Thanks for subscribing! In this issue we bring you
an exclusive article, as well as news of two events starting in
September. We hope you can join us on one of them!
1. Laying
Down the Burden of Self
On this 42-day online course we will explore a
meditation practice taught by the Buddha himself — the Six
Element Practice — an earth-shattering and yet profoundly
beautiful reflection on the interconnected and impermanent nature of
our being.
Buddhism teaches us that the deepest source of our
anxiety and suffering is that we have mistaken views of who we are.
Our central challenge in life is therefore to critically examine
these false notions and, ultimately, to let go of them. We need to
learn to see not that there is a self that we have to lose, but that
there never was one in the first place. We need to learn to see
through our deluded views of separateness and permanence and plunge
into the mystery of our own being.
2. Find
Out That Meditation Works!
Literally thousands of studies have shown the
benefits of meditation, including decreased anxiety and depression,
boosted immune health, slowed aging in the brain, and improved life
satisfaction. Meditation works!
Change Your Mind is a 28-day
online event introducing you to meditation practices that can
transform your life. Step by step, you'll learn mindfulness and
lovingkindness meditation practices that help you feel calmer, more
patient, and more emotionally positive.
This event is suitable for people of all levels of
experience, including complete beginners. It's an introduction to
meditation that's especially useful for those who think they can't
meditate!
The Power
of Gratitude
Happiness is the single most repressed emotion. If
that surprises you, just consider what happens in meditation: we
simply notice whenever the mind has started wandering down the
pathways of rumination (and sometimes it gets quite far before we
realize what it's doing), and then we let go of the thinking we're
doing and come back to our breathing, or to our other immediate
sensory experience. After just a few minutes of this we feel calmer
and happier — or at least less troubled and less unhappy, which
amounts to the same thing.
There's nothing magical about the breathing that
makes us happier. What's going on here is just that much of our
thinking makes us unhappy. It causes us stress or anxiety, or makes
us irritated or discontented in one way or another. If we let go of
this thinking we stop making ourselves unhappy. Our unchecked,
unmonitored rumination represses our sense of wellbeing.
But there are other ways that we repress a natural
sense of wellbeing, one of which is that we discount and ignore the
positive. We tend to place our focus on things that are going wrong
in our lives, or that we think are going wrong, and ignore things
that are going right. This is a form of cognitive distortion.
When we start to notice, acknowledge, and
appreciate what’s going right in our lives we feel much happier. In
fact psychologists say that being grateful and appreciative is one of
the main things we can do to be happier in life. I read about one
study in which participants were asked to spend 30 minutes writing a
letter of appreciation to someone who had benefited them. The
scientists conducting the study found that people who did this
exercise were measurably happier a month later. It's quite
astonishing that a 30 minute exercise can elevate your mood for a
month. Other studies have found that a daily practice of writing down
a list of things we're grateful for has effects on our happiness and
on our health — for example promoting better sleep.
A few months ago when I was feeling down about how
my life was going my girlfriend of the time pointed out some of the
things that were going right: that I live in a beautiful apartment,
have two wonderful kids, have good friends, that lots of people are
grateful to me for what I do, that I’m generally healthy, and so on.
Considering this lifted my mood considerably.
One practice I recommend is simply sitting down and
saying “thank you” for the things that are going right in your life.
And when I talk about saying thank you I mean either saying the words
out loud or articulating them clearly in your mind.
If you're puzzling over what on earth you have
that's going right in your life, remember the cognitive distortion I
mentioned above. We take for granted, ignore, and thus fail to
appreciate many things that are going right. So here are a few things
that are likely to be going right for you. Really take in any of
these that are true for you and remember to say thank you:
You're sheltered from the elements. You have access
to the internet. You probably possess some kind of electronic device
that allows you to store massive amounts of information and to get on
the internet to access even more information. You have electricity.
You have water. There are sewers to dispose of your waste
hygienically. You have food in the house. You're surrounded by
furniture (any one piece of which makes you unimaginably rich in the
eyes of around a billion of the world's poorest people). You have
relatively clean air to breathe. There are paved roads nearby. You
live in a relatively lawful part of the world. There are emergency
services poised to help if your house catches fire or if you have
serious medical problems. You're breathing. Your heart is beating.
Mostly your body is functional. If you have illnesses or injuries,
your body is trying to heal itself. Your senses are functioning well
enough for you to get by. You are conscious. You are aware of the
world around you and of your inner world. You have self-awareness.
You have the capacity to learn. You have the capacity to cultivate
gratitude.
If you've sincerely done this exercise, notice how
you feel. Has your mood shifted, even a little? Probably the answer
is yes, and if so you've just experienced the benefits of turning
your attention from what is wrong in life to what's going right.
Gratitude turns what we have into abundance.
I'm not, of course, suggesting a naive approach of
ignoring difficulties. There are things in our lives that are
difficult. But these are made more difficult to bear when we focus
only on them and not on our abundant blessings. There are also things
happening in the world that are terrible. But if we're depressed and
despondent we're less able to do anything constructive in the face of
these challenges.
With love,
Bodhipaksa
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