Simplify. Get More Comfortable.
I’ve been listening to the talks (there are 43 of them!) from Ajhan Sucitto’s recent month-long retreat at the Forest Refuge. They’re terrific. Some of them I’ve listened to more than once, including this one: Samadhi — Absorbing the Sweet Spot.
“Happiness and ease are the forerunners of samadhi,” he says. Many people find it really difficult to access these qualities because as Westerners, we tend to get intellectual/conceptual/”notional” about the process of mindfulness and mediation.
So he likes to give a very different kind of instruction.
He says: Let the body teach you about mindfulness. Let walking teach you about mindfulness. Let eating teach you about mindfulness. Let sitting teach you about mindfulness… The body is where there is direct wisdom that knows: this is stress. [sigh] And there’s the release from that. This is what we want to know. Thinking mind can’t know that because it can always conceive of a stress, of a should, or a could, or of whether I match up to the standard. It will always be doing that… It can not realize the end of stress. And realization is what it’s about.
He suggests instructions that are non-technical: “Put aside what you don’t need. What you feel you need, stay with that for awhile and then after that, see what else you can put aside…..
Simplify is one instruction.
The other instruction is: Get more comfortable.
Put aside the topics that are going to make you more uncomfortable… Attune to qualities that are going to give you a sense of comfort and contentment. Self respect. Bearing in mind one’s skillful action, one’s skillful companions, one’s warm relationships, one’s love…. Just bear it in mind. Drink it in. Drink in the beauty of it…
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Try it.
(And definitely listen to the talk. Click here.)