Get Some Headspace: 10 minutes can make all the difference Read Online Free Page B
Author: Andy Puddicombe
when I went to the toilet I completely forgot I’d put the money down there.
As it happens, the restroom was busy and so, with no urinals free, I went into one of the cubicles. I won’t go into detail, but these toilets had seen better days and whoever had used it beforehand had forgotten to flush. I was still lost in thought and worry as I stood there and lifted up my robes. And then it happened. Before I could do anything, I watched in horror as $500 in loose notes fell into the pan. Needless to say, had I been more mindful and less caught up in all the thoughts, it would simply never have happened. I got distracted, and when you get distracted, you make mistakes. You may be wondering what happened next – did I really leave $500 floating in the toilet, or did I roll up my sleeves and do the unthinkable? Let’s just say I ended up going on that retreat.
So mindfulness means to be present. It means being ‘in the moment’, experiencing life directly as it unfolds, rather than being distracted, caught up and lost in thought. It’s not a contrived or temporary state of mind that you need to somehow create and maintain. On the contrary, it’s a way of stepping back and resting the mind in its natural state, free from the usual chaos. Take a moment to imagine what it might be like to live life this way. Imagine how it would be to drop all the baggage, the stories, the arguments, the judgments and agendas that take up so much space in the mind. This is what it means to be mindful.
But after a lifetime of being lost in thought, the right kind of conditions are needed in order to learn how to step back in this way. That’s where meditation comes in. There’s nothing mystical about it. Meditation is simply a technique to provide you with the optimum conditions for practising the skill of mindfulness.
Of course you can experience being ‘in the moment’ or fully absorbed in the present with any activity, not just with the practice of meditation. In fact, you’ll have no doubt experienced this feeling many times in your life before. Perhaps you were skiing down a mountain, riding a bike, listening to your favourite bit of music, playing with your child, or even watching a sunset. The problem with this approach is it tends to be a bit hit and miss and so we don’t get to experience the feeling all that often. But by sitting down to meditate each day, even if it’s for a very short time, that feeling of being present, aware, and in the moment, becomes increasingly familiar and is then that much easier to apply to the rest of your life. As with learning any new skill, if you want to get the very best out of it, you need to provide yourself with the very best conditions in which to learn. In fact the practice of meditation provides such good conditions for learning mindfulness that for many that’s as far as they want to take it. Simply having ten minutes of resting the mind each day can feel enough.
The idea of mindfulness and meditation and how they relate is not necessarily that easy to grasp. So try thinking of it this way: imagine you’re learning to drive a car, presumably you’d head out to a quiet country road rather than a busy motorway at first. Of course you can drive on either, but one is much easier than the other when you’re learning. The same is true of mindfulness. You can use it in any situation and for any purpose, but the easiest place to learn the skill of mindfulness is during meditation. The funny thing is, even when you feel confident in applying mindfulness to everyday life, you’ll probably still want to take a short time out to meditate each day. That’s because no matter how good a driver you might be, there’s something comforting, and even exhilarating, about driving along a quiet country road that a motorway never can quite match. What’s more, it also gives you the time and space to notice what’s going on around you, to admire the scenery.
The distinction between meditation and
As it happens, the restroom was busy and so, with no urinals free, I went into one of the cubicles. I won’t go into detail, but these toilets had seen better days and whoever had used it beforehand had forgotten to flush. I was still lost in thought and worry as I stood there and lifted up my robes. And then it happened. Before I could do anything, I watched in horror as $500 in loose notes fell into the pan. Needless to say, had I been more mindful and less caught up in all the thoughts, it would simply never have happened. I got distracted, and when you get distracted, you make mistakes. You may be wondering what happened next – did I really leave $500 floating in the toilet, or did I roll up my sleeves and do the unthinkable? Let’s just say I ended up going on that retreat.
So mindfulness means to be present. It means being ‘in the moment’, experiencing life directly as it unfolds, rather than being distracted, caught up and lost in thought. It’s not a contrived or temporary state of mind that you need to somehow create and maintain. On the contrary, it’s a way of stepping back and resting the mind in its natural state, free from the usual chaos. Take a moment to imagine what it might be like to live life this way. Imagine how it would be to drop all the baggage, the stories, the arguments, the judgments and agendas that take up so much space in the mind. This is what it means to be mindful.
But after a lifetime of being lost in thought, the right kind of conditions are needed in order to learn how to step back in this way. That’s where meditation comes in. There’s nothing mystical about it. Meditation is simply a technique to provide you with the optimum conditions for practising the skill of mindfulness.
Of course you can experience being ‘in the moment’ or fully absorbed in the present with any activity, not just with the practice of meditation. In fact, you’ll have no doubt experienced this feeling many times in your life before. Perhaps you were skiing down a mountain, riding a bike, listening to your favourite bit of music, playing with your child, or even watching a sunset. The problem with this approach is it tends to be a bit hit and miss and so we don’t get to experience the feeling all that often. But by sitting down to meditate each day, even if it’s for a very short time, that feeling of being present, aware, and in the moment, becomes increasingly familiar and is then that much easier to apply to the rest of your life. As with learning any new skill, if you want to get the very best out of it, you need to provide yourself with the very best conditions in which to learn. In fact the practice of meditation provides such good conditions for learning mindfulness that for many that’s as far as they want to take it. Simply having ten minutes of resting the mind each day can feel enough.
The idea of mindfulness and meditation and how they relate is not necessarily that easy to grasp. So try thinking of it this way: imagine you’re learning to drive a car, presumably you’d head out to a quiet country road rather than a busy motorway at first. Of course you can drive on either, but one is much easier than the other when you’re learning. The same is true of mindfulness. You can use it in any situation and for any purpose, but the easiest place to learn the skill of mindfulness is during meditation. The funny thing is, even when you feel confident in applying mindfulness to everyday life, you’ll probably still want to take a short time out to meditate each day. That’s because no matter how good a driver you might be, there’s something comforting, and even exhilarating, about driving along a quiet country road that a motorway never can quite match. What’s more, it also gives you the time and space to notice what’s going on around you, to admire the scenery.
The distinction between meditation and
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