulness Practice to De-stress

Aspire to become a calm and peaceful person, even in challenging situations.
Try to be mindful of whether you’re feeling calm and when you start to become tense.
Calm yourself. When you start to feel tension or stress, turn toward calming yourself—rather than doing anything to affect the situation. This is vital.
When you notice tension and stress, start breathing deeply from the diaphragm, feeling your stomach expand. Or, if possible, close your eyes and begin a brief breathing meditation (see below).
Breathe deeply and say to yourself “calm” “relaxed”. Try to tune your body to these feelings...calm...relaxed.
Continue this Diaphragmatic breathing or a breathing meditation until you feel relaxed. This might take only a minute or it might take much longer.
Remember the world is empty and dreamlike.
Put a little smile on your face. Try to have fun and find joy in things.
Keep trying this mindfulness practice and calming technique whenever you need it. You’ll get better at with practice, and eventually you will be able to tame your mind and be calm all day.

Relaxing Meditation

If you find yourself getting stressed—and have time and space for a five minute meditation—this can help you reset your state to calm and relaxed.

Close your eyes.
Check that you have a nice straight back.
Breathe through nostrils.
You can put your hands in the mudra of meditative equipoise. Place your hands in your lap, the right hand resting in the left, and the thumbs gently touching forming a bridge.
Breathe deeply from your diaphragm.
Count, starting at one, as you breathe in. 1....2....3....4....5
Count as you exhale, but exhale more slowly as your breathe out. 1....2....3....4....5....6.....7....8.....9....10
You can meditate for only as long as it takes your body and mind to enter a more peaceful state.
When you arise from your meditation, look at your experiences as a projection of your mind, like a dream.
Try to stay peaceful. Relax. Enjoy.

Hunger is the foremost illness;

Saṇkhāras the foremost suffering.

For one who knows this as it really is,

Nirvana is the foremost happiness. (203)*

References

Buddha. The Dhammapada, translated by Gil Fronsdale. (2011). Shambala, pp. 54.

Previous Episode

Episode 74 - Compassion in the time of Coronavirus

This is the third of a series to help us with problems, anxiety and fear during these difficult times caused by the Covid 19 pandemic. We can transform our activities into a deeply spiritual practice by having the compassionate intention to alleviate the suffering of others. Simply by remembering that we are staying at home out of compassion for those who might become ill, our same actions have the function of compassion, which has five effects:

It purifies our bad karma
Creates good karma
Makes our mind strong and resilient
Lessons problems between people
Creates the cause of enlightenment

“In every life situation, you need compassion. When you live with your family, you need compassion. Without compassion, your family life is full of problems and suffering.” —Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche

References

Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche. (August, 1997). Practicing the Good Heart [oral teaching]. Retrieved from https://www.lamayeshe.com/article/chapter/chapter-five-practicing-good-heart

Parsons, S. (March 31, 2020). China’s Divorce Spike Is a Warning to Rest of Locked-Down World. Bloomberg [online article]. Retrieved from

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-31/divorces-spike-in-china-after-coronavirus-quarantines

Next Episode

Episode 76 - What The World Needs Now Is Love

By making cherishing others our main daily practice, we will discover a real source of happiness in our lives. Cherishing others means acting to make others happy. It opposes selfishness. As we deal with the challenges coming from the Coronavirus pandemic, practicing cherishing others will give us some immediate relief from our problems. Below are the some of the results of cherishing others, but we should discover them ourselves!

The Benefits of Cherishing Others

Is the cause of happiness.
Solves all problems
Makes relationships harmonious and stable
Is the cause of success and happiness in this life
Leads to all good qualities.
Leads to the lasting peace and bliss of full enlightenment

How is cherishing others the cause of our own happiness?

When an action is motivated by the intention to cherishing others, to make them happy or help them, it creates good karma. Good karma is the root cause of every moment of pleasure or happiness, from health and harmony in relationships to a moment of joy. For example, we gave to others in the past and that created the karma for us to have enough resources in this life. Why did we give to others in the past? Because we cherished them and felt their happiness was important.

In the past, we gave to others to alleviate some need they had--like hunger--or to give them pleasure. Later we experience a similar result: we have delicious, plentiful food or we have a mind predisposed to happiness. Every positive action we undertook in the past was motivated by cherishing others in some way. Thus, every happiness we enjoy comes from cherishing others. Even a sky filled with diamonds is not as valuable as this mind of cherishing others.

**In our meditation we come to this object: a heartfelt conclusion and intention, “I must make cherishing others my main practice in daily life.”

“Whether or not we are aware of it, from the day we are born, the need for affection is in our very blood. I believe that no one is born without this need for love. And contrary to certain modern schools of thought, this demonstrates that human beings are not limited to the physical plane alone. No material object, no matter how beautiful or precious it is, can give us the feeling of being loved, because our deeper identity, our true character, is rooted in the subjective nature of the mind.” —Dalai Lama, My Spiritual Journey

References:

Dalai Lama (2009). My Spiritual Journey. Translated by Charlotte Mandell. Harper Collins.

Je Tsongkhapa. Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, Volume 2. Pages 181-208. Translated by the Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee. Joshua Cutler, Editor-in-Chief, and Guy Newlan, Editor.