Practicing at Home

Practicing at home is not always easy, but it can be quite enjoyable when we know how to enjoy it, and how to keep the practice going. At first, I experienced mental drainage. I felt that my mental energy run out very fast and I often felt the need to recharge through meditation. That is also one of the pull to meditate – to recharge myself.

In my first week at home, I was doing very well. Everyone welcomed me home. I was treated as someone special, and I was listened to attentively. However, all this changed in the second week, because somehow, our workers just didn’t come for their shifts. There are three shifts for the workers: morning, afternoon, and evening shift. If there is more than 1 person absent in 1 shift, we ourselves have to take over her duty to ensure that we can deliver on time. As a result, since then we have all been very busy. There is hardly any time when all of us can sit down and relax. Hence the discussion session is temporarily called off.

In such time when the workers are absent and the machines were not running well (one couldn’t be operated for a few days), the tension was high. Work has to be the first priority (that is the rule of the house), so the already-planned discussion session was called off. I was disappointed then, because I thought the discussion session was the opportunity for me to share with my family, and also to allow them the chance to load their mind with positive things, to counter the more-often-negative things they receive from the TV and from the high-tension work environment. This incident led to more disappointments, but it’s not a bad thing after all. In the end, I learnt to re-adjust my approach. Instead of trying to do something formal and so visible, I can just be present, be with them, and at the same time, not be like them. What I mean is, whenever everyone is angry and starts shouting at each other, I should maintain my calm. Otherwise, there is no way I can help the situation. I have promised myself and my family that this time I’m going to give my time to them. I mean it and I really want to realize it. So I told myself, “I will just give myself, no matter what it takes”. This thought saved my day. The new approach helped to make me feel more relaxed and just go with the flow. This desire to give myself takes away concern for myself and instead places the concern on others. While doing this, metta flows. To my pleasant surprise, the whole day I felt that my mind was in a good state, I felt very calm and at ease, no matter how busy I was outwardly. Metta becomes my secret weapon.

Also through experiencing disappointment, I learnt to unplug myself from it, to understand what disappointment is, and to find the main cause of it. Hence, it becomes a learning experience too.

It is sometimes challenging to give myself completely. Sometimes I want to do my own thing. Being an introvert, I like to spend time with myself. So I have to struggle between giving up or keeping my ego. =) This is a good learning.

That should be enough to summarize my experiences at home. It’s nowhere near the life at Brahma Vihari, but I can either appreciate it and have a good time, or fret about it and live miserably. I choose the former.

Mindfulness

Home, Medan

Tue, 12^th September 2006

Cooling Heart

I’ve just got back from the retreat with Sayalay Dipankara in Ipoh. The fantastic cave temple aside, this retreat differs from other retreats I’ve been to in the coolness I experienced in the heart. There’s a lot of mindfulness and moderation – in food and in sleeping.

Moderation

Normally, my weakness is food. When faced with a good variety of food, I have the tendency to take all of them, and to take more of what I like – the characteristics of greed. When this happened, there was a lot of inner struggle because of the conflict between my behavior and the Food Reflection done just before we were to partake our food. The Food Reflection goes like this:

“Reflecting wisely on this food,

I use it not to distract my mind,

not to gratify desire,

not to make my form impressive

or to make it beautiful.

But simply for the sustenance and continuance of this body

And to fulfill the practice of the holy life.

With this attitude in mind,

I will allay hunger without overeating

So that I may continue to live

blamelessly and at ease”

What I did was the complete opposite – I ate to gratify my desire, and for that very reason, it distracted my mind. Hence I experienced the aftereffect: I was not at ease. Excess of food in the body causes it to be heavy and drowsiness comes easy. What’s worse is the effect of such action to the mind: As I let greed ruled the mind, it often completely took over. The mind laden with greed is gross and not at ease. It behaves like a crazy person. The more one feeds the fire of greed, the more it burns. The more one gratifies one’s desires, the thirstier one is.

Now in this retreat I tried doing something different. I ate in moderation – in the amount and variety. I didn’t want to go after the food. My purpose of coming here was to train the heart and that requires a great amount of mindfulness. I didn’t want to do anything that hinders or goes against the way of the practice. I made the determination (aditthana) not to eat my fill, but to take around 80% of my bodily need. That should be enough to sustain me, as Ajaan Maha Boowa (a Thai Forest Tradition Monk, believed to be Arahant) sometimes even take much less and consumes only one meal a day, whereas I consumed two. As soon as I was about to fill full, I let go of the food, whatever that is, even if that was my favorite food. After I let go, I no longer thought about the food at all. I simply walked away to clean my dishes. Practicing in this way, the heart was very cooling as I didn’t give in to the greed. Hence, for the whole period of 10 days, I was able to feel completely at ease even when eating. It is only now that I act in accordance to the food reflection. And for that, I was rewarded with a sense of ease in the heart. It was not difficult at all. The sense of ease that comes from eating in moderation gives rise to a cooling heart, and that in turn encouraged me to continue on practicing in this way. And how much good that does to the practice! The practice goes along the line of non-greed, non-hatred, non-delusion. When we act in ways that give rise to greed, hatred and delusion, we are actually going against the stream of practice. As a result, the practice cannot go smoothly. This practice of moderation in food also aids in supporting mindfulness.

Mindfulness

In the retreat setting, it is not too difficult to be mindful most of the time as there are many supporting factors: The presence of a good teacher with constant reminder of the practice, the presence of fellow yogis who are striving together, the quiet environment, the good food and enough time to rest. As a rule there is a lag of mindfulness and this happened often. But the period of mindfulness is long enough for us to know how mindfulness feels like, and that, put in juxtaposition with the unmindfulness which is the more common mode of our normal living, allows us insight into the stark difference between mindfulness and unmindfulness. Being unmindful is like being a crazy person. One doesn’t really know what one is doing. One simply rushes about doing this and that, without clear comprehension and presence of mind in what one is really doing. For common run-of-the-mill people, period of unmindfulness is so much longer with possibly no moment of mindfulness that it feels normal to be crazy like that. It feels normal because it is the state of mind most of the time, with nothing to inform the mind what ‘sane’ is like.