Find a quiet place in which to take a comfortable seat.
Sit up tall and close your eyes.
Breathe patiently and fully,
Yet gently and quietly.
In and out through your nose.
Give yourself permission to do nothing.
Give yourself permission to embrace this moment of stillness.
In which there's nothing at all that needs to be done.
Other than staying here,
Watching the breath.
Breathe quietly and patiently.
In and out.
Recall that equanimity arises through continued mindfulness.
Be mindful right here and right now of sensation in the body.
Mindful here and now of movement or changes in the breath.
And mindful always of activity in the mind itself.
And now make a commitment to stay mindful of body,
Breath and mind in each moment.
As you contemplate the following pairs of words.
And between each pair of words,
We will pause three to five breaths.
The first is praise and blame.
Contemplate the reaction in your body or your mind when someone compliments you.
In what ways do compliments throw you off balance?
And what would it feel like to receive a compliment yet remain stable in body,
Breath and mind?
And when you receive criticism,
In what way do you lose your balanced state of mind?
And is it possible to receive criticism and with mindfulness remain present and undisturbed?
How does your body respond to praise and how does it respond to blame?
Be present with the sensation that arises as you sit with the concepts of praise and blame.
And now contemplate gain and loss.
What arises in body and mind when you reflect upon gain and loss?
Do you feel pushed or pulled in any one direction?
Reflect briefly upon an experience when you got exactly what you wanted.
Or recall an experience when you lost something dear to you.
What would it feel like to hold space equally for both the joy and the suffering?
Notice in the body what it might be like to extend warmth and love equally to your wins and your losses and to all the emotions that those two things evoke.
And then think of the duo of pleasure and pain.
What arises?
Are you aware of an attachment to pleasure and aversion to pain?
Or in some ways do you avoid pleasure and grasp to your pain?
What would it feel like in your body to equally welcome all sensations?
To allow for the fullness of your human experience without attachment to any of it?
What surfaces for you as you contemplate pleasure and pain?
And then reflect upon these two,
Fame and ill repute.
In what ways are you thrown off balance by what others think of you?
Notice the push and the pull of popularity,
Recognition,
Acknowledgement and notoriety.
Notice too how the body reacts to disrespect,
Dishonor,
Disregard or neglect.
Notice where attachment lies,
Where the mind or the body gets stuck.
Notice where the body feels tight or where and why it begins to soften,
To open up.
And then turn your attention back to your seat,
Back to the connection between your hips,
Your legs or your feet and the earth.
Turn attention back to the steadiness and the ease of your breath and with every exhale feel even more grounded,
More rooted and stable.
Like an old growth tree in the forest,
You're firmly rooted,
Your strong foundation has grown stronger over time.
And the weather might change and the wind might pick up and you can be pushed and pulled to and fro but no wind is strong enough to uproot you.
You bend,
You sway but you keep returning to center,
Never angry at the clouds for passing through,
Never pining for a sunny day.
You accept it all as it is,
Understanding that you could sometimes use the rain.
All is welcome,
You remain stable,
Rooted in your own awareness.
Awareness as the home base from which you grow,
You are stable,
Balanced,
Strong and free.
Allow your awareness to come back to the room and the eyes to open and give yourself permission throughout the day to reflect on this meditation.
