Wednesday, February 2, 2011

A Super Bowl Meditation

Reading over the Lao Tzu ch. 77 this morning I was struck by these lines:
'The sage acts without taking credit,
Achieves without attachment.
He does not want to display his worthiness' (Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching(Yi Wu trans.) Ch. 77)

While these lines have long been of interest, today they elicited a unique response, that of 'show-boating athletes', particularly, with the Super Bowl coming up, celebrating a touchdown came to me.

I was then reminded of NFL great Barry Sanders, perhaps the greatest running back of all time, who after each touchdown, no matter how spectacular, would simply hand the ball to the referee, leaving his teammates to do the celebrating for him.

While Barry Sanders is not likely a sage (as this term in Chinese philosophy is reserved for the ancient sage-kings and Confucius alone), his under-spoken celebration said more, without saying anything, than any of the most over the top celebrations ever did. I remember very few celebrations, nor the athletes that performed them. But Barry Sanders' 'celebrating by non-celebrating' is the most memorable of all and a fitting image to the lasting power of Lao Tzu's action in non-action.

Mindfulness Meditation and Natural Clarity

This is another article I wrote for examiner.com based on the post 'Healing the Healer Within':

According to Lao Tzu, our original, natural, ordinary state is that of harmony. We need only return to simplicity to return to this original Way. Like a hand that is grasping in murky water, our active mind can churn up more and more clutter. When we stop seeking and stop grasping, the murkiness begins to settle and we can experience natural clarity.

One increasingly popular way to allow the mind to settle is the practice of mindfulness meditation. Dr. Rina Sircar has been teaching mindfulness meditation at Taungpulu Kaba Aye Dhamma Center in the Santa Cruz mountains, and Taungpulu Kaba Aye Meditation Center, in the Mission Distict, for over 30 years.

The first foundational lesson that Dr. Sircar gives is focusing the mind’s attention on the in and out of our breath. This practice anchors the mind on the breath. If the practitioners become distracted and their minds begin to wander they need only remember to return their minds to focusing on their in and out breathing.

Doing this time and time again allows the practitioner to experience all the fleeting thoughts and aspirations of the mind as they continually arise and pass away. It also gives practitioners the ability to experience something that remains, something simple and natural, beneath every thought.

Mindfulness meditation is like the analogy of the hand searching in murky water; our attention is the hand churning the waters of the mind. Stabilizing our attention, like stilling our hand, allows the murk, the excessive thought, excessive desire, to settle, opening the way for original clarity.

With such a clear mind, insight can shine through, bringing life and insight into our lives. With this insight, we are less likely to view the world with a narrow focus on achieving our desire or fulfilling our ambition. We can instead see the world as it is, the life and insight that we have opened up in ourselves responding to the life and insight in all things.