Wherever You Go, There You Are Mindfulness meditation for everyday life
Reviews
Must read.
Actual rating: 2.5 stars.
it’s not necessarily that i found this book to be *bad* i just find it frustrating when people try to make meditation and mindfulness as separate from their hindu & buddhist roots. in trying to do so, this book makes several blunders that were quite clear to me (a novice meditator). i don’t feel it is appropriate to try to disengage this practices from their spiritual and religious ties, because they ARE an intrinsic part of hindu & buddhist practices and trying to act as if they’re not is inappropriate, and i feel, disrespectful. still, this book is a good “intro” to mindfulness and is concise in its points — although i again wonder why mindfulness and meditation have to be easily digestible to Westerns?
Highlights
Discernment is the ability to see this and that, as opposed to this or that, to see the whole picture, and its fine details, to see gradations, not just binary categories such as black and white, good or bad, us and them in absolute terms. Being discerning is an inward sign of wisdom and respect for reality because we are taking note of subtleties as well as the gross outline of things, aware of complexity and mystery, aware of an intrinsic interconnectedness between opposites.
Work at allowing more things to unfold in your life without forcing them to happen and without rejecting the ones that don’t fit your idea of what “should” be happening.
We aren’t practicing to make things perfect or to do things perfectly. Rather, we practice to grasp and realize (i.e., make real for ourselves) the fact that things already are perfect, perfectly what they are.
Every time you get a strong impulse to talk about meditation and how wonderful it is, or how hard it is, or what it’s doing for you these days, or what it’s not, or you want to convince someone else how wonderful it would be for them, just look at it as more thinking and go meditate some more.
Nothing happens next. This is it.
By taking a few moments to “die on purpose” to the rush of time while you are still living, you free yourself to have time for the present. By “dying” now to the past and the future in this way, you actually become more alive, realizing that this moment is the only moment available to you—or to any of us, ever.
Your feelings are creations of your mind's view of things.
There is no successful escaping from yourself in the long run, just transformation.
We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we habitually conjure up to avoid what is really unavoidable.
Non-doing simply means letting things be and allowing them to unfold in their own way.
Doing Non-Doing
Asking yourself from time to time, "Am l awake now?”
A diminished awareness of the present moment inevitably creates other problems for us as well as through our unconscious and automatic actions and behaviors, often driven by deep-seated fears and insecurities. These problems tend to build over time if they are not attended to and can eventually leave us feeling stuck and out of touch. Over time, we may lose confidence in our ability to redirect our energies and ways that would lead to greater satisfaction and happiness, perhaps even to greater health.
Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally. This kind of attention nurtures greater awareness, clarity, and acceptance of the present-moment reality.