Back To The Basics Of Mindfulness

What is mindfulness? Is it being present at each moment? Or is there more to it than that?

What if we’re present but frequently lodging objections? What if we’re present but secretly wish things were different – in our firm, organization, relationships? What if we’re present but we’re not at peace with what we see inside?

Can mindfulness help with that?

Transcript

Hi everyone,

It's Judy Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 409.

I don't know whether anybody who is here actually got the note today.

I've constant contact apparently did not send anything since yesterday and now they are sending so I've been on chat with them and it wasn't just me it wasn't just us but anyway I'm glad to see those who are here.

Today I thought that I would start this is Wake Up Call 409 and today I thought that I would start with kind of going back to some basics since it's fall and it's kind of back to school time I thought that would be would be kind of nice back to basics about mindfulness for a little while so because I don't know about you but I can sometimes get lost in the details and lost in the list before Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path and I do want to explore all of that but just to kind of step back and and remember that in a way mindfulness is kind of simpler than all that and not but it's in the beginning or at its at its heart it's about this present moment attention and the courage and the grace and the not wishing things were were other than they are and I was talking with my friend Len Riskin and Len is a law professor at Northwestern who's been teaching mindfulness in negotiation classes for many many years and his in fact his article from 2002 so we're talking 21 years ago wait yeah 21 years ago in the Harvard Negotiation Law Review the Contemplative Lawyer on the Potential Contributions of Mindfulness Meditation to Law Students,

Lawyers,

And Their Clients that's the kind of seminal article of the mindfulness law movement and it's linked on the Warrior One website if you want to read it but his new book is what I want to talk about a little bit just for a minute which is called Managing Conflict Mindfully because it's really fantastic I highly recommend it Managing Conflict Mindfully so I was talking to Len and he reminded me of the most fundamental point that mindfulness is about ending suffering and about how to begin at the beginning you know we're stressed we're anxious and Len and I traded some great and very parallel personal stories about that from when we were baby lawyers and mindfulness can really help and how how that begins by learning to be in the present moment which by definition means we're not stressing about the past or anxious about the future so we're not suffering or at least for sure we're suffering less so anyway I'm not I'm not at all doing justice to Len's beautiful chapter on mindfulness in his book but I'm just pointing towards this as the foundation the beginning and the nice thing is you know we know how to pay attention I love the way the poet Mary Oliver talks about it she says I do know how to pay attention how to fall down in the grass how to kneel down in the grass how to be idle and blessed how to stroll through the fields which is what I've been doing all day tell me what else should I have done I really love that and we do know how to pay attention to and for me it helps to know where I'm pointing so we sit down we bring our attention to the body the breath sound and bing the mind wanders I was sitting on retreat this summer and I sat next to this young man the whole time you know because you just pick one seat for the whole retreat and he was clearly to me a deep practitioner you know he was somebody who was known to all of the teachers they would call him by name they would reference prayer of conversations they'd had and it was really nice sitting next to such a deep meditator I felt like I was kind of receiving this transmission and encouragement and support and at one point a teacher asked you know if you're counting the breath meaning paying attention to the breath and counting one two three four five and then letting you know when the mind wanders going back to one if you if you know that practice and the teacher said if you're counting the breath how far do you get before your mind wanders I'm thinking 10 on a very concentrated day so and put my hand up to say that but then my egos like frantically stage whispering you know put that hand down put that hand out because 10 it seems so unmindful you know so unsettled next to next to my body next to me right but it ends up not mattering because the teacher calls on him and not me anyway you know the man whose name they all known and he says without a touch of irony he just says one one breath you know and then our mind wanders and whether we've been sitting for 30 years or 30 minutes whether all the teachers know our name or not this is just the mind you know it generates ideas and plans and emotions which is partly what makes us good lawyers right but it does that persistently when we're not working to you generating generating generating in perpetual motion that's what the mind does but it's not what the mind is and so the question is what are we paying attention to and the great Thai forest master Ajahn Chah says that the mind is intrinsically pure within itself it's already peaceful the fluttering as he calls these thoughts and emotions to me often feel more like a tsunami than a flutter the fluttering is due to the wind meaning all the stories and emotions that the mind generates so he says we must train the mind not to get lost in those this is the aim of all the difficult practice we put ourselves through and so then there's the question of how how do we train the mind and I feel like we have two choices you know one is striving and then wrenching ourselves away from the difficult emotions and the persistent thoughts and the incessant shatter and I always have to be on the lookout for this choice so I don't make it because this choice is really just a training and striving and wrenching right and maybe we feel like in the past we had to make that choice to become good lawyers even though I think that that's a thought in and of itself that we could examine but striving and wrenching will not at least in my experience will not help with the recollection that underneath all of that is already peace so the second choice is to train our minds with kindness with understanding with love and with a kind of benevolence because we know this mind it does generate anger and frustration and sorrow and guilt and remorse it will lure us into paying attention to thoughts that are not useful but when we cannot flinch from what's happening right and not judge ourselves and not get upset with ourselves that the same old emotions and the same old thought patterns have recurred for the millionth time and instead see them with love for what they are just fluctuations of the mind then we're tapping into the peace of the true mind so that's why my experience is that mindfulness is present moment attention first and foremost but with a certain attitude an attitude of courage an attitude of grace right so courage because so many times we sit down and there's nothing but story nothing but difficult emotion nothing but fluctuation and the impulse is to flinch or turn away or wrench away and it takes courage to not do that and to be kind to ourselves instead and to remember that we are not our thoughts we are not our emotions and to recollect that underneath all that fluctuation there is peace or as Thich Nhat Hanh would say we are peace so the courage to look and see and recollect and also the courage to let go of wanting things to be anything other than exactly what they are moment by moment by moment so letting go wanting the mind to be less turbulent letting go of wanting our emotions to be more positive letting go of wanting something or someone to be other or to be better right letting go of wanting anything other than what's right here and right now and then not only letting go of but letting go into right so letting go into kindness letting go into love that's the grace letting go into the version of ourselves that's right here right now no matter what and loving that version up because it's what we've got and because that love that understanding that's underneath all the turbulence there really is peace that's what we want to cultivate present moment awareness with courage and grace and without wishing things were other than they are that's the first thing I want to say about what mindfulness is for me and Ajahn Chah says it so much better about this mind it is intrinsically pure within itself it's already peaceful so let's sit finding a comfortable posture that supports you in your practice whatever that posture is for you whatever that practice is for you this morning and if you if you'd like and you want to come to the breath the attention on the breath and try the the counting practice it's really just counting each breath then then when you notice that the mind has wandered just start back again at one and you might not even get further than one and that's okay and just whatever you're noticing whether paying attention to the breath or the body or sound or whether the moment you heard my sound of my voice you recollected oh I'm meditating and you'd been off in story whatever is happening right now just being with that with a lot of understanding and benevolence and love the mind is wandering or or paying attention and there's something difficult and you attend to whatever is here with loving kindness with love just what is just what is just what is and maybe if you want to taking this last minute of our sit together to directly show some appreciation to yourself some meta some gratitude you know to for being here for for getting here even though the note was late and coming and sitting with our little community you're maybe putting the hand on the heart I love what Annie Lamont says about about prayer and I think of this just in terms of faith and and practice she says there's three types there's please there's thank you and there's one so whatever is present for you today the thanks everybody for being here and this is the this is the real stalwart group who I guess maybe you have the link bookmarked or something like that and sorry again about the late note see you next week take care be well