Hi I hope that this note finds you well, enjoying life and the many "opportunities," sometimes known as challenges, to assess your level of mindfulness in your life.
Every once in a while, I stumble across a writing or book on meditation that deepens my understanding and practice of meditation. In this case, I came across a profound paragraph from a book, one simple paragraph, that outlines almost an entire practice of meditation that can free you from your thoughts and difficult emotions. Because my purpose is to serve you in learning how to meditate and how to stabilize and strengthen your practice, I had to share it with you.
This excerpt comes from the book,
From Enlightened Courage, by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. Copyright 1993 by Editions Padmakara (Padmakara Translation Group). Published and distributed by Shambhala Publications.Train in Three Hard Disciplines
These are the difficult practices of mindfulness, of expulsion and of 'interrupting the flow.'
As for the first of these, the difficult practice of mindfulness, it is necessary to recognize afflictive emotions as soon as they arise and it is hard, at first, to remain sufficiently aware to be able to do this. However, when negative emotions arise, we should identify them as anger, desire or stupidity. Even when emotions have been recognized, it is not easy to drive them out with the antidote. If, for instance, an uncontrollably strong emotion comes over us, so that we feel helplessly in its
power, we should nevertheless confront it and question it. Where are its weapons? Where are its muscles? Where is its great army and its political strength? We will see that emotions are just insubstantial thoughts, by nature empty: they come from nowhere, they go nowhere, they remain nowhere. When we are able to repel our defiled emotions, there comes the difficult practice of 'interrupting the flow,' This
means that, on the basis of the antidote described, defiled emotions are eliminated just like a bird flying through the air: no trace is left behind. These are practices in which we should really strive.
While Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche was a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, this doesn't mean that one has to be a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, or even a Buddhist, to get the meaning of this teaching. The three practices, mindfulness, expulsion, and interrupting the flow, can (and should) be used by anyone wanting to deepen their practice of meditation. These practices simply are...practical!
I hope that you find this useful. Please let me know if so, and if not, and perhaps a bit more of what would be useful to you. You can contact me, as always, here:
Contact meTake care. Meditate well. Live and love well. And never give up.
Jerome
P.S. - As always, please share my site with your friends and anyone who you think might be interested in the content that I have to offer. It's the only way for me to benefit more people. Thanks.
