by Sicco | Apr 29, 2014 | Health Benefits of Meditation, meditation
Retreating to a Monastery
At a recent retreat or day of mindfulness and meditation at a nearby monastery, an interesting question arose from the audience. Members of the outlying communities had driven in to visit the monastery, where a number of full-time nuns and monks practice every day. Someone asked, “I feel such peace when I visit your canyon (the monastery is located inside a group of mountains). When I visit any another canyon, I don’t feel that same peace. Is this canyon a special place?”
I think there are several different way to look at this question, and perhaps see several layers of answers. Some answers may ring more true to some people and another answer to another person.
In terms of the physical place, you have the actual canyon with a monastic community. Retreat centers tend to be in beautiful and natural surroundings, to allow nature to do it’s own form of healing medicine as well. This particular community mentioned above has their own little valley, surrounded by beautiful mountains, many birds and other creatures. Living in this center, there is a practice community of monks, nuns, and laypersons, intentionally and purposefully choosing to live on a mutually agreed to wisdom path.
Of course these are all regular human beings too, with their own issues and afflictions to work with. However, they are choosing to take a path that aims to help relieve suffering in themselves, and those around them (those who intentionally reduce their own suffering, and increase their inner peace and joy, can’t help but relief suffering in those they in contact with). It is like a ripple in a pond, what you do to yourself, harmful or beneficial, affects everyone around you. Helping others will come naturally, not in a forced way (like converting others or other coercive methods). This joy and equanimity, or solidity that a trained mind consciously cultivates, ripples throughout the communities it touches and interacts with. Sometimes in an obvious way, but probably more often like an undercurrent influence. In so doing, this spreads the fruits of the particular practice and plants new seeds with that same intention…To help relieve suffering, decrease harm, and increase joy and peace throughout the wider world.
There is also the visitor perspective. The person going to a retreat at a monastery, the practicing “lay person”, who come for a brief retreat from their day-to-day busy lives, to get nourishment and recharge by a community that practices peace. Lay practitioners are likely very busy meeting the needs of their local communities, their children, spouses, colleagues, perhaps volunteer activities, and finally making sure they earn enough money to pay the bills. These are all a lot of obligations, pressures, and potential sources of stress making it very hard for many to carve out time in their days to take care of their own minds and bodies.
The “marketplace” or cities and communities and world we live in, is for the majority of the world a busy place that sends many subtle and not so subtle messages that are often quite different than what you’d find in a retreat center or monastery. Messages like, “appreciate all you have today”, or, “enjoy this moment”, or “you can let all your muscles relax” now, or, “enjoy listening to the birds, while seeing the sun and gentle breeze play with the leaves”, etc. How many billboards and advertisements remind us of those types of simple joys? Usually the advertisements tell us we need to work more in order to be more happy, or we need a product or something else, or we need to be somebody else, or have x amount of money, work longer hours, put in more “face time”, or else look like a slacker. Get more degrees, or accumulate more daily, “likes” in order to belong and be happy.
These types of messages don’t encourage, or lead to more contentment, and accepting, appreciating what we have right here and now. Many in a subtle way might encourage us to be something else, or get something or some status, thus in a way saying we’re not good enough where we are, or who we are. And of course we don’t just get these types of messages through advertisements, but also through parents (well intentioned as this may be), schools, and through many other channels.
So when folks like myself go on a retreat, or go into nature, we know we have given ourselves permission for the duration of the retreat, to let go of expectations, societal judgements, and obligations, and literally “retreat” from it all. This consequently makes us more receptive and open to receiving that peaceful feeling the visitor to the monastery was referring to. If we had that attitude and mindset outside of the retreat, we can also discover that feeling peaceful is not limited to certain locations. It of course is harder to maintain this mind once we return to the marketplace.
A practice community asks us kindly to not use phones, and other things that compete not only for our decreasing attention and time, but are also reminders of the obligations and expectations waiting for us. So in that sense, the practice community may be for many people the only entity giving permission to take care of ourselves and to take a break from all the hustle and bustle of life.
I sense that it is true that a physical location can become, “special” in the sense that it is filled with a community of people who all agree to orient themselves, and move their energies the same direction, as opposed to the more scattered intentions and energies moving every which-way, that is more likely found in the marketplace. A community orientation of more peace, joy, and contentment, and less harm, suffering, and dissatisfaction in itself makes a huge difference in the feel of a place.
In the end of course, the underlying intention is to not have any “inside” and “outside” of the monastery walls, both literally, as well as in our own minds. To cultivate more and more of that intention that is incubated and cultivated in monasteries, into our own minds and then into the wider world and the marketplace. So that no matter where we go, what canyon or surroundings we visit, we can give ourselves permission to see and feel and experience that sense of peace that is available at any moment.
by Sicco | Apr 24, 2014 | General, meditation, Philosophical
One of the basic ideas behind meditation is that it is a form of mental hygiene. For the same reasons that brushing teeth regularly, or drinking enough fluids every day, or having a diet with plenty of fruit and veggies, meditation is likewise a part of healthy mind/body maintenance. Sleep is also vital to helping our minds relax. However even if you get 8 hours of sleep every day, that still means that our minds can be constantly stimulated and exhausted from “information overwhelm” or information overload those other 16 hours.
Rest your Weary Mind
This is why I think many of us are attracted to meditation. To give our “weary minds” a break during the day as well. Just like any other skill, it only works well if you make it a regular routine, rather then once in a while, or only when overly stressed.
The Murky Water Analogy
Murky vs Clear Mind Meditation
One of the simplest way to explain meditation, even if done for just 10 breaths, is through the analogy of the murky water. Picture if you will, two glasses of water (each representing our minds). Each has sand or contents, as do our minds. Now if our lives are busy, which most of us are, this glass gets shaken and stirred around a lot during our day-to-day lives. If you shake a glass of water that contains dirt or sand, you will see that the water gets murky and unclear. So it is with our minds.
The more that is “on our minds”, the more murky our thinking gets. The more information overload, the harder it is to make decisions, clarify our thought processes. And frankly with a murky mind like that, I’m sure you may have noticed too, it becomes hard to see and experience the here and now directly presented around us. Perhaps we miss the bird calling, the child smiling or the dog wagging her tail. Perhaps we end up more easily irritated, and short tempered. This seems to be part of the human condition.
So taking those meditation time-outs to allow our minds to settle does wonders for our well-being and those around us. It allows us more light and clarity coming through in our thinking. After all, if I set the glass of murky water down, and let it settle, it will began to become more clear almost immediately. Folks go on meditation retreats, in part because of a desire to settle much more deeply then a one minute or one hour meditation can do for them. Nevertheless, any settling, even if only a few minutes a day, or periodically throughout the day it is a great health benefit for the person doing it, but also to the people you are in contact with in your work or home life.
In a future post I would like to explore how settling into a meditation practice does not mean settling into ideological nests or pre-conceived ideas. What does settling into meditation mean to you?
by Sicco | Apr 18, 2014 | Breathing, meditation, Ocean Sounds
If you have ever been on a beach and enjoyed the sounds of the ocean waves, you probably also recall having a relaxation response in your body. The ebb and flow of the ocean waves coming on the shore, and then receding back into the ocean has a way of resonating with our own breaths. I think this is because our bodies resonate with the natural ocean wave sound rhythm and express a sense of recognition that this is what our breathing is like when natural. This feeling then naturally gives a sense of well-being.
Especially during meditation, when you become aware of the slowing of your breathing, it is a very similar pattern to the ocean waves pattern. You can imagine a deep inhale like the water coming up to the shore, and then it briefly pauses just like with our own breathing, before receding back to the ocean. Then there is another pause and the cycle starts over again.
My guess is that most of our breathing is like the ocean when we’re asleep and peaceful, however during a busy and hectic day, it is probably much more irregular and choppy. If you have been sitting in a chair for long, your breathing may even feel constricted. This is where listening to ocean waves can be one more tool in your conscious breathing tool bag, to assist in becoming conscious of your own breathing patterns.
I’m including an ocean video with sound below, so you can try this out if you don’t live near an ocean. What you can try, is find a comfortable seat or lay flat on the ground, turn on this video, and let go of your thoughts. Then start noticing your breathing, and see if you can slow down and resonate with it. You will get most benefit if you simply let the ocean waves breath you, instead of trying to force or control your own breathing. In other words, by letting go of any ideas of outcome or control. Let me know how it goes!
by Sicco | Apr 13, 2014 | General, Machine Sounds, Mechanical sounds, White noise
Machines can give us reliable predictable white noise to aid in sleep
When I look back at my childhood and think of what helped me sleep on a restless night, I think of a machine. It was a machine that could lull me to sleep.
My father was a plant seedsman, essentially an intermediary between those who grew plants and those who purchased the seeds. He had a home office and a package counter/sealer machine that would do a number of things essential to his business. First there was the seed container that would be filled with thousands of seeds. Those would travel up to to the funnel that would drop them into individual packages. The way the seeds would travel is by vibration which made kind of a humming sound. This vibrating circular container would cause the seeds to travel up a spiral so that they would become single file. This allowed the seed counter to count the seeds exactly. My father would set a limit on the number of seeds that could go through the counter, before it signals that there were now enough seeds for that particular package.
Next stage in the machine sounds
After the machine had filled a bag, it was sealed on three ends by using heat transfer. Than, a mechanical scissor would cut the bag (that was still part of a large roll of coated paper), to make it an individual bag of seeds. This process was a scissor clipping sound combined with a moving of the rolls sound, and then a sealing sound, and then finally the top of the bag would now also be sealed, and the bag would then fall into a holding container. Meanwhile the process would repeat over and over, at times my father had this machine running 24 hours a day. Sometimes the machine needed breaks for lubrication, or it needed new seeds, and new rolls, and other tweaks, so technically it was not always running continuously without any interruptions. But it could run for hours at a time.
I slept 2 floors above the seed packaging machine which was on ground level. I could faintly hear it all the way on the third floor. However, when having trouble sleeping, I would go down to the second floor and lay on the staircase landing so the machine sound would lull me into sleep. There was something very peaceful about the consistency in the machine operations, as though it provided some reliability and predictability and this “white noise” in turn washed out all unexpected or startling sounds, thus aiding those who might be light sleepers as I tend to be at times. Those kinds of sounds can be comforting and consequently help us put our minds at ease.
I wish my father still had his machine, it would be great to add this sound to the sound library. I will however continue to be on the lookout for those types of consistent machine sounds to help folks who have trouble falling asleep.
One of the sounds I really enjoy, and find comforting is the sound of a dishwasher. Try this dishwasher sound if you would like 8 hours of this sound, and be sure to like it if you find it helpful!
