01 Apr Cultivating discipline, effort and letting go
Become aware of c
ultivating intangible inner qualities like discipline, effort and letting to keep up the practice of meditation.
Why do we fail to keep up with the practice of meditation?
1. Lack of motivation
2. Not finding the time
3. Boring
4. Finding the space
The practice of meditation is the like training for any sport or setting out time for exercise in your lifestyle and keeping up the discipline to continue the practice and effort and being able to continue the effort regardless of the results.
Some questions
Why do athletes like M Ali (boxer) or now H Bolt (sprinter) get up early every morning before anyone else; what makes them continue the effort and practice, what drives them on. When they fail what do they do? How easy was it for Buddha to keep up his meditation? Was it and is it always easy for experienced meditators to keep up the practice?
Developing discipline is important to keep our practice of meditation. Consistency of meditation is important to reap the benefits. Like any other sport you need the support and discipline to be exerted on to you so we may go to a gym, or have a personal trainer or we may exercise with friends or in a club for support. Likewise the external discipline is necessary in meditation. Hence we come to our classes together and get motivated to keep up the discipline by watching others come to the class. If we do not attend a class we may be asked “are you okay you didn’t attend last week.” Such questions and conversations act as a soft external discipline which is necessary to keep up the practice.
Cultivating self discipline is important too so that we have the ability to be able to get up every morning to keep up the effort of meditation be it rain, thunder or storm or your feeling tired or feeling a bit under the weather.
We also need to look at maintaining consistent effort i.e. developing the attitude of returning back to our effort so if our mind wanders we cultivate returning to our effort. If we injure ourselves in sport or fail to attend a class we return to the effort again. If need work on a particular skill we return our effort back to that area such as sitting up right in good posture whilst meditating?
Continuing effort is only going to work if we also practice letting go i.e. we cultivate detachment from our results so that we are not affected by whether we have failed a task or have done brilliant on something. Cultivate to experience and learn from the results of your efforts and practice letting go and focus on the journey.
We have to bear in mind that that though we are only sitting to meditate the task itself is difficult like any sport and we have to approach it with the same mind set.
Do not be deceived by the simple act of sitting to meditate!
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