Student Reactions to the Orange Meditation & Mindfulness

What follows are excerpts from my student’s reactions to an orange meditation activity I did with them and discussions on mindfulness and happiness.
Excerpts from Student Responses to the Orange Meditation & Mindfulness
At first I wasn’t exactly sure why we were to put so much thought into just an orange. Plainly there were the orange pickers, the sellers, and the market owners in line of the process of selling the oranges. However, when reminded of the poem that we read in class about how in order for this paper to have been made, a rainfall would have had to happen for the tree to grow and etc. I was then able to concentrate on the deeper meaning of the activity which was to get out of the trance of thinking that the orange is a simple matter, and should have been in my hands without the efforts and the natural process of a thousand events. Before the orange pickers, or even the farmers who planted the orange tree, the Earth had to exist. It may sound like an exaggeration to think about the pre-historic times just for an orange to have happened. But like all humans, and the current existence of you, me, and us, an orange took just as much amount of process. In conclusion, I learned that we shouldn’t take everything for granted but actually think about how it came to be and how much effort or time was put into just one simple existence and be thankful, thoughtful, and simply more aware of my surroundings. – Yeon Ju (Grade 9)

We all ate oranges mindfully. We thought about the orange very precisely. Where did it come from? How did it get here? What did the seed go through to become an orange. This really made me think more about the orange and realize its significance. – Gautam (Grade 9)

When we eat food at home we don’t think of what people went through just so we could enjoy our food. The process of when we started eating the orange I was actually thinking about what people did and for the first time in my life I felt as though I was thanking people I don’t even know. This helped me realize how fortunate I am. It also made me think how everything we eat and drink starts off as such a little thing and that we are dependent on other people in order to get our supply of food. – Akash (Grade 9)

I think mindfulness is very important to life, not just religiously, but in general. When one is aware of his or her surroundings, and pays attention to every little taste, smell, sight, and sound, life becomes a lot more enjoyable. The orange, for example, can be a whole experience, not just a snack, if a person takes the time to smell it, feel it, and get each texture and taste out of every mouthful. There were a lot of sounds and smells one wouldn’t notice if her or she didn’t take the time to stop and just sit quietly, observing and being aware. – Nikhil (Grade 9)

Slow eating involves you to think about the food such as people who bought it, grew it, moved them to stores etc. When we did that activity with the orange, I began to realize that there are a lot of things involved in that orange in order to grow. There is rain and sun involved in terms of nature, also people who grew it, and the meal they had to eat in order to work and people who moved them to stores. If we think about it deeply there is an almost infinity of things involved. - Kyu Min (Grade 9)

I think mindfulness means awareness. Awareness and thinking of everything that surrounds us. To understand this, we all got an orange and had to think of how it got in our hands, of all the people who worked for it to grow. We talked about how we didn’t take enough time to eat and think about all these people which are involved in it, which I think is true, we do not take enough time to savor the things we eat nor think about the work of others to make all this possible, we should be more aware of all this. – Mathis (Grade 9)

Happiness is cultivated by tackling the minute challenges during the day with mindfulness and without being burdened. I think that happiness, to a large extent, can be cultivated by one’s attitude in searching for it instead of dwelling on problems. It is a matter of resilience of the mind and the heart. I want to to continue to find reasons daily to be mindful, grateful, and happy in order to create a pattern of happiness that will lessen any obstacles such as anger, stress, materialism, jealousy, insecurity, and pessimism in my life. – Mary (Grade 12)
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Sogyal Rinpoche in Delhi

Last summer when I was in Ladakh I read Sogyal Rinpche’s Tibetan Book of Living and Dying which is easily one of the most important texts I’ve ever read. Sogyal Rinpoche was in Delhi a few weeks ago. Before I knew he would be in Delhi I had already planned a trip to Bali (which was amazing–I went to a surfing/yoga retreat for women). What follows are notes one of my Dharma friends took from his talk. Many of my friends who attended the talk said that Sogyal “woke them up.”

The Nature of Mind

Sogyal Rinpoche

April 10, 2009

 

The main purpose of our life – the heart of being human – is being happy

 

“My crown is in my heart, not on my head” Shakespeare

 

In the longing to be happy, we destroy our happiness as if it is our worst enemy – Shantideva, The Path of the Bodhisatva

The mind can make a heaven out of hell, or a hell out of heaven  - Pascal

 

The 3 Vehicles of Buddhism convey the essence of Buddha’s teachings:

1. Peace: “Commit not a single unwholesome action”; “At least do no harm” (Hinayana Tradition)
2. Compassion: “Cultivate virtue”; loving-kindness, bodhicitta (Mahayana Tradition)
3. Wisdom: “Tame this mind”; purification, transformation (Vajrayana Tradition)

True mind is already present in us but encased in the ordinary mind

 

The fault of the mind is that is sees self and experience as:

• Permanent
• Singular
• Independent

 Samsara: Mind turned outward, lost in its projections

Nirvana: Mind turned inward, recognizing its true nature

 

Understanding the nature of your mind gives you the opportunity to “own your mind” not in an outwardly grasping way. . .but from inside

 

To see a painting in the dark, you need a candle that is still and bright

Shamata > creates stillness

Vipassana > creates brightness

 

Shamata with support: use of an image, mantra, breath, chanting, bell, senses, thoughts, emotions, as focal points, has effect of calming mind, like putting a baby to sleep

Shamata without support: Mind is rested, “chilled out”, in a state of non-distraction, just being

 

In using thoughts and emotions as focus of meditation:

1. In the beginning, it becomes like watching a movie, where you are looking at your life but less entangled
2. Later, the thoughts and emotions dissolve, there is a gap

When meditating:

25% mindfulness

25% awareness – loving vigilance, looking out

50% abiding spaciously

 

Just as water when you don’t stir it will become clear, so with mind, when it is left unaltered, it will find its true peace

 

“Machupa” natural, authentic, unaltered

“Manzupa” not grasping

 

The key is not altering. Mind in its natural state is like a crystal, luminous

 

Just as space is not defined by what passes through it, so mind is not defined by the thoughts or emotions passing through

 

It is not the appearances, the phenomena, that bind us. It is the grasping.

Emptiness is not nothingness. It means pure experience, empty of projections, concepts, storylines, unaltered

 

“Death is like a mirror reflecting the true nature of life”

 

When we die we touch the ground luminosity of our deepest nature, the mother luminosity.

The teachings are like the path luminosity, the child luminosity that leads us, gives us a glimpse of the great luminosity. So when we die, if we have been fortunate to receive the teachings of the path or child luminosity, we will recognize the ground, the mother luminosity.

 

There are 3 kinds of faith:

1. eager faith: longing, like thirst in a desert
2. vivid faith: recognition, inspiration; like finding an oasis in a desert
3. confident faith: trusting that one has found something essential; like trusting that drinking water will restore health, quench one’s thirst

For more on Sogyol Rinpoche’s teachings:

Rigpa Center for Tibetan Buddhism

http://www.rigpa.org/

 

 

 

SLOW…

The past days have made me think a lot of about slowness and in our Sangha yesterday the following was shared by my dear Sangha brother, Michael:

BUSY BUSY BUSY

Laughter. Angers. A swirl of conversation. A rush of foot traffic in every direction. Stop for a moment. Become a rock which redirects currents in multiple directions. Bodies and voices are going everywhere at once. Do any know where they are or where they will end up? Do they care?

Is the movement the meaning? Are the words simply a musical accompaniment to endless purposeless search? The sun rises, the sun sets, thunder rolls, rain falls, the sky clears, and up and down the street people rush rush rush. He she who is still, who is no longer part of the swirl, becomes suspect. Those passing look suspiciously at any solitary figure. Has he no purpose? Is she lost? Is there danger here? Move swiftly away, swiftly forget. No time to worry about the lost, the silent, the ones who move too slowly. Pick up your feet, accelerate, must not be left behind. – Michael L. Newell

There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist…most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by the multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence…It destroys the fruitfulness of one’s own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful. – Thomas Merton

Despite our good hearts and equally good intentions, our life and work rarely feel light, pleasant or healing. Instead, as it all piles endlessly upon itself, the whole experience of being alive begins to melt into one enormous obligation. It becomes the standard greeting everywhere: “I am so busy.” We say this to one another with no small degree of pride, as if our real exhaustion were a trophy, our ability to withstand stress a mark of real character. – Wayne Mueller

This is what we mean by the term spiritual: It is the ecstatic force that stirs all our goals. When we perceive it, it is as if our mind were gliding for a while with an eternal current. – Abraham Heschel