Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us.
Interpretation
Meditation helps us observe our thoughts and use them to navigate our lives more effectively.
This quote by Jon Kabat-Zinn emphasizes the importance of meditation as a practice of self-awareness and contemplation. It suggests that by stepping back from the flow of our thoughts and emotions—much like sitting by the bank of a river—we can gain insight and understanding, allowing us to better harness the energies of our mind for guidance and direction in life.
In practice
In a discussion on mindfulness, this quote can illustrate the value of meditation.
Once you have established yourself as a center of love and kindness radiating throughout your being, which amounts to a cradling of yourself in loving kindness and acceptance, you can dwell here indefinitely, drinking at this fount, bathing it in, renewing yourself, nourishing yourself, enlivening yourself. This can be a profoundly healing practice for body and soul.
One way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology that's been developed over thousands of years by traditions that know a lot about the mind/body connection.
Practice sharing the fullness of your being, your best self, your enthusiasm, your vitality, your spirit, your trust, your openness, above all, your presence. Share it with yourself, with your family, with the world.
The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.
In Asian languages, the word for mind and the word for heart are same. So if you’re not hearing mindfulness in some deep way as heartfulness, you’re not really understanding it. Compassion and kindness towards oneself are intrinsically woven into it. You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.
Initiate giving. Don't wait for someone to ask. See what happens - especially to you. You may find that you gain a greater clarity about yourself and about your relationships, as well as more energy rather than less. You may find that, rather than exhausting yourself or your resources, you will replenish them. Such is the power of mindful, selfless generosity. At the deepest level, there is no giver, no gift, and no recipient . . . only the universe rearranging itself.
I see my whole 20s as a massive experiment. So were my teens. I think the problem is that we're not encouraged to experiment; we're encouraged to decide and choose, be singular and focused. You can't be that until you experiment. You don't know what's going to work until you try it.
Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition.
we know nothing of tomorrow, our business is to be good and happy today
I am not a victim of emotional conflicts. I am human.
Start the practice of self-control with some penance; begin with fasting.
Whatever terrible things may have happened to you, only one thing allows them to damage your core self, and that is continued belief in them.
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