Vision: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life | Jon Kabat Zinn

Vision it's virtually impossible and senseless anyway to commit yourself to a daily meditation practice without some view of why you are doing it what its value might be in your life a sense of why this might be your way and not just another tilting at imaginary windmills in traditional societies this Vision was supplied and continually reinforced by the culture if you were a Buddhist you might practice because the whole culture valued meditation as the path to Clarity compassion and buddhahood a path of wisdom leading to the eradication of suffering but in the western cultural mainstream you will find precious little support for choosing such a personal path of discipline and constancy especially such an unusual one involving effort but non undoing energy but no tangible product what's more any superficial or romantic Notions we might Harbor of becoming a better person more calm or more clear or more compassionate don't endure for long when we Face the turbulence of our lives our minds and our bodies or even the prospect of getting up early in the morning when it's cold and dark to sit by yourself and be in the present moment it's too easily put off or seen as trivial or of second secondary importance so it can always wait while you catch a little more sleep or at least stay warm in bed if you hope to bring meditation into your life in any kind of long-term committed way you will need a vision that is truly your own one that is deep and tenacious and that lies close to the core of who you believe yourself to be what you value in your life and where you see yourself going only the strength of such a dynamic vision and the motiv a from which it Springs can possibly keep you on this path year in and year out with a willingness to practice every day and to bring mindfulness to bear on whatever is happening to open to whatever is perceived and to let it point to where the holding is and where the letting go and the growing need to happen the vision we are speaking of has to be renewed every day has to be right out front all the time because mindfulness itself requires this level of awareness of purpose of intention otherwise we might as well stay in bed the practice itself has to become the daily embodiment of your vision and contain what you value most deeply it doesn't mean trying to change or be different from how you are calm when you're not feeling calm or kind when you really feel angry rather it is bearing in mind what is most most important to you so that it's not lost or betrayed in the Heat and reactivity of a particular moment if mindfulness is deeply important to you then every moment is an opportunity to practice for example suppose angry feelings come up at some point in your day if you find yourself feeling angry and expressing it you will also find yourself monitoring that expression and its effects Moment by moment you may be in touch with its validity as a feeling state with the antecedent causes of your strong feeling and the way it's coming out in your body gestures and stances in your tone of voice in your choice of words and arguments as well as the impression it is making on others there is much to be said for the conscious expression of anger and it is well known medically and psychologically that suppressing anger in the sense of internal izing it is unhealthy particularly if it becomes habitual but it's also unhealthy to vent anger uncontrollably as a matter of habit and reaction however justifiable you can feel it Cloud the mind it breeds feelings of aggression and violence even if the anger is in the service of writing a wrong or getting something important to happen and thus it intrinsically warps what is whether you are in the right or not you can feel this even when you can't stop yourself sometimes mindfulness can put you in touch with the toxicity of the anger to yourself and to others I always come away from it feeling that there's something inadequate about anger even when I'm objectively on High Ground its innate toxicity taints all it touches if its energy can be transmuted to forcefulness and wisdom without the smoke and fire of self-absorption or self-righteous then its power multiplies and so does its capacity to transform both the object of the anger and the source so if you practice purposefully expanding the context of the anger yours or someone else's right in those very moments that it is arising and peing knowing that there must be something larger and more fundamental that you are forgetting In the Heat of the emotion then you can touch an awareness inside yourself which is not attached to or invested in the anger fire awareness sees the anger it knows the depth of the anger and it is larger than the anger it can therefore hold the anger the way a pot contains food the pot of awareness helps us cradle the anger and see that it may be producing more harmful effects than beneficial ones even if that is not our aim in this way way it helps us cook the anger digest the anger so that we can use it effectively and in changing from an automatic reacting to a conscious responding perhaps move Beyond it all together this and other options stem from a careful listening to the dictates of the whole situation our vision has to do with our values and with our personal blueprint for what is most important in life it has to do with first principles if you believe in love do you manifest it or just talk a lot if you believe in compassion in non-harming in kindness in wisdom in generosity in calmness in solitude in non-doing in being evenhanded and clear do you manifest these qualities in your daily life this is the level of intentionality which is required to keep your meditation practice vital so that it doesn't succumb to being purely a mechanical exercise driven only by the forces of habit or belief in Walden thorough cites a Chinese inscription on a [Music] bathtub renew thyself completely each day do it again and again and forever again