Everyday Mindfulness

What situations do you find hardest to stay mindful, to keep the ego from rearing up, to remain true to yourself, to stay in the flow?

I'd guess it would be a situation involving a group of people. Maybe your family, maybe work colleagues, housemates... The closer they are, the better they know how to press your buttons!

So maybe we can do yoga or sit in meditation and observe our tendencies to judge ourselves, perhaps as someone who's easily distracted, or someone who always wants to make things ok, or worries about what others think of us doing yoga or meditation. Maybe we can even start letting go these "I am" identifications: "I am a person with tight hips", "I always get angry when I can't do something", etc. But how does this help at a family dinner when your adversarial uncle starts drawing you into a conversation on the rights and wrongs of intervening in Syria? It's not much use to pull out your best warrior II pose on him... (might make him shut up for 5 mins though!)

It's not easy to bring what you learn on the mat or on the cushion into everyday life. But isn't that why we call it a practice? We're practising for everyday life. And what use is a practice where you can achieve beautiful flowing, non-dual, ego-less, oneness for 30 mins a day but still bite your colleagues head off in your morning meeting?

That's why it's helpful to build a bridge into our practice. A bridge between formal on-the-mat/cushion time and normal life. We create time to do a reasonably unchallenging activity 100% mindfully, bringing our practice to bear on something that isn't on the mat/cushion.

For this reason, in Zen we practice working meditation, or Samu in Japanese. It's emphasised to such a degree that it's actually one of the four principal components of Zen practice (along with sitting meditation, private meetings with your teacher, and talks).

Working meditation includes the practice of mindfulness, giving or generosity, duty, and selfless service. In Zen monasteries every monk (or retreat participant) has a duty to do work for the maintenance and upkeep of the building and grounds, or help with the cooking, shopping, accounts, etc. But it's more than a duty - the task is performed with the same mind as sitting meditation. Doing the activity 100%, becoming the activity. An opportunity to put what you've learned on the mat/cushion into practice.

For inexperienced practitioners (like myself), the working meditation activity should be super-simple: something like cleaning, gardening, or chopping wood/vegetables. The repetitive simplicity of these kind of activities needs very little thinking power, leaving plenty of energy to devote to being 100% mindful. A favourite in Japan is weeding the gravel in the monastery garden.



Can you see the true nature of the universe in every weed you pick? In every stone or piece of earth you move? Can you disappear into the flow of the cleaning cloth sliding over the kitchen floor?

Gradually as our practice develops and we're able to stay with it more and more doing simple tasks, we can introduce some harder things. Cooking, for example, requires much more cognitive input, but can you stay 100% mindful when the saucepan is boiling over but the recipe says "gently simmer"?

I remember my teacher Daizan saying that the monastery accountant is always one of the most senior monks because it takes a very developed practice to stay 100% with it when you're doing the books!

So you can see that letting go of our frustrations, our right/wrong judgements, our need to win the argument, remaining empathetic, compassionate, loving, and not letting the ego direct our actions is hard enough when we're just hoovering the living room. Doing all that whilst your uncle is banging on about how important it is for our economy to maintain a military presence around the world, including Syria, is advanced practice!

Start small, and build up. If we're patient, diligent, and compassionate, one day we might find ourselves flowing through every situation with ease, being 100% our true nature without a speck of self.

First published on http://outerinneruniverse.blogspot.com.

Thank You for this post. I got a lot out of it.

It would be really helpful if we start being selfless. I wonder,it might be a start of living in harmony.

westmoquette wrote:What situations do you find hardest to stay mindful, to keep the ego from rearing up, to remain true to yourself, to stay in the flow?

I'd guess it would be a situation involving a group of people. Maybe your family, maybe work colleagues, housemates... The closer they are, the better they know how to press your buttons!

Hi West. I enjoyed your blog post.

This integrating of mindfulness practice is one of the hot topics in my life these days. As you say - the social engagements can be among the most difficult, and I think this is because we come up against cultural barriers that encourage us back to old habits and to become more narrow-minded - to share in a rigid social identity, because that's what efficient communication apparently revolves around.

Other people outside of mindfulness practice will consider it weird, painful-sounding, boring, etc., even though we can consider it to be like a refreshing glass of pure sparkling spring water in the midst of a murky stinking swamp of suffering. From within practice we can see everyone else is also thirsty for this glass of pure water, and that they are tired of drinking the rancid swamp water, but they consider all water the same, and so unless they do not have a serious incentive, they will often not even take a sip of what a mindfulness person drinks.

As the Chinese saying goes: "The best zen hermits live in the city". This is because it is incredibly difficult to remain in the stagnant swamp and not become drenched in mud and slime and become part of the scenery, while there are sparkling springs in the mountains waiting to be celebrated.

The busy social world of the city is a huge challenge to face. I live in Beijing, for example. I'm glad there are no chavs or crackheads - I've never felt so safe walking the streets, but most other pressures and dangers remain the same. A Sangha of sorts - a mindfulness practice group or community - helps a lot, and that's what we are working on at the moment. Egging each other on during those difficult times can be a huge resource. This forum can serve a similar purpose it seems. Hmm - that reminds me, I must look into getting a chat function up and running.

I found this post very helpful.

great post,
mindfulness is more than meditating on the mat.
we bring it into our sessions in week 1 and gradually build it up through the eight sessions.
it may be something as simple as brushing your teeth.
how often do you do that and plan the rest of the day, never aware of the sensations of brushing the teeth.
having a shower is another.
after yoga and meditation i get dragged around a few parks by the dog- mostly mindfully and then sit and eat a banana, mindfully, aware of the texture , taste, the marks on the banana.
there's lots of ways to bring it into your day. lots of things we do on autopilot that we never fully experience.

have you ever noticed how often Mums talking to other adults and their toddler/young child tries to get their attention and they only half listen to the child? I still remember as a child trying to get a word in when my own Mum was in conversation with someone and it was so hard to get her attention! I know I probably did it when my own kids were small but now when I see little ones trying to catch their parents attention I feel sorry for them! What they have to say is important to them too!

Well said, Larorra.
There's not been a really good book about mindfulness and parenting.
My bet is that Gareth will write it.
Good things, Jon

I decided to use mindfulness yesterday while straightening my hair! As it is quite thick and long it is a lengthy progress which I do not particularly like doing so decided to see how it would go being mindful. It made me realise afterwards that the boring tasks we have to do, our minds are elsewhere, hurrying to get the task finished so we can do something we enjoy more etc, but if we actually focus more on what we are doing we realise its not as bad as all that! I am definitely trying to do routine tasks more mindfully from now on!

The peace in the present moment is infinite.

Never thought of writing a book, maybe you've planted the seed Jon.