Pivoting: Practice Morsels

Pivoting, like in basketball, involves maintaining a stable foundation while allowing flexibility to move in different directions. This concept parallels meditation, where the meditation object serves as a rooted anchor while attention can shift as needed without losing stability.

In meditation, some distractions may require brief acknowledgment before returning to focus. Similarly, in daily life or Samatha practice, one can remain grounded in meditation while momentarily shifting attention when necessary.

Transcript

Pivoting. So I think of a basketball player. You have a solid foot in one position and then can go a 360 direction with the other foot as long as the pivot foot stays there. So this kind of metaphorical thing reminds me of meditation where you can be firmly rooted in the meditation, The meditation object, And yet have some leeway and some freedom to move from one thing to another if need be without losing that pivot step. And that is the root, The stability that's there at the same time. If something might need attending to, Then it can be attended to. This is in various forms of meditation where it's proper. Some things might come up where you don't want to deal with them, But they're coming up anyway. So maybe there's a slight pivot that's needed before it can be dropped and then come back to the object. Other times, Especially in our daily life, Can we have that meditative sense or if we're doing like Samatha, Staying with the object and yet pivoting to where we need to be with our attention for other things while having that firm root, Grounding, Stability in the object at the same time.