Something Simpler on Simplicity
How do we simplify our lives using meditation and mindfulness?
One of the things we practice in mindfulness meditation is to stay in the moment. Keeping our mind in the 'now', rather than allowing it to ramble through random thoughts of yesterday: recollecting, recreating, or anticipating tomorrow.
Nothing complicates our lives as much as the stress caused by things that aren't actually happening at this moment. All our yesterdays are gone and all our tomorrows haven't happened - and may not ever happen in the way we are anticipating. So easily we slip into unproductive mental habits. Sit and reflect on that for a moment, and you will see the truth of it for yourself.
Something else that causes many complications in our life is the constant search for pleasure or security. We work hard at trying to create a solid and permanent environment that pleases us. We often have very fixed ideas about what or how that should be. In meditation, we learn to recognise that nothing is permanent - everything is always in a state of flux. Therefore to try to hold onto things to make your world 'concrete', will only create more frustration, unhappiness and complications.
Babies are only born with two fears: being dropped and loud noises – the rest of our fears are mostly learnt behaviour. I'm not talking about our base brain fears of snakes or spiders, which makes us recoil. I mean anxieties, fears or emotions that prevent us from living life fully. We can be scared - or angry, or jealous - without having to act on those emotions or let them take over our lives.
In Zen we speak of minimalism. Paring things down to the essential.
It doesn't only refer to the physical manifestation of how to simplify by giving away. It also means letting go of things mentally. Simplifying our mind. Turning inward to look at what our thought process is, what our fixed ideas are, what our standard responses are, what our habits are, our beliefs, our opinions, our goals.
In Zen and in meditation, we talk a lot about "knowing". We look closely what we are certain about, what we cling to or grasp at to make us feel safe and secure. We look at our mind and how it moves. We meditate to achieve a mind that is innocent of preconceptions,
expectations, judgments and prejudices. We sit to observe and see “things as they are.” Without approaching things with a fixed point of view or a prior judgment, just asking “What is it?”
Shunryu Suzuki taught us "in the Beginners mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." Meaning that, if we are expert and we operate from a place of "knowing", we are not really open to other possibilities anymore.
If we start from a place of "knowing", we often work with great disappointment - because things don't happen quite like we expect. Or if we know something should be like this, and turns out to be different, our reaction is usually not a happy one.
As an "expert" you don't really need to pay attention to what's happening because you already know it. So most of the time you miss the opportunities that are presented if your mind is open and ready to receive.
In meditation we are taught not to be an expert, to be awake to what is really happening around us. To work from a place of "not knowing", not being certain about anything. To really look and pay attention, so we can respond by saying "Ooh, that's interesting!" rather than "Ugh! No, that's not what I wanted."
