In these blog posts, I will share key points from books I’m reading. Today I am sharing from “Mindfulness in Plan English” by Bhante Bhante Gunaratana, so that together we can benefit from these noble truths and transform our lives. I’d love to hear from you in the comments section!
1. Although there are many subjects of meditation, we strongly recommend that you start focusing your undivided attention on your breathing to gain some degree of basic concentration.
2. Seeing with wisdom means seeing things within the framework of our body-mind complex without prejudices or biases that spring from greed, hatred and delusion.
3. Ordinarily when we watch the working of our body-mind complex, we tend to ignore things that are not pleasant to us and hold onto things that are. This is because our minds are generally influenced by desire, resentment, and delusion. Our ego, self, or opinions get in our way and color our judgement.
4. We want to gain insight into the experience of impermanence to overcome our unhappiness and ignorance: our deeper knowledge of unhappiness overcomes the greed that causes our unhappiness, and our realization of selflessness overcomes the ignorance that arises from the notion of self.
5. Mindfulness practice is the practice of being hundred percent honest with ourselves.
6. We have to be extremely wise and mindful to thank the person who exposes our faults for helping us to the tread the upward path of self improvement.
7. We should speak mindfully and listen mindfully to be benefitted by talking and listening. When we listen and talk mindfully, our minds are free from greed, selfishness, hatred and delusion.
8. Our goal is to reach the perfection of all the noble and wholesome qualities latent in our subconscious mind.
9. Practice: once you sit, do not change the position until the end of the time you determined at the beginning.
10. If you have never meditated before, sit motionlessly for not longer than twenty minutes. Gradually increase the time of meditation.
