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One approach is to think of meditation
as instrumental, as a method, a discipline
that allows us to cultivate, refine,
deepen our capacity to pay attention
and to dwell in present-moment awareness….But,
and it is a big but, even though the
Buddha himself worked hard at meditating
for six years and broke through to an
extraordinary realization of freedom,
clarity and understanding, this method-based
way of describing the process is not
itself complete and can, by itself, give
an erroneous impression of what meditation
actually involves….there is a
second, equally valid, way to describe
it (mindfulness meditation) a description
that is critical to a complete understanding
of what meditation really is when we
come to practice it.
This
other way of describing meditation is
that whatever ‘meditation’ is,
it is not instrumental at all. If it
(mindfulness meditation) is a method,
it is the method of no method. It is
not doing. There is no going anywhere,
nothing to practice, no beginning, no
middle, no end, no attainment and nothing
to attain. Rather, it is the direct realization
and embodiment in this very moment of
who you already are, outside of time
and space and concepts of any kind, a
resting in your very nature of being,
in what is sometimes called the natural
state, original mind, pure awareness,
no mind or simply emptiness. You are
already everything you may hope to attain,
so no effort of the will is necessary-
even for the mind to come back to the
breath- and no attainment is possible.
You are already it. It is already here.
Here is already everywhere and now is
already always. There is no time, no
space, no body, to paraphrase Kabir.
And there is no purpose to meditation-
it is the one human activity (non-activity
really) that we engage in for its own
sake - for no purpose other than to be
awake to what is actually so.
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Pioneering educator, corporate advisor,
and best selling author of Do What
You Love, the Money Will Follow, Ordinary
People as Monks and Mystics, and The
Mentor’s Spirit.
…anyone who has ever experienced
active, concentrated attention knows
the truth of the statement by well-known
Quaker writer Douglas Steere: “Work
without contemplation is never enough.” You
may have played a game of bridge, read
a book, gardened, pieced together a ship
in a bottle. Afterward, you realized
that you had lost track of the passage
of time and forgotten your cares.
What
can be achieved in such momentary pursuits
is the result of a quality of mind -
a mind fully absorbed in its task, in
the present - that can be available to
us daily when we are working at our right
livelihood. Absorption is the key to
mindfulness - the deep involvement in
the work itself and the way in which
each task is performed. Mindfulness puts
us in a constant present, releasing us
from the clatter of distracting thoughts
so that our energy, creativity and productivity
are undiluted. You become your most effective.
Attention is power, and those who work
in the state of mindful awareness bring
an almost supernatural power to what
they do.
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In order to cultivate the virtues of
the mindful leader we must practice mindfulness
meditation with non-achievement in mind.
But this is not to say that we do not
experience results from our practice.
For thousands of years millions of people
have practiced mindfulness meditation
and experienced many positive outcomes
and as said earlier, science is documenting
more and more benefits everyday. So we
could quite reasonably ask, “How
is it that we are supposed to cultivate
leadership virtues by sitting still and
achieving nothing?”
Let’s
try a two part experiment. First, hold
your hand in front of your face. Simply
observe your hand for about 30 seconds.
Now, if we were asked to describe this
experience, most of us would say that
we are just looking at our hand not ‘achieving’ anything.
We don’t ‘achieve’ our
hand; we don’t achieve our foot
or eye color or knee cap either, for
that matter. We are our hand
and foot and eye color and knee cap.
Now, for part two of the experiment.
Hold
your hand in front of your face once
again, but this time flex your fingers
open and shut, forming a fist and then
releasing. Observe this ordinary gesture
a few times. Now, if we were to
describe this experience, most of us
would say that we are opening and shutting
our hand - pretty straightforward. Yet,
there is much that we take for granted
in making this gesture. In order to flex
our hand, 27 bones, 29 joints, 123 ligaments,
34 muscles, 48 nerves and 30 arteries
coordinate into a seamless gesture that
is profoundly elegant. When we flex our
hand we make a series of gestures that
are quite astounding but are taken for
granted. And while none of us speak about “achieving” our
hand, we may be able to better appreciate
the inherent genius involved with flexing
it.
In
the same sense, when we practice mindfulness
meditation, we also are exercising a
variety of ‘spiritual muscles’ that,
for the most part, we have taken for
granted. Just as we can not “achieve” our
hand, nor can we “achieve” just
sitting. But when we flex our fingers
back and forth into a fist we gracefully express unseen
forces and in that same sense, when we
practice mindfulness meditation we equally express a
variety of unseen, graceful and profound leadership capabilities.
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Click here to read the article
Click here to subscribe
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Listen to Pema Chodron’s
Interview with Bill Moyers
Click
here to listen to the interview.
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Mindfulness or sitting meditation
is a friendly gesture towards ourselves
where we take time to simply be
and the mindfulness developed in the practice
naturally unfolds on the job guiding us
to Be Authentic, precise and
decent. Sitting down and being still is
at the heart of being awake at work. Yet,
such meditation can not be rushed or forced,
so we need not hurry; we can be flexible
with ourselves and our life circumstances
as we learn this practice.
To learn more: http://www.awakeatwork.net/about/med.html
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