A: This happens when our mind is agitated and we have not settled down in our hearts. The best way to approach this is to stop and go back to the sensation of our breath. If your mind is muddled for some reason, spend more time on breath sensations. This will allow the mind to settle down. Just like when you have a muddy water glass, you need to let it sit for the soil to settle down at the bottom and the glass to be clear.
Tag: karma
Stress Less
As the holidays are fast approaching, we are getting into the most stressful season of the year in the Western world. So today let’s discuss how to keep the stress at bay and more importantly, how to make sure that you keep your mental peace amid all the chaos.
Before we talk about tackling stress, let’s discuss how stress originates in our body. Stress comes from trying to control people and situations. Getting other people to behave our way is not really working and is never effective. The only thing we can control for sure is our mind. There will be always things to worry about. So if wait for things to settle down, we will be waiting for eternity. Our thoughts carry us all over the place and they bring stress in our lives. If we gain mastery over our mind and thoughts, we find deep peace. Our mind is like a crazy wild elephant. It destroys everything on its way, it thinks about scary thoughts that will most likely never materialize. Someone put it nicely, anxiety and worries are misuses of the imagination.
But we live in the real world so there will always be things out of our control. If we learn to control our reactions to situations, we will be able to avoid stress and bring happiness and peace. In that spirit, I found this stress handling quadrant. I am going to share this document on the screen. This document is courtesy of Tashi Nyma a Buddhist Monk out of Dallas, Texas. No need to copy this document – I will email you a copy at the end of this session. Those of you who are watching this on our YouTube channel or on LinkedIn, please email meditatedenver@gmail.com and I will email you a copy of this document.
As you can see, this is called the Four Quadrant Practice. The first quadrant is Avoid. We want to avoid as many situations as we can that can create stress in our life. For example, is looking at our phone 10 times an hour really necessary? Once people start looking at their phones, all kinds of stressful situations arise. They say an average American looks at their phone 96 times per day. That is insane!! Going on social media all day is another one of those things that we can avoid. What I found helpful was to limit my social media interactions to twice a day. And I am trying really hard not to get into an argument on social media. I limit checking my emails three or four times per day. Again, it is different for everyone but no one expects you to respond within minutes.
The next quadrant is Adjust. Let’s adjust our behavior to avoid stressful situations. For example, because I am in a High-Risk COVID group, I started getting stressed out when COVID increased in the last two months about shopping. So we adapted to a 100% online or curbside pickup model for the last 6 weeks. It eliminated all the unnecessary stress. You might want to limit the duration of meetings if that stresses you out.
The next quadrant is to Adapt. We adapt to the situations that we can avoid or adjust to. For example, you may not be able to avoid a meeting with that annoying coworker. Take some deep breaths before you begin the meeting. Go for a walk if you have an option.
The last quadrant is Accept. This is if all fails kind of category. Accept that you have to take that meeting and it may go bad. Prepare yourself and change your attitude towards it. There is no reason an external situation should give you stress. Train your mind. Essentially, this is what we started the session with.
So as you can see, there are ways to stay out of stressful situations. We must make sure that what the world brings does not need to disturb our internal peace. Hopefully, with some practice, we can all experience that peace within. I would like you to do this exercise as homework with the worksheet. It would certainly make you think if nothing else.
Mindful Speech
Some people talk a lot and others tend to be quiet. But all of us have a constant chatter in our mind this inner speech. So let’s discuss mindful speech both inner and outer. We briefly talked about asking ourselves Is it True? Is it Necessary? Is it Kind? Before we post anything on social media in Episodes 7 and 9. So let’s take this a little further. When we have any kind of communication with someone else, we must ask ourselves; is it True? Is it Helpful? Is it Necessary? Is it Kind? The answer to any one of these is negative, we should try and refrain from that speech. A speech can be any communication method be it social media, email, verbal, nonverbal, etc. This will help us bring a level of kindness to the world. More importantly, it will allow us to be less judgmental as we tend to judge everyone except ourselves all day long. It will also hopefully help us avoid exaggerated language. Because of the influence of marketing in modern society, we have all adopted this language of exaggeration. Either it is the best or the worst nothing in between. Do we really “love” that slice of pizza? Without that our life is somehow going to be incomplete? Is it really a slice of heaven? Do we even know what heaven looks like? If someone does not give us something, is it really ruining our life? My personal favorite is To Die For. Really? Will you die for that sweater? If we begin to pay attention to what we communicate, we will be able to avoid a lot of this.
Paying attention to our communication is great. But, if you think about it, the majority of all of our speech is internal. We talk to ourselves more than we talk to anyone else. We think about things that happened or things that may never happen. So let’s start to develop a habit. When we catch ourselves having an internal dialogue, we should ask ourselves; is it True? Is it Necessary? Is it Helpful? Is it Kind? And again, if the answer to any one of these is No, let’s just stop that internal dialog and try to just be without thinking anything. Personally, I find it helpful to ask Is it Necessary? Every time, the answer seems to be No and I stop that internal dialog. One useful tip is to use our MAC technic here as well. If we are alert looking out for this internal dialog, we will then can be mindful in asking the question so that we can stop that internal dialog. You will be amazed at how your day improves just by keeping a tab on your internal dialog. Some people ask if we should continue if the dialog is positive. In general, we want to avoid that internal dialog as it may start out positive but as you all know, our mind wonders and can get the negative drift anytime. If we make a sincere practice to scan for our internal speech, we will be able to tame our mind a lot faster and our meditation practice will improve as well.
If someone dies in their sleep, does that ripen positive karma?
For the most part yes. There is an exception when the person is having a nightmare or a dream and their delusions are coming out such as fear, anger, and so forth. If they die in that state of delusion, then negative karma ripens otherwise person dying in their sleep will have their positive karma ripen.
Joyful Death
Today, let’s talk about something unusual – joyful death! At a first glance, it sounds like an oxymoron, but as you will see, it is a profound subject. I read two books recently on death. Living Meaningfully and Dying Joyfully – a book by Kelsang Gyasto – a Buddhist meditation master. The second book was Death an inside story by Sadhguru – a Yogi. Surprisingly, both books had a very similar theme and conclusion. They also have similar teachings on what happens at death. At death, our very subtle mind or I or sole leaves this body and stays in what is known as an intermediate state for anywhere from a few hours to few weeks before taking another birth. That another birth could be in any realm – human, animal, and so forth depending upon what karma ripened at the time of our death.
In general, in the west, we have this fear of death. All of us intellectually know everyone dies someday but we don’t take that to mean that we too shall die. If you think about it, every minute that passes, we are one minute closer to our death – scarry right?
During our Karma Q&A sessions, we briefly touched on the fact that Karma that ripens at our death determines where we end up next in this cycle of birth and death. So let’s discuss what it really means. We have all created negative Karma in this lifetime and previous lives. So strictly statistically speaking, the chance of negative Karma ripening at death is higher than the chance of positive karma ripening. How do we get around these overwhelming odds against us? If we die peacefully or joyfully, we increase our odds of positive karma ripening significantly.
That leads to the next question – how do we die peacefully? There is actually a whole science behind this. In a nutshell, during death, one must be without any attachment, fear, pain, or anyone of the delusions. If that happens, our negative karma will not ripen at death. This means no thinking about our possessions; money, cars, houses, etc. No worrying about our loved ones removing all attachment. No concern about our mental and physical pain. There are things people around those who are dying can do to help the process as well. The biggest thing loved ones can do for a dying person is not be attached to them. Meaning no holding hands, no crying, no we will miss you, no it is too soon, no please stay, and so forth. As that creates a strong sense of attachment that we are trying to avoid. We can also make things conducive for a dying person by playing soft devotional music.
I have only experienced one death of a loved one in my life. But it was textbook joyful death. A few years ago, my uncle passed away. At the time of death, there were about 20 people in the room, no one was touching or even close to his bed. Everyone was singing bhajans and in about half an hour or so, he passed away. No one was crying, it was just a matter of fact as opposed to a sad event. That is what is needed to make sure our negative karma does not ripen at death.
I know this is a different topic and not everyone is comfortable thinking about but it is an important event in one’s journey through life. It decides what our next destination may be so we must begin to think about how best we can make this a peaceful if not joyful event.
So in our meditation today, we will first settle down in our hearts. Then we will perform what is known as absorption of cessation meditation. All that means is no thoughts, no feelings, no sensations. We do this by imagining ourselves as a piece of wood. A piece of wood has no thoughts, or feelings, or emotions. Just like that, we will stay still in our mind experiencing a deep peace. We will hold that peace as long as we can.