Explore every episode of the podcast dharma-licious

To watch the original video of this episode and/or become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

Do you ever wish that you could have a more tranquil mind?

For a lot of folks who turn to meditation, this is often one of the big outcomes that they’re after. But there’s this common thing that happens.

When people have been practicing meditation for a little while, it can seem to them like their minds are becoming more busy rather than less busy. It’s as if their concentration is getting worse rather than better.

It has to do with their ability to notice the thoughts that are arising in their minds.

It’s not that they are having more thoughts or that they’re becoming more easily distractible. It’s just that as our awareness becomes more refined, we naturally start to notice the subtleties of our mental activity more acutely.

In other words, our minds are pretty much the same. It’s just that we’re able to catch those little thoughts that would normally have gone undetected under the radar.

And this is a good thing.

It’s at this stage that it becomes really apparent just how often and how much we’re typically going through our days lost in our thinking without even knowing that we’re thinking - and the consequences that that can have on our happiness and well-being.

It’s also at this stage that it starts to sink in that it really isn’t our job in meditation to stop our thoughts from coming or to block them when they do. The only requirement is that we see and learn about the nature of our minds and to let go of being overly identified with our naturally flowing experience, to loosen our grip of that metaphorical fist so we don’t hold on to our thoughts, ideas and beliefs quite so tightly.

It’s clear that many of us start out being attracted to mindfulness and meditation because we’re seeking some kind of inner tranquility. Usually, the idea we have of tranquility is that it’s what happens when our minds stop and our bodies relax and we can just chill out in the beingness of it all.

But the true definition of tranquility as it pertains to our minds is that it’s the state of being undisturbed by our thoughts, which is a very different definition.

It means that it’s okay for our thoughts to flow.

It’s okay for them to be there.

We don’t need to get rid of them.

But that we develop this capacity to meet them with calm observation - to see them for what they really are and not be agitated by them, regardless of what the content of the thought is about.

It’s through this trainable capacity that we can then start to meet the circumstances of our lives with increased wisdom. And in this context, wisdom means seeing reality as it really is and responding appropriately.

Now, imagine what this would mean for you in your extremely busy day-to-day life.

How useful would it be to have that mental wherewithal more often than not to see what’s going on around you so super clearly as it really is rather than through the distorted perceptions of an agitated and distracted mind to be undisturbed by your thoughts?

To my mind there are very few things we can do for ourselves that are more important and more valuable than that.

It’s not an overnight thing, and it does take a willingness to engage in a consistent practice, but it is possible and it is available to you.

If you’d like to explore developing a more tranquil, resourceful relationship with your mind, then get in touch and let’s discuss options of how and where to start.

Be well.

Paul 🙏

Visit https://dharmalicious.substack.com to join the newsletter and receive Paul's additional content.

When we settle back and look at our minds, it’s not too difficult to recognise that our thoughts, behaviours, and actions are primed to move us away from pain and towards comfort.

Even if sometimes our thoughts, behaviours, and actions are clumsy and maladaptive and end up entangling us in ever stickier webs of suffering, the motivation behind them – the core intention – is to get us back to some form of happy as swiftly as possible.

You could say that each of us, in our own way, is obsessed with happiness. Or at the very least, with not suffering.

It consumes us. It’s been consuming us since the lights of human consciousness were switched on.

Which makes it even more perplexing that in most cultures - particularly western, capitalist cultures - that true happiness is the thing we understand the least.

The most potent misunderstanding we have about happiness is that we’re not supposed to suffer.

We’re not supposed to feel discomfort.

We’re not supposed to get sick.

We’re not supposed to feel icky emotions.

We’re not supposed to be vulnerable to having everything change on us in an instant.

We have a deeply rooted sense that suffering is wrong. Or worse, there’s something wrong with us when we suffer.

So, our instinct is to dive in and try to fix or banish every kind of wrinkle, crease, twinge, or niggle in our lives.

Our conditioning has us believing that it’s only through an absence of suffering that we can be truly happy.

Now, the obvious question is:

How’s that working out for us?

Understanding Dukkha

The Buddha understood that true happiness, peace, and contentment—within ourselves and with the world—is achievable. But only when we see the truth about what it means to be born into a human body with a human mind; the truth that we cannot avoid the inevitability of unwanted and unpleasant experience.

There’s no getting away from it. Unwanted and unpleasant experience is the non-negotiable admission fee for taking part in humanity.

So, if we want to be truly happy in life we’ve got to work out how to skilfully navigate and relate to our suffering. And that can only start by getting a handle on why and how we suffer in the first place.

The first teaching the Buddha ever gave was that of The Four Noble Truths, which remains steadfastly at the core of all Buddhist philosophy and practice.

The first of these truths is the Truth of Dukkha.

Dukkha is an ancient Pali word (Pali being the language the original Buddhists texts) and is often translated as ‘suffering’.

But, like many Pali words, there is no single English equivalent word that can capture the true breadth and depth of its meaning.

You may have heard that the Buddha said, ‘Life is suffering’, but that’s not a particularly helpful or accurate translation. Afterall, life can also be extremely joyful.

It’s more accurate to say, ‘In life there is suffering’. But even then, each of us have different ideas of what constitutes suffering in our own experience.

Dukkha is better understood to mean a kind of ‘unsatisfactoryness’, or ‘a bumpy ride’, or ‘that which is difficult to be with’, or ‘that which is hard to endure’.

And in terms of what it’s referring to, it covers the full range of unpleasant and unwanted human experience, from intense physical and emotional pain and mental anguish to mild frustrations or things just seeming “a little off” or “not quite right”.

When we frame it that way, it’s a lot easier to see that, yes, on any given day we inevitably bump up against and array of events, thoughts, and emotions we’d rather be without.

Think about when you wake up in the morning. How long does it take for the first moment of Dukkha to arrive?

For many, it might be before the eyes have even opened.

A heart-sinking resistance to it being morning already.

Not wanting to leave the comfort of the pillow.

Thoughts about the busyness or challenges that lay ahead.

And that’s before even placing a foot on the floor.

And then, of course, there’s the bigger stuff.

The interruptions, the bad news, the disagreements, the setbacks, the losses, the betrayals, the illnesses, the injuries, the bereavements, the accidents.

It’s all Dukkha.

And none of us are exempt.

Accepting that Dukkha – or suffering – is a natural, normal, to-be-expected, and unavoidable part of life, is the essential first step on the Buddha’s path towards cultivating a more peaceful and happier mind.

Or as the wonderful Buddhist nun and teacher, Pema Chödrön, said,

“The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we suffer, it doesn’t mean anything is wrong. What a relief!”

So rather than turning away from our suffering, trying to resist it, avoid it, or paper over it, the wisest move we can make is to get to know it—to investigate it, to understand it.

The Suffering Of Suffering

One of the things I really appreciate about the Buddha is how he laid it all out so clearly, including categorising the 3 types of suffering that each of us inevitably experience.

The first category is called The Suffering of Suffering (or, in Pali, ‘Dukkha Dukkha’, which is fun to say).

This describes the fact that we live in a world where there are many things going on around us, or that we may even get embroiled in, that are incredibly difficult to be with.

Things like violence, hatred, cruelty, abuse, poverty, sickness, pandemics, homelessness, racism, sexism, all the ‘isms’, natural disasters, climate catastrophes, the list goes on.

There is no reframe to convince us that any of this is good. It’s not, it’s hard. And to a large extent it’s the backdrop to our lives.

The route to peace is not to deny that any of this is real, but rather to examine our options for how we might relate to it.

Also included within The Suffering of Suffering—which is sometimes known as ‘Ordinary Suffering’—are the difficult emotions that none of us are impervious to.

If you have a human body and a human mind at some point you are going to experience anger, resentment, sadness, sorrow, grief, embarrassment, guilt, fear, anxiety, stress, nervousness. Again, the list goes on.

We don’t feel any of these emotions because there’s something wrong with us. We feel them because they are baked into the fabric of what it means to be human.

And then there are all the difficult or uncomfortable physical sensations we experience.

We get tired, we get hungry, we get aches and pains, cuts and bruises, we get sick.

Just think about temperature. How often is it just right versus it being too warm or too cold?

It’s all Dukkha.

The Suffering of Change

The second category is The Suffering of Change (Viparanama Dukkha)

One of the core conditions of life that we find most difficult to bear is that everything changes and nothing is permanent.

We’re conditioned to based much of our happiness and satisfaction on things being a particular way. We chase after the conditions and the things we want, and when we get them, we want them to remain and stay the same.

We crave certainty, predictability and stability. And, of course, this is a problem when we live in a universe that is characterised by change and impermanence. Life itself is not stable. It’s uncertain and unpredictable. It’s in constant flux.

The Buddha said,

“Whatever is of the nature to arise, will also pass away.”

As a simple example, think about what it’s like buying a new item of clothing that you really, really like. Two ways we feel the effects of change is

1) the level of happiness you feel towards that garment is going to fade, it’ll become old news quite quickly, and

2) The garment itself will fade—it’ll wear out, get tattered, and might end up as rags.

The Suffering of Change describes the suffering we feel when we pin our satisfaction on things that, by their nature, cannot stay the same and cannot last.

They are inherently unsatisfying.

The Suffering of Existence

The third category of suffering is The Suffering of Existence (Sankhara Dhukka). Often referred to as ‘all pervasive suffering’.

This is about the basic experience of what it’s like to be a human being, and the deeply held, though erroneous, sense that we each have these inherent and fixed identities that are separate to the inherent and fixed identities of everyone else.

While this gives us a sense of being special and unique in the world, it inevitably comes with its own subtle sense of isolation, accompanied with the not-so-subtle weight of responsibility to keep ourselves happy and alive.

All pervasive suffering is born out of the fact that we want ourselves to remain stable and unchanging.

If only we could wave a magic wand and stay forever young, beautiful, vibrant, and healthy.

But the reality is, every one of us faces the same circumstance. We’re born, we grow and, if we’re lucky, we get to grow old. At some point the body inevitably gets weaker and wears out, we get sick, and, eventually, we all arrive at the same end.

None of us are exempt.

And that is incredibly hard for us to come to terms with. It’s the thing we find hardest to fully accept. We don’t like thinking about it. We’ll often do anything to avoid thinking about it. But we’re all too aware of our finitude, and with that comes an existential low-level hum of anxiety that lingers in the background.

So, we do what we can to hold back the tide, to keep ourselves younger for longer, to stay fit, avoid getting sick, to distract ourselves from the whole ‘passage of time’ conundrum.

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t be doing what we can to keep ourselves healthy. Of course, it’s really important that we do.

But when the behaviours we engage in are born out of a subtle act of rebellion against the precariousness of life, then they create their own kind of suffering, because ultimately, they never work. We’ll always find ourselves back at the second category: The suffering of change and impermanence.

Now if you’ve made it this far, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that this all sounds rather pessimistic.

But remember, the Buddha’s teachings really are laid out to provide a path for peace.

The intention of exploring these categories—

The Suffering of Suffering

The Suffering of Change

The Suffering of Existence

—is, if we want to be truly and genuinely happy in life—to transcend our suffering—then we first must investigate and understand how suffering shows up for us in the first place.

It’s by seeing the truth of Dukkha clearly in this way that we’re then ready to recognise and appreciate that the contentment we seek is not being held ransom by the realities of life, but by our deeply conditioned tendency to get caught up in being attached to our lives having to be a particular way.

This leads us neatly on to the 2nd Noble Truth – The truth of the Cause of Dukkha

Which—spoiler alert—is Craving.

This is a topic for another day, so please look out for that.

Warmest,

Paul 🙏

Visit https://dharmalicious.substack.com to watch the original video and / or join the newsletter and receive Paul's additional content.

-----------

A couple of questions I want to share with you that I’ve been playing around with a lot recently and that come lifted directly from my meditation practice are:

“Is this skilful?”

and

“Is this wise effort?”

I’ve been practicing asking myself these questions throughout the day in context of whatever I happen to be doing in that moment.

And the reason for that is I find these questions to be hugely helpful in reorienting me to what’s most important to me in my life and work, in a way that helps me to attend to that, while protecting my energy and well-being.

The first question, “Is this skilful?”, is related to the thoughts and intentions and choices that have been underpinning my behaviour in that moment.

It’s really a shortcut way of asking any number of other things like:

* Is this really benefiting me or others in a meaningful way?

* Am I responding or merely reacting to what’s going on?

* Am I doing what’s right or just what feels easy and comfortable?

* In a work context, it might mean, is this strategic or just noise?

* In a relationship context, it might mean, is this respectful and ethical?

* Is it morally sound?

* Am I creating unity or division?

* Togetherness or friction?

So in essence, asking the question, is this skilful, is like asking,

“Is my current inner state and behaviour oriented towards something wholesome and worthwhile? Or is it perhaps leading towards something I don’t want further down the line?”

The second question, “Is this wise effort?” relates to energy and application.

Now, like many people, I suppose, I’ve been known to flit between

1) Strenuously striving and grasping for the things and the outcomes that I want and

2) Backing off to such an extent that I’m not really achieving anything worthwhile at all.

So wise effort is about finding that healthy balance between completely zoning out on one hand and trying too hard on the other.

It’s about recognising where the energy of my behaviour is currently at on a continuum between full-on avoidance and resisting at one extreme and desperate striving, clinging, grasping, controlling and over-efforting on the other.

Usually, for me, I know I’ve got that balance just about right when I feel that what I’m doing is important and worthwhile. And when that is accompanied by the sense that I’m not really taking it or myself too seriously.

It’s about giving it just the right amount of effort for it not to feel like a burden on my well-being and sanity. A little bit like a guitar string that only plays in tune when it’s not too tight and not too loose.

Now these two questions, “Is this skilful?” and “Is this wise effort?”, don’t come with any instructions for what to do. That’s up to you and your intuition. But what they do is help you to notice when and how you’re out of alignment with how you really want to be showing up for your life.

And by getting into the habit of asking these questions frequently throughout the day, you give yourself lots of opportunities to spot it more quickly, and to not allow too much time to pass for that habit energy of unskillful, unwise effort to lead you down avenues you’d really rather not go.

So I want to encourage you to give this a try. As often as you can remember throughout the day, simply pause and with whatever you’re doing, ask yourself the questions, “Is this skilful?” and “Is this wise effort?”

Visit https://dharmalicious.substack.com to join the newsletter and receive Paul's additional content.

One of the more challenging aspects of mindfulness, for a lot of people, particularly for those starting out in their practice, is the encouragement to meet each moment with acceptance.

It is extremely common that the reason someone has turned to mindfulness in the first place is because they’re looking for a way to relieve some kind of anguish they’re dealing with. That might be stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, or physical pain, to name a few. The hope is that mindfulness can offer a cure, or at least a way of escaping the discomfort.

And it’s also common that, even if there isn’t a stress-related motivation to give it a go, there’s an expectation that mindfulness is going to provide an express route to inner bliss.

But then, in meditation, we’re asked, “Can you allow this moment to be exactly as it is, without needing to control it or for it to be different in any way?”

When you’re having a particularly lovely time in meditation, fully accepting the moment is the easiest thing in the world. But if that moment is presenting you with discomfort, sadness, or frustration, resistance seems like a totally logical and justified response. Why on earth would anyone want to accept the very thing they’re longing to be rid of?

I well remember the first time I meditated. As someone experiencing anxiety and depression, my response was:

“Are you kidding? I’m here to feel better, not to accept how awful everything is. I thought this was supposed to be relaxing.”

(Or something along those lines, perhaps a little more expletive.)

Like many people, it took me a little while to really connect with why acceptance is so fundamental to the practice.

The bad news is, mindfulness will not solve all life’s problems. It won’t stop there being stress in the world. It won’t remove pain from your body. And it definitely won’t make you blissfully happy, 24/7 for the rest of your life.

But the good news is it gives us something better; a way of fully engaging with the whole of life, in all its messy glory.

Because life is messy.

Mindfulness teaches us that discomfort is a normal, natural and inevitable part of life. We can’t avoid it and nor should we. If all we do is accept the pleasant side of life and resist the ugly, at best we’ll only ever be present for half of life.

It shows us that, by not shutting ourselves off from the less comfortable aspects of our experience – if we turn toward them rather than away from them - we can begin to relate to them in a very different way. We can learn to be with whatever we’re experiencing, without needing to suffer because of it.

The willingness to open-up and feel into what’s actually happening—physically, emotionally or mentally—and accepting it without judgment, puts you in the healthy position of being able to simply observe how the body and mind are naturally responding to the culmination of causes and conditions that have led to this very moment.

So, rather than trying to push the stress away, it’s like saying:

“Stress is here. This is what it feels like in the body. Stress is a part of life, and it feels like this.”

No resistance. No explaining it away. No dressing it up as something else. No story about why it’s here or wishing it to be different. Just the awareness of being in this moment, as it is right now.

The Myths of Acceptance

There is a lot of misunderstanding about what it means to accept things as they are.

For example:

* If we just accept everything, won’t that make us passive?

* Won’t we lose our ambition and drive?

* Surely, we’ll retreat into ourselves and just allow bad things to happen?

* If we just accept feeling bad, how are we ever going to feel better?

It’s important to know that acceptance is not the same as resignation. It’s not saying, “Well, that’s just the way things are so I guess I’d better lump it!”

It doesn’t mean we aren’t going to take the necessary action to improve our circumstances in the future.

It’s not sitting idly by and letting bad things happen to us or others.

It’s not condoning any injustice we might have been subjected to.

Firstly, acceptance gives us an accurate measure of where we are right now, which is really important.

I once asked someone for directions, and after some careful consideration they looked at me and said, “To be completely honest, if I were trying to get there I wouldn’t be starting from here!” It’s the worst advice I’ve ever been given!

If where we want to get to is a place of ease, we have to be real about where we’re starting from.

Not accepting the truth of what’s present in the moment, is like trying to start a journey from someplace other than where you are.

Acceptance is simply a wise first step in working skilfully with what’s already happening.

You don’t have to accept any future moments before they’ve arrived. The only moment that needs accepting is the one you’re in right now because it’s already here.

The Importance of Physical Sensation

Secondly, when you accept things as they are, you see them as they are… and by ‘see’ what I really mean is feel.

It allows us to observe how our experience of the moment shows up as physical sensations in the body.

We might experience an emotion as having some tightness, or pressure, warmth or coolness, tingling or vibration, lightness or heaviness, or something else.

By becoming mindful of the physical nature of our experience, and staying with it for a while, we start to see that nothing stays the same. It all exists in a never-ending flow of constant change.

While we may have perceived our discomfort as being a fixed ‘thing’ that has a kind of solidity to it, we begin to observe that, usually, it’s made up of lots of different individual sensations that are constantly shifting and evolving, arising and passing away.

Practising this kind of observing is what helps us, over time, to transform our relationship with discomfort. Bringing interest to the dynamic flow of sensations, without our usual judgements and stories about them can be extremely liberating and offers a sense of greater ease.

The Art of Allowing

The process starts with acceptance, but it’s followed up with allowing.

It’s entirely possible to accept what’s here in the moment while still holding onto some subtle resistance for allowing it to flow unimpeded.

I’ve certainly had the experience of this in my own practice.

I have a condition called Ankylosing Spondylitis, which is a kind of arthritis that causes inflammation in the spine and the joints. This can often contribute to a bit of discomfort while meditating, particularly in longer sits, and for a long time, I was convinced that I was doing a pretty good job at accepting there was pain.

But one day, it came to my awareness that, while I had accepted there was discomfort, I was, at the same time, subtly resisting feeling that discomfort in the body. It’s as if I were trying to acknowledge it and ignore it simultaneously, by forcing my attention onto the sensations of breathing.

As soon as I realised what I was doing, I loosened my grip and made the sensations of the pain the object of my meditation.

What I found was, by allowing them to be there, and by exploring them with a calm mind, it was possible to experience the sensations without feeling so contracted. They stopped being something I felt I needed to endure.

This was a game-changer, not just in my meditation practice, but also in my day-to-day life. Sometimes there is not a lot I can do about the pain, but I’ve learned that I can happily co-exist with it. It doesn’t have to be something that detracts from my enjoyment of life.

In mindfulness, accepting and allowing are best mates. They go hand in hand.

Allowing is the part of acceptance that lets us be with things as they are, without them needing to change. Paradoxically, it is by not needing things to change that we are more readily able to see that they are always changing. Nothing is permanent. And that includes our emotions.

When there isn’t a narrative to keep breathing new life into them and hold them captive, emotions rise-up, they get felt and then they fall away. The more we can witness the simplicity of this for ourselves, the more we are able to trust that it’s ok to accept them when they arrive. We trust that they are only here because the conditions are right for them to arise. But we also trust it’s their nature to pass through. They’ll peak and they’ll fade. They won’t be here forever.

Be Kind

So, while mindfulness isn’t the solution to all our problems, and it isn’t all unicorns and rainbows, it does put us in touch with something pretty amazing—our innate capacity for handling life’s ups and downs in a more skilful, easeful way.

Please don’t be hard on yourself if you find some things harder to accept than others. Be patient and be kind.

After all, it’s a practice.

Keep practising.

Warmest,

Paul 🙏

Visit https://dharmalicious.substack.com to join the newsletter and receive Paul's additional content.

When we practice mindfulness, what we’re really practising is clearly seeing the underlying nature of our moment to moment experience, as it truly is, rather than through the lens of our own stories, distortions and judgements.

Regularly dropping into this level of awareness can, over time, be very useful in helping us relate to our lives more skilfully.

The more skilful choices we’re able to make when responding to life’s inevitable ups and downs, the more contented and at ease we tend to be with life itself.

But how easy it is to look beyond the stories our minds create, in order that we can hang out with the raw, unfiltered, data of what’s happening moment to moment?

It certainly takes practice.

Why? Because it is ingrained in us to assign our own meaning to just about everything we encounter.

We do that by instantly and automatically judging our experiences, even the imagined ones, as being positive, negative or neutral. Then we instantly and automatically create a compelling narrative that supports the correctness of our judgments, meaning we believe them to be true.

We forget that thoughts aren’t facts.

The Problem With Judging

Each of us has a lifetime of conditioning about what is good and bad, right and wrong, fair and unfair, beautiful and ugly... and it takes just milliseconds for us to get a felt sense of whatever we’re presented with. It is so automatic that it feels like it is happening to us, rather than by us.

We assume the way we feel is a direct reaction to the person, the behaviour, the situation or the thing. But it’s not. We’re really reacting to the judgement itself.

Our propensity for making snap judgements is a product of our evolution. It’s a highly efficient way to stay safe.

By desiring only positive experiences and resisting the negative ones, we’re far less likely to venture into situations that lead to harm. Or at least that’s the plan.

On the surface, this sounds like a good thing. And it is.

In real moments of danger, there may not be enough time for the mind to make calculated, conscious decisions about what’s best for our future wellbeing. So, making snap judgements is a way of automating our safety.

The problem is, this unconscious process of judging is a far from perfect system. It doesn’t discriminate. We end up judging absolutely everything. Even ourselves.

This often leads to unnecessary suffering for ourselves and others. It’s great for keeping us safe, but it’s rubbish for keeping us happy.

The judging instinct has a negativity bias, meaning it errs heavily on the side of caution. When in doubt, it will lean toward perceiving something as a potential threat, just in case.

How Judging Blocks Happiness

In order to work so quickly, the judging mind has to ignore much of the actual reality of a situation. So much so that we’re often blinded to other, potentially healthier and more joyful possibilities.

Judging, as normal as it feels, keeps us eternally spinning on a wheel of longing for pleasant experiences and avoiding unpleasant experiences.

Our conditioning would tell us that this is the way to happiness but, ultimately, it can only ever be a disappointing ride. Being caught in the never-ending cycle of craving what we don’t have and resisting what we do have, is a recipe for dissatisfaction.

So, how do we climb off the wheel, and what can that possibly do for our relationship with happiness?

Getting Off The Wheel

Firstly, climbing off the wheel is not a one-time event. We have to repeatedly disembark again and again by intentionally practising being non-judgemental toward our experiences.

It’s important to understand that having a non-judgemental attitude doesn’t mean training ourselves to stop having judgemental thoughts.

As long as you’re breathing, judgements WILL arise.

Having a non-judgemental attitude means developing a sensitivity for noticing judgements as they arise, and then choosing to not get swept away by them.

Instead, we simply observe our judgements as thoughts taking place in the mind. By themselves, they are harmless mental events.

Rather than getting hooked up on the content of the judgement, and being carried along on a proliferating train of thought about why ‘such and such’ is bad a thing and shouldn’t be happening, we just bring awareness to the fact that the mind is thinking. That’s just what minds do.

When we don’t react to a thought - when we observe it but don’t engage with it - it simply plays out in the mind and then dissipates. Then all we’re left with is what is actually here, in this moment, right now.

Practising Non-judging

The perfect place to practice non-judging is in the training ground of meditation.

When the body is settled and the attention is resting on a neutral anchor, such as the breath, it soon becomes apparent how much the mind likes to judge.

We might evaluate the quality of our concentration, or lack there thereof, and get down on ourselves for not being a ‘good meditator’.

A physical sensation might get labelled as bad or annoying, and there may be a commentary about how it’s interfering with the enjoyment of the moment.

There may be judgement about an emotional state: “I shouldn’t be feeling like this. I wish I felt more Zen.”

Sometimes we get lost in thoughts about ourselves; the kind of person we are, what we’re good at, what we’re not good at, how flawed we are...

Or, we can get equally lost in similar thoughts about other people.

We judge the past. We judge the future. We might even judge the present moment, wishing it were different - getting frustrated with the environment we’re in with all its distractions, making it hard to meditate.

And then, of course, we’re back to judging ourselves for having been lost in thought, when we should have been focussing on the breath.

So what’s the move?

The move is simple.

Each time you notice a judgement taking place in the mind, just bring your awareness to it and, without analysing it in any way, silently say to yourself “judging”, and then gently guide your attention back to the sensations of the body breathing, or some other anchor.

It’s important that this is a very soft mental note, delivered in a kind and friendly way.

By being compassionate in the noticing of the judgement, we’re acknowledging that it’s not a personal failing that we judge. There is nothing to feel bad about. We’re just witnessing the unfolding of a natural phenomenon that affects all of humanity.

And we can also see that, in letting them go, judgments don’t have any power in and of themselves. They’re not real. They are just thoughts that arise in the mind and then, if left alone, pass away like clouds in the sky.

The more often we repeat that move of noticing and coming back, the more we’re able to appreciate what is actually happening in the moment.

Just the raw, unfiltered, data of sensory experience.

An Invitation

It turns out that this capacity we have for observing the activity of the mind, without being drawn into the content of the mind, does wonders for our sense of well-being and mental health.

When we’re not being yanked around by the push and pull of judgmental thoughts, we’re given the space to choose more wisely which lens to view the world through.

It means we can take a moment to skilfully respond to our circumstances, rather than simply react to them.

Practising non-judging may take place in formal meditation, but it’s bringing that practice into our daily lives that allows the true benefits to be known.

What’s an aspect of your life that would likely flourish if you were let go of some of your judgement about it?

We may not be able to stop mind judging, but as long as we don’t judge the judging and, instead, nurture the habit of noticing and mindfully redirecting our awareness, we are definitely able to experience our lives with more kindness, clarity and ease.

So, in closing, here’s a useful question I invite you to check in with at any point throughout your day:

“What’s really here right now?”

Be well,

Paul 🙏

To watch the original video of this episode and/or become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

There’s a reason we take life so personally.And a way to NOT take it so personally.Enter the KitKat*(and no, it has nothing to do with taking a break)(although you really should be taking breaks)(but that’s not what this is about)(I digress)I know you’re busy.You really haven’t got the time for this.Buuuuut, if you’re up for some powerful Buddhist insight that might make a big difference…Maybe now is a good time to have a break.

Visit https://dharmalicious.substack.com to join the newsletter and receive Paul's additional content.

Imagine that you’re standing in the middle of a field on quite a breezy day, and the wind keeps shifting direction.

For whatever reason, whenever the wind blows this way (👉), you feel really happy and connected to your wellbeing.

But when the wind blows that way (👈), you feel unhappy and disconnected from your wellbeing.

Also imagine that, because you like feeling happy, you try to do everything you can think of to keep the wind blowing in this direction (👉). You try to encourage it. You try to force it. When it does blow that way, you do everything you can to keep it blowing that way.

But of course, it ends up being quite a frustrating, fruitless exercise, because no matter what happens, we just don’t control the way the wind blows.

This may sound like it’s just a silly imaginary exercise, but it’s not so different from how we actually experience the ebbs and flows of our happiness and wellbeing.

So this begs the question, is there a way of us being able to hold onto our general sense of inner ‘okayness’ and wellbeing, whatever direction the winds are blowing?

Well, from a mindfulness point of view, yes there is. It’s what we refer to as the inner quality of equanimity.

I like to think of equanimity as cultivating a kind of ‘good natured patience’ for whatever we happen to be experiencing moment to moment.

It means we don’t get buffeted by the winds when they’re blowing this way and then that way.

We just sit patiently—and good naturedly—in the middle of it all, accepting that this just happens to be the direction that the wind is blowing right now.

A helpful way of identifying where we might be getting caught up in making our happiness and wellbeing dependent on certain circumstances being a particular way, is reflecting on what the Buddha called the ‘Eight Worldly Winds’.

These are really four pairs of opposites that we all get to experience. They are:

* Gain and loss

* Pleasure and pain

* Fame and disrepute

* Praise and blame

Now, it’s going to seem very natural to us that of course we’re going to be happier when we’re experiencing pleasure rather than pain. Or when we’re gaining things that we want, rather than losing things that we don’t want to lose.

Of course we want to be praised rather than blamed.

We want to be held in high regard rather than be in disrepute.

But this reflection is really about taking stock of the actual extent to which we’re able to control which way these winds blow.

Of course, we can have influence over it, but even if we were to stand or sit here and do nothing at all, we’re going to experience pain. We’re going to experience pleasure. We’re going to be praised for something, blamed for something. We’ll gain things and lose things.

It’s just the way the wind blows.

So in mindfulness, when we are cultivating equanimity, what we’re really doing is elevating our general ‘okayness’ and good natured patience for being with things however they happen to be.

This isn’t to be confused with feeling disengaged or indifferent about what we happen to be experiencing at any moment. In fact, quite the opposite.

With equanimity we become even more tuned into what we’re feeling and experiencing.

But, because we’re not so attached to things having to be a particular way in order for us to access our general ‘okayness’, it means that we are open to savouring the pleasant while it’s here, and don’t feel the need to cling or grasp at it.

It also means that we can be with the unpleasant aspects of life without having to feel overwhelmed by them. We recognise it’s just the way the wind is blowing right now.

We can’t just click our fingers and develop this overnight. It’s what I call a ‘SLOW GROW’ quality.

If this is something that you like the sound of—you’re interested in the possibility of cultivating more equanimity for yourself—then get in touch. I’d be delighted to have a chat about the ways that mindfulness practice can help you do exactly this.

What do you think about the eight worldly winds? Let me know down in the comments.

Visit https://dharmalicious.substack.com to join the newsletter and receive all of additional content.

What does wisdom mean to you?

In almost every culture, wisdom is a prized virtue and, typically, we revere those we consider to be wise. Yet there are many lines of thinking about what constitutes wisdom. Ask ten different people and you’re likely to get ten different answers.

For some, it’s about the intersection of where someone’s knowledge and skills meet their experience.

A wise mechanic might hear the tone of a faulty engine and just know exactly what to do to fix it. Or a wise trader might accurately predict a subtle market movement and profit from a well-timed deal.

For others, wisdom is more about intuition—some level of unconscious understanding or ‘gut feel’ that leads to good judgement or decision making.

For others still, wisdom might be synonymous with high emotional intelligence, or moral and ethical clarity, or seeing the bigger picture, or simplifying the complex.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines wisdom as:

“The capacity of judging rightly in matters relating to life and conduct”.

Now, this is a definition I like! Probably because it conveniently ties in with how wisdom is most often perceived on a spiritual path.

It’s about the quality of how we relate to life and, subsequently, how we choose to conduct ourselves.

What Is Perfect Wisdom?

From a Buddhist point of view, wisdom could be described as:

‘Seeing reality clearly and responding appropriately’.

This includes cultivating the ability to recognise our own thoughts, emotions, repeating patterns and behaviours, and to discern which of them help to foster peace, happiness, and wellbeing—for ourselves and others—and which of them further entangle us in perpetual cycles of unnecessary suffering.

It’s from this skilful recognition that we become better equipped to practice compassionately letting go of that which leads to pain, and to be intentional and proactive in bringing about that which promotes peace.

And in Buddhism, one of the factors that promotes the deepest kind of peace is a profound insight that the Buddha referred to as ‘perfect wisdom’.

In a teaching delivered to his own son, Rahulā, he said:

“See everything with perfect wisdom. This is not mine. This I am not. This is not my self.”

It’s a bold and deliberate statement, and goes way beyond any definition of wisdom we typically use in modern, day-to-day life.

What the Buddha is teaching here is the highest form of wisdom there is, is a felt recognition that the ‘self’ we take ourselves to be—that we feel indelibly identified with—has no substance to it whatsoever.

That strong sense of ‘I, me, and mine’ that’s unconsciously infused into just about every thought, experience, and interaction we have, is a construction of the mind. While it feels ever so real, no matter how or where we might look, the ‘self’ can never be found.

I know, I know! If you’re hearing this for the first time it can be a mind-boggling concept to entertain. You may even sense a non-trivial degree of resistance to it. I certainly did.

But, if we can allow ourselves to acknowledge the resistance and be willing to curiously explore what the Buddha was on about, then we’re taking an important step on a path towards genuine inner peace and freedom.

The Insight Of Not-Self

This is an insight that sits right at the heart of all Buddhist teachings. It is the insight of Anattā; a Pali word meaning ‘emptiness’ or ‘not-self’.

But what’s the link? Why does failing to find any evidence of a ‘self’ lead to peace?

So much of our suffering in life stems from the persistent, yet erroneous, idea that we are the central subjects to which life is happening. The sense that there is an ‘I’ or a ‘me’ at the centre of all experience makes us feel as though we are the intended targets of the infinite pleasures and pains, gain and losses, and joys and sorrows of life.

We take living to be an extremely personal endeavour.

Believing there is some kind of fixed, enduring ‘self’ in here somewhere—some core globule of ‘me’ [or insert your own name]—means that we’re vulnerable to constant fluctuations in self-esteem, self-worthiness, and self-value.

This inevitably leads to stress-producing patterns of craving, thought, and behaviour that stem from the desire be and remain significant, relevant, and wanted, and deserving of affection, respect, and belonging.

But, by repeatedly glimpsing the insight of Anattā (not-self), we can gradually learn to soften our grip on all of this—to gradually trust that this ever flowing, ever changing process of life is not personal.

It’s not personal because there is no fixed, central subject to which it can be personal. All there is, is the perpetual unfolding of experience.

What we take to be the ‘self’ is really the feeling of what it’s like to experience the continual arising and passing away of mental activity, bodily sensations, sights, sounds, tastes, and smells. Somehow, we get to be conscious of it all. And it’s the consciousness of all these phenomena, constantly and rapidly arising and passing, like countless notes being produced by individual instruments in a huge orchestra, that results in the overarching melody, or feeling, of “I, me, and mine.”

Put another way, if you were to deconstruct a car and lay all the individual parts out in front of you, there would be no single part that you could point to and say, “This bit here! This is the car”.

But when you put all the parts back together again, suddenly, what we think of as a car, reemerges. A ‘car’ doesn’t exist other than as a designation we use to describe the specific configuration of all the constituent parts.

In Buddhism, it’s the same with the ‘self’.

When the Buddha said, “See everything with perfect wisdom. This is not mine. This I am not. This is not my self”, he wasn’t offering it as a philosophical concept. He was guiding Rahulā to explore and investigate the insight of Anattā for himself.

And we can explore it for ourselves too.

This Is Not Mine

“This is not mine”, invites us to contemplate the fallacy of ownership.

Is it really possible to own anything? Or is the idea that something can belong to us just another mental construct that appears real?

This isn’t just about tangible ‘possessions’. We claim ownership of our thoughts and feelings too. We think, ‘This is my thought’, ‘This is my body’, ‘This is my pain’.

But when we allow ourselves to observe closely enough, we start to see that thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and other senses, are just coming and going all the time, all on their own.

The fact that they arise in the way they do has nothing to do with there being a ‘self’ that’s generating them, but rather it’s because of infinite causes and conditions (very little of which we get to choose) that makes it inevitable for them to arise.

“This is not mine”, teaches us that if our inner experience belongs to anything, it belongs to humanity as a whole. It’s the consequence of being born into this kind of body with this kind of mind, and it’s the same for every being that that was born configured as a human.

This I Am Not

“This I am not”, encourages us to see through the ways we construct our identities based upon perceptions, labels, and external factors.

Every time we have a thought that begins with “I am...”, we are imagining a self that we then take to be real.

Ultimately, we are not what we do for a living. We are not our skills or talents. We are not successes or failures. We are not these thoughts. We are not these bodies. We are not this every changing cocktail of moods and emotions.

It’s true that we can and do carry out very important and beneficial roles in life, such as parents, caregivers, teachers, leaders, business owners, employees, protectors, or emergency responders, but a role, label, or title, does not describe the essence of what it means to be this human being.

This Is Not My Self

“This is not my self”, is really an invitation for us to look closely and to see if we can find the ‘self’ in whatever it is we are looking at.

For example, can the ‘self’ be found in any particular body part? If so, which one?

Were you able to find it in that last thought you had that has now vanished?

Can it be found in a sensation or a mood?

Most commonly, it feels like the ‘self’ is located within the mind. But again, when we look deeply, the mind itself is a river of change that offers no stable or permanent ground for a self to settle.

The Peace Of Not Finding

It can be strange to keep looking but never finding. But this is the fruit of the practice. As one Buddhist master said,

“The not finding is the finding.”

While it can feel discombobulating—particularly in the early stages of exploring the insight of Anattā—having a gentle persistence to keep the exploration alive, while going about our lives, really can help us to soften and let go of much of the grasping and clinging that inevitably leads to suffering.

Living with a healthy awareness of ‘not-self’ doesn’t make our lives any less significant or real. As a wise Mongolian monk once said,

“It’s not that you’re not real. We all think we’re real, and that’s not wrong. But you think you are really real. You exaggerate it.”

Of course, we’re here and we exist. But we each exist in this world as expressions of exactly the same dynamic flow of life. We are not the independent, isolated, separate entities we so often believe our “selves” to be.

So, the next time you feel yourself being identified with, and wrapped up in, a situation or story you’re telling yourself, I encourage you to bring to mind, “This is not mine. This I am not. This is not my self.”

And remember, this is more than just a practice. According to the Buddha, this is perfect wisdom.

Warmest,

Paul 🙏

How have you been relating to the day so far? Or the last hour?

Has it been a pleasant experience or an unpleasant one?

Or has it been nondescript, more neutral?

And to what might you have been attributing the cause or the source of why you’re feeling the way you do now?

At any moment, how we relate to our experience is defined by one of four levels of appropriation, what I call levels of mindful recognition*

----------------

Join dharma⌁licious for free here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

----------------

Life Happening To Us or By Us

Maybe you’ve been operating from the sense that life has been happening to you.

For better or worse, your thinking, feeling and behaving has been a mere choiceless reaction to the external events and circumstances you’ve been facing.

Or maybe you’re satisfied that life has been happening by you.

You’ve been able to organise your thinking in such a way to make the best of an otherwise unfortunate situation.

Or you’ve applied a particular behavioural technique to influence a desired outcome. And that deliberate action is the cause of what you’re feeling now.

Often, this alternating perspective that life is either happening to us or by us is what feels most familiar.

Either we are in control of life or life is in control of us.

But through the practice of mindfulness, we can discover that there’s something a little more profound on offer.

Life Happening Through Us or By Us

As we learn to pay attention and build familiarity with the vastness of our awareness and how sensations, sounds, thoughts and feelings just naturally come and go all on their own, we can sense that what we experience is really an eternally unfolding, dynamic set of processes that are happening through us.

It’s at this level that we can start to appreciate the non-personal nature of our realities. And this is what helps us to cultivate a sense of ease and equanimity.

But there is a level of even greater freedom.

Rather than simply knowing that we’re aware, rather than looking at awareness, we can take the position of experiencing the world from the perspective of awareness itself—to be the condition in which everything is unfolding.

Life isn’t happening to you. It’s happening as you.

You’re not just conscious of the flow of your experience.

You are identical to it.

Now, if this seems ambiguous or a real stretch of the imagination, I just want to encourage you to practice looking in this direction.

Really settle back and see if you can find this position for yourself, even if it’s just a glimpse.

Thank you for reading. If this has resonated with you in some way, please do let me know in the comments and share this with a friend. And of course, if you haven’t already, subscribe to dharma⌁licious for weekly Buddhist-inspired insights and guides for modern day resilience and flourishing.

Be well. Please take really great care of yourself.

Paul 🙏

*These four levels of mindful maturity have been inspired by the work of The Conscious Leadership Group

Visit https://dharmalicious.substack.com to join the newsletter and receive Paul's additional content.

So, yesterday I found myself in a particularly reactive state of mind. I’d had a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it and much of the day was spent unconsciously rushing from one thing to the next. It wasn’t until later in the day that I really stopped to reflect how I’d been showing up, and how I hadn’t been the best company for those around me.

What I realised is that my reactivity had had little to do with how much needed to get done, and it had had everything to do with how I’d been relating to sensations of unpleasantness in my body and mind while rushing.

Signup for free weekly emails that unpack buddhist wisdom for modern day resilience and flourishing:

https://dharmalicious.substack.com

It stands to reason that a frantic and distracted mind is less prone to responding wisely than a mind that’s calm and present.

It has reminded me that moving quickly doesn’t have to be synonymous with rushing.

Enter Mindful Awareness

The role that mindfulness plays in helping us to reclaim our ability to respond rather than react, is that it can help us trace the chain of events that can lead to reactivity.

When we ground our awareness in the present, we can begin to notice that the quality of our thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and actions, begins with an initial trigger of something that we experience as either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. That ‘something’ might be a pleasant or unpleasant sight, sound, taste, smell, physical sensation, or thought that has arisen in the mind.

The very instant that ‘thing’, whatever it is, makes contact with our awareness, it is immediately recognisable as being pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. We refer to this as a feeling tone.

A feeling tone is different from the feelings or emotions that we experience in the body or the mind. It is far more pre-cognitive than that.

For instance, when we look up and see a sunset, the pleasantness of it is immediate. We don’t have to think about it. It’s just pleasant, and there is no mistaking it as being unpleasant. It’s pleasant from the precise moment the image makes contact with the eyes.

Likewise, if we hear the screeching sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, we don’t have to think about whether we like it or not. The moment it makes contact with the ear, it’s unpleasant.

It’s the same for every aspect of our moment to moment experience. Life is an ever changing cocktail of thoughts and sensations that arise as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral stimuli.

So, why is this significant?

It’s significant because feeling tones trigger and colour our perceptions.

Following a feeling tone, we start to perceive what’s happening through the medium of judgements and labels, such as good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair, love or hate, beautiful or ugly, etc…

Our perceptions then manifest as sensations and feelings in the body that we also experience as either pleasant or unpleasant.

As a response, the mind then attempts to make sense of these feelings by telling the story of what’s happening - of why it’s good or bad, and by using evocative language that adds emotional weight to the situation.

Then this, in turn, loops back into the system to enhance physical sensations of comfort or discomfort, by which point we’re often compelled to act or behave in a way that honours what we’re feeling.

This whole process can happen so quickly that our actions and behaviours can flow out of us automatically and, in some instances, can become our default or habitual way of relating to certain events or situations.

The Wisdom of Noticing

By paying attention to feeling tones as they arise in our experience—which becomes easier to do through the practice of meditation—we can learn to introduce a little more space between what happens and what we do with what happens.

We can regard pleasantness simply as pleasant, and unpleasantness as unpleasant, and we can practice being in that moment with equanimity.

When we feel challenged, or overwhelmed, or experience an uncomfortable event, we can always take a moment to check-in with ourselves and recognise the presence of the unpleasant feeling tone in our system.

Through pausing and acknowledging, we can resolve to use this space to respond more consciously and wisely to what’s going on.

We might decide to have a glass of water rather than the tenth cup of coffee of the day. Or we might choose to take a settling breath, rather than saying something we might later regret.

We may not always get it right—yesterday being a clear example for me—but it is possible that the window of tolerance can become wider over time, and that we can develop the wherewithal to be more responsive, rather than reactive, more of the time.

What a gift that is.

Well, I’m off to practice right now.

Be well. Please take really great care of yourself.

Paul 🙏

Visit https://dharmalicious.substack.com to join the newsletter and receive Paul's additional content.

As you look out into the world, and as you interact with the people in your life, what do you notice about our general tendencies for how we relate to change?

You’ve probably witnessed countless times how we’ll embrace and welcome any change that feels good and that falls in line with our preferences and desires. But also that we have many, often unskilful, ways of resisting changes that threaten our sense of comfort and confidence in the way things already are, or should be.

Through our thoughts, ideas, behaviours and actions, we have a tremendous capacity to influence outcomes and the direction in which our circumstances flow. And when it comes to doing what we can to make the world a fairer, more equitable, and tolerant place to be, we may have a moral and ethical duty to be the instigators of change.

But it’s how we relate the notion of change itself that determines whether we experience our lives with a sense of ease or friction.

When we cling to the thought that something has to stay the same for us to remain content, it’s inevitable that there’ll be upset when it changes.

Or, if we believe we won’t or can’t be happy until something changes, then we’re destined to suffer the discomfort of craving all the time that change eludes us.

Even if the change does come, those new conditions will themselves be subject to change.

It’s only by investigating and coming to terms with and appreciating the true nature of change that we can begin to settle into a more accepting and peaceful relationship with it.

What the Buddha said

One of the most profound teachings the Buddha gave was given in one line, and it underpins the entire Buddhist philosophy of personal freedom. He said:

“Whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away.”

We might hear this at a surface level and think it smacks of cliché. We all get that things change. But the invitation here is to go deeper with it and really investigate it for yourself.

“Whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away.”

It means that nothing is permanent. Everything is in a state of constant change.

Everything.

Everything that exists is flowing in the direction of non-existence.

Can you think of anything to which this does not apply?

Objects, buildings, plants, animals, cultures, countries, seasons, the sun, the earth…

Even us! Every second, our bodies are changing. Our thoughts, sensations, feelings and emotions are continually coming and going.

dharma⌁licious is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

It’s not as though things change every now and then; a bit today and then a little bit more next year; It’s all happening right now. It may be happening in big, obvious ways, like a shift in the weather, or in infinitesimally tiny ways, like the erosion of a monument that’s stood for thousands of years. But it IS happening, right now.

Things are constantly beginning and ending in equal measure.

Impermanence is an inescapable, unbreakable law of the universe.

It cannot be any other way.

So, what does this have to do with our relationship to change in our everyday lives?

Some good news

Understanding the truth of impermanence and to practice recognising, with acceptance, that this is the nature of all things, helps us to live more skilful lives in at least at a couple of ways:

* For the things we appreciate in life, it allows us to be more present with and truly grateful for what’s here right now.

* For the things we find hard, challenging or painful, it gives us the confidence to know that this too will pass.

This isn’t to say that meeting change mindfully is always easy. It really is a practice. It can sometimes require courage and a willingness to lean into uncomfortable emotions. But by learning to harmonise ourselves with the ever changing flow of what is, we can come to experience more of life with more clarity and acceptance, even while we’re working to change things for the better.

Be well. Please take really great care of yourself.

Paul 🙏

Visit https://dharmalicious.substack.com to join the newsletter and receive Paul's additional content.

Life is hard.

Wow, there’s an opener for you. Bet you’re glad you clicked on this one!

Seriously though, life is hard. Or at least it can be.

I don’t say it to be in any way nihilistic. Quite the opposite. I say it in acknowledgement of a simple truth—that each moment contains within it the potential for us to be thrown off balance in some way.

As wonderful and as joyous as life can be (and it really can be wonderful), it’s also fraught with emotional curve balls that can strike at any time. One moment we’re happily getting on with the day, on an even keel, and then the next moment we encounter something that leaves us feeling confused, or disappointed, or self-conscious, or annoyed, or frustrated, or sad, or in pain or any number of other states we’d rather be without.

The thing about these uncomfortable encounters is that we never intend to experience them. We may, with hindsight, feel we could have mitigated against them or have been better prepared for them, but because much of the time they’re unpredictable, they are, by extension, unavoidable:

- An insulting or ignorant remark

- A setback

- An accident

- An injustice

- A breakage

- An illness or injury

- A loss

- A shooting pain in your left big toe

Whatever form they arrive in, we rarely see them coming and they can quickly disrupt a contented vibe, giving us a cocktail of unpleasant thoughts and feelings to deal with.

It’s typical for us humans to reserve our contentment and wellbeing - almost exclusively - for those moments when everything is going well. It’s as if we believe that life is supposed to feel like a smooth ride, away from the rough terrain of drama, pain, unfairness, and uncertainty. But, as we all get to experience, life just isn’t like that.

If our strategy for lasting happiness is to keep waiting for our lives to become a stream of permanent ease and comfort, the chances of us achieving it are likely to be slim.

Mindfulness, as a practice, helps us to navigate our lives with greater ease, but it doesn’t do it by eliminating unpleasant events from taking place. It does it by giving us the wherewithal to remain clear-minded and steady in the midst of whatever the world presents us with.

The clarity and steadiness are brought about by cultivating an attitude of equanimity; the ability to stay calm, patient and fully present for our moment-to-moment experiences, whatever they are, without needing to push them away or strive for something different.

Being Mountain Like

The classic metaphor for describing what it’s like to be in a state of equanimity is to imagine yourself as a mountain.

Mountains are, of course, huge, solid, immovable objects that are rooted to the earth with a wide and stable base.

When it comes to environmental conditions, mountains experience it all.

The seasons come and go bringing every type of weather, from warm sunshine and gentle breeze to icy winds and pelting rain. Sometimes the mountain is wrapped in fog and other times it’s completely exposed under a clear blue sky. But whatever conditions it finds itself in, it remains stable, solid, and strong. It doesn’t try to cling to the sunshine, nor does it try to hide from the hurricane. It doesn’t try to interfere with the weather, nor does it get annoyed with what it’s being subjected to. It just patiently sits in the middle of it all, as the ever-changing conditions arise, evolve, and fall away around it, just as it has been doing for millions of years. Still strong, still stable, still here.

Mindfulness meditation helps us to develop our equanimity by repeatedly encouraging us to be mountain-like in a number of ways.

By feeling the contact of our feet on the floor or our bodies on the seat, we get a sense of being grounded, a bit like a mountain that is rooted to the earth.

Sitting in stillness with an upright posture is mountain-like in its physicality and helps us to set the tone for meeting our experience with poise and dignity (as well as helping to us to stay alert and not drift off). As we allow our moment-to-moment experiences to unfold and we accept them as they are, without judgement, we being to recognise that sensations and emotions are just like the weather, constantly changing and evolving, sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant, and often neutral.

When observing the mind, we get to understand that our awareness is like the vast open sky and that our thoughts are simply clouds harmlessly passing over it. Even if it’s a really cloudy day we can hold onto the insight that we are not defined by the clouds. They’re simply atmospheric phenomena that appear for a while and then dissipate. The sky, however (our awareness) is always there, and we’re either tuned into it or we’re not.

In meditation, we begin to notice that we have preferences for things to be a particular way, and we go on to see how this can lead to clinging and striving. We inevitably notice our aversions to unpleasant thoughts, sensations and emotions, and how this can lead to resisting or pushing them away.

As we become more experienced meditators, we see that the real cause of our suffering is the way we tend to struggle against whatever the present moment has to offer. So, we practice the skill of non-interference—of letting things be just as they are. We patiently sit in the middle of it all, not needing to be pushed or pulled in one direction or another. We remain present and stable, just the mountain.

This is equanimity.

Of course, there is a risk that we could take the mountain metaphor a bit too far. After all, mountains are inanimate hunks of rock, void of emotion, whereas we are organic, conscious beings that feel. It won’t do us any good to think we need to be cold-hearted and stone-like in order to be equanimous.

Equanimity is often mistaken for being either an attitude of not caring and not feeling or a philosophy of ‘grin and bear it’. It is neither of these. Equanimity is actually a state of being that puts us more directly in touch with our feelings, but in a way that they are not automatically running the show.

The ‘grin and bear it’ approach insinuates that coping with unpleasant experiences is all about endurance; seeing how much unpleasantness can we take before we can’t take anymore. It isn’t about enduring our experiences. It’s about increasing our patience and okayness with the way things are. It’s not being ok with the way things are that causes us the most stress in our lives. The more things in life we can be ok with, the greater our capacity to stay level-headed and balanced when we need it most.

That’s not to say that we have to like everything that happens, just that can we calmly ride it out with a kind of wise maturity.

Equanimity gives us a window into how our unconscious desires and aversions cause us to not be ok with the present moment as it is. And it gives us the wisdom to know that no matter what is happening in this moment, we have the option to experience it with patience. We don’t have to be seduced by every urge and impulse or to get carried away by a stressful thought.

Having the awareness and presence of mind to observe all our little desires and urges, as they arise, and calmly riding them out instead of blindly reacting to them, is like a superpower. It helps us to retain a peaceful mind even when things don’t work out the way we had planned. We’re more likely to show patience and compassion to others when their desires and aversions make them behave in unskilful ways. It stops us from being quite so attached to things having to be a particular way in order to feel connected to our wellbeing. And it prevents us from spiralling into worry or rumination when thinking about the future or the past.

The Winds of Change

At its core, equanimity is a recognition that our wellbeing is not dependant on “favourable circumstances”. It is dependent on our ability to ride the winds of change.

It is the nature of human reality that sometimes we’ll experience successes and sometimes we’ll experience failures. Sometimes there will be joy and other times sorrow. Sometimes we’ll be held in high esteem and other times we’ll be judged harshly. We’ll be praised and we’ll be blamed.

The winds of change are always blowing, and it is our attempts to stop them blowing that give us the most heartache. Despite our best efforts to keep them flowing one way, the winds inevitably shift and change direction.

I’m sure we all know what it’s like to feel attached to a particular success or outcome, only for it to change or be taken away. Or to experience the pain of a difficult situation, but for that situation to lead to something else that we see as a valuable gift.

With equanimity, we don’t judge our wellbeing based on what seems to be occurring in one isolated moment in time, but rather we see it in the wider context of how our moment-to-moment experience is constantly shifting and evolving. We can trust that it’s ok to simply be with what’s happening now because we recognise that this moment, like all others, is a process. It’s already changing whether we’re trying to control it or not.

Recognising our own attachments and aversions to the full array of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral conditions we experience in our lives is central to our mindfulness practice. We practice noticing them, welcoming them, and letting them go without reacting to them. Our concern becomes less about where our experience is heading and more about the simple witnessing of its unfolding.

The word Equanimity, as it’s used in mindfulness, is a translation of the ancient Pali word ‘Upekkha’, often thought to mean “seeing with understanding”. I like to think the understanding we see is that there is an innate peacefulness that exists outside of our thoughts and beliefs about what’s happening in the moment, and we can access it by paying attention, not to what we experience, but to the underlying mechanics of how we experience.

Looping back to the beginning, yes, life can be hard. But by paying attention to our unfolding experience with equanimity, we can have the wisdom to know that, if we choose, we can be ok with it.

Just like the mountain.

Visit https://dharmalicious.substack.com to join the newsletter and receive Paul's additional content.

One of the things I love most about being a dad is getting to share in the joy my eight-year-old son finds in simple pleasures. Small achievements. Imagined adventures. New discoveries. Lightbulb moments. Dots connected.

It’s a real tonic.

The other day, he finally got to stroke our cat, Sheldon, who for years would always have bolted for the cat flap, due to lingering memories of being chased by a hyper, toddler-shaped version of this boy. But not now. Now, sufficient trust has been kindled to allow for a tentative connection to be made.

For my son, this was a personal breakthrough that carried the joy-magnitude of many birthdays and Christmases arriving at once. And had it not been for his determination to remain calm and gentle with his touch, he’d have been doing cartwheels down the hall.

It doesn’t really matter what kind of a day I’ve been having. Seeing him light up from a small win gets me every time.

I’m happy that he’s happy.

The Joy That’s Already Here

The lesson that my son’s happiness is so often a natural trigger of my own happiness invites me to consider, ‘where else in life can I delight in the joy already happening around me?’

This has become an important aspect of my spiritual path.

Prior to fatherhood, I’d unknowingly assumed a very narrow and inwardly pointed view on happiness. My measure started and ended with, “What’s going on for me in my life right now?”

That’s not to say that when others shared their good news with me, I didn’t express happiness for them. I did. But it was more out of good manners—a polite courtesy—than it was about joining them in their joy.

In fact, I could be quite resentful and jealous of those I considered to be doing better than me in the happiness stakes. It’s uncomfortable to admit that, but that’s how it could be. I carried this bizarre (but apparently not uncommon) notion that as others increased their level of success and happiness, it somehow meant there would be less available for me.

But luckily, thanks to my son—and my Buddhist practice—I’m now able to see just how much unnecessary suffering that caused.

Not only have I learned that there is no limit to how much joy and happiness the world can handle, there is also no shortage of opportunity to share in the joy that’s available all around.

As the Vietnamese Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, said, “Happiness is available, please help yourself to it.”

More Than Just A ‘Nice’ Thing To Do

In Buddhism, this quality of taking delight in the happiness or good fortune of others is called ‘Sympathetic Joy’ (Mudita, in Pali).

It is one of the Brahmaviharas—or ‘Four Immeasurables’—along with Lovingkindness, Compassion, and Equanimity. These are four beautiful, boundless qualities of the heart and mind that, when practised, support us on the path to awakening and freedom from suffering.

Sympathetic joy is not merely a “nicer” way of relating to others; it’s a necessary condition for personal freedom.

It inoculates us against the mind’s deeply held tendency for comparison—one of the most potent causes of human suffering. When our hearts are filled with joy for each other, we soften around our clinging and identification to egoic notions of superiority or inferiority.

Sympathetic joy gives rise to a natural sense of abundance that squeezes out the need for competitiveness, craving, envy, or ill-will. As we delight in the virtues and fortunes of others, imagined hierarchies dissolve and, in that moment, we become equal—bringing us closer to the truth of our togetherness in this common circumstance of humanity.

dharma⌁licious is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sympathetic joy is also an important balancing agent for our compassion. Minds that are awake don’t turn away from the suffering of the world—they meet it as it is with understanding, love, and care. Remembering that it’s equally important to acknowledge and celebrate the joy of the world helps us to not collapse under the weight of its suffering.

Practising Sympathetic Joy

When we look around, there are endless opportunities to take delight in the happiness and good fortune of others.

* A colleague’s success at work

* A person’s triumph through adversity

* Seeing a person emotionally moved by a thoughtful gift

* Observing friends laughing and savouring each other’s company

* A child marvelling at a tiny bug crawling up their forearm

But what if there doesn’t appear to be any obvious signs of joy or good fortune happening around us? No problem. We can always contemplate the simple truth that, right now, all around the world, there are countless people who are experiencing the circumstances that bring them true happiness.

Right now, untold numbers are finding themselves on the receiving end of incredible acts of kindness and generosity that’s making a positive and meaningful difference to their lives.

How many people, in this very moment, are hugging, laughing, celebrating, falling in love, or maybe collapsing into relief, having been told their cancer is gone?

What might it feel like to pause, breathe, and allow their joy to land in your body?

What might that do for your own contentment and wellbeing?

What might it do to the trajectory of your day?

With the busyness and distractions of everyday life, it is easy for us to miss these moments of opportunity.

It can sometimes feel as though the only thing happening in the world is the drama of our own thoughts and circumstances.

Can you relate?

Sympathetic joy is an intentional practice that invites us to pause more regularly, settle back, let go of our own tensions for a moment, and really connect with the inner happiness of others.

The key is to do this in a genuine, heartfelt, and unconditional way—not to be looking for any form of reciprocation or recognition. The feeling is its own reward.

But it is a practice, just like any other. Please don’t be discouraged if it feels difficult or you forget. It’s not about being perfect.

As always, a great approach is ‘short moments, many times’.

While we don’t need a reason to practice this, it is a particularly healthy thing to do anytime we catch ourselves experiencing the opposite of sympathetic joy—namely resentment, envy, jealousy, or ill-will.

Rather than resenting someone for winning the opportunity you wanted for yourself, can you soften, reflect on their good fortune, and wish them well?

When others around you are carefree and having a wonderful time, while you’re knee-deep in stress and struggle, can you invite some gratitude for their sense of ease and enjoyment?

Our capacity for sympathetic joy tells us that happiness can never be a finite commodity. It is, and always will be, endlessly expansive and liberating.

When their joy becomes your joy, it’s two for the price of one.

So, if you find yourself running low on happiness today, please remember you can always borrow some from someone else!

Be well, please take really great care of yourself.

Paul 🙏

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

In Buddhist teachings the sky is commonly used as a metaphor to describe the nature of our awareness.

Just as the sky is often decorated with clouds—and tells us everything we need to know about the kind of weather currently moving through—our awareness is decorated with perceptions, thoughts, sensations, and emotions.

As we think, sense, and feel, our tendency is to become fixated on and identified with these inner events, mistaking them for being the irrefutable evidence of who we are as people.

But in meditation, the encouragement is to recognise our thoughts simply as clouds passing across the sky. Temporary and insubstantial. We notice them appear, change, and dissolve, without attaching to them or infusing them with significance.

Likewise, our moods and emotions form our inner weather – sometime unpleasant to endure, but nevertheless impersonal and impermanent – just naturally arising and subsiding out of ever-changing causes and conditions.

And as we practice not grasping or clinging to our thoughts, sensations, and emotions, we may begin to glimpse that the only constant aspect of our experience is the awareness by which it’s all known.

Awareness is sky-like. Wide open, expansive, spacious, boundless.

United in Awareness

Just as the sky wraps itself around the entire earth and remains undisturbed by all the comings and goings of clouds and weather patterns, awareness is the vast, peaceful, prior condition that’s wrapped around the entire experience of what it’s like to be human. And it too is undisturbed by all comings and goings that takes within it.

When things happen, and you know they’re happening, awareness is that subtle, silent, ever-present quality of knowing that you know.

Despite all the ways that each of us are unique in our characters, experiences, beliefs, resentments, and preferences, it’s this foundational, unifying capacity for awareness that sits at the very heart of our shared humanity.

My awareness is not different to your awareness, and yours is identical to everyone else’s.

It’s through recognising, sensing, and embodying our awareness in this way that we become more acquainted with our true nature.

Our true nature is the still, quiet, expansive, peaceful space from which all experience appears and is known.

It’s untouchable, uninfluenceable, and unperturbable. And it’s the very reason that you, me, and every other person, is much, much more than who and what we typically believe ourselves to be.

Strenuously Becoming

But, of course, we are also conditioned beings, burdened with these intoxicating constructions of mind that we’ve learned to relate to as the ‘self’, or the ego.

We spend most of our lives grasping for clarity and confidence about who we are as people—what it is that makes us distinct individuals with unique value to offer the world.

We take on the project of improving ourselves—maximising strengths, minimising weaknesses, and making ourselves more definable with additional skills, qualifications, and achievements.

We attached ourselves to labels, roles, and identities.

We curate our personas and manage our reputations.

We demonstrate our style in the ways we dress, the things we buy, the company we keep, and the environments we hang out in.

We strive to be acceptable to others, at the very least, but feel it’s better—if we can pull it off—to be somehow significant or important.

We might even seek guidance from teachers, leaders, or gurus, in the hope they can tell us the correct way to be.

And through all our efforts, and perceived successes or failures at being the people we believe we’re supposed to be, we’ll either delight or despair in saying, “I am the kind of person who…”

Already Here

In Buddhism, there’s an expression that’s often used to describe what’s happening when we experience ourselves in this conditioned way:

“Gazing at the sky through a straw.”

In our attempts to experience ourselves as the fullest expression of who we are, we close ourselves off to our true essence.

We might believe we’re looking at the whole sky of our being, but really all we’re seeing is a tiny fragment, determined by the width of the straw and the direction it’s pointing.

The more effort we put into trying to solidify our identities with definable edges—in convincing ourselves they’re tangible—the more constricted and constrained the straw becomes.

This process of ‘selfing’, that can often feel like expansion, is really a narrowing. A way of limiting who we are and our belonging to each other. It’s what keeps us feeling that we’re separate beings—in the world but not of the world. It isolates us in the ways we are different, rather than uniting us in the ways we are one.

True growth isn’t about proving, improving or adding to yourself. It’s about removal. It means stripping back and putting down that which prevents you from seeing the whole sky and expanding into the wide-open space that is always already here. The space in which it becomes resoundingly clear that all things and all beings are connected, interdependent, and equally vital in this wonderful circumstance of life.

The space of awareness.

The space that we access through contemplation, softening, and letting go. Not because of what it means for us when we’re meditating on the cushion, but for what it means when we’re in the throes of living our very normal, everyday lives.

Navigating the complexities of our relationships, with humility and humanity.

Finding the strength to do difficult things in compassionate ways.

Giving up our dysfunctional independence to make space for the kind of togetherness and collaboration that benefits us all.

An important note, in closing. We can’t embrace the fullness of our being by making an enemy of the ego. While the ego is an illusion, the illusion is real, and it’s not going anywhere.

So, when you catch yourself gazing at the sky through a straw, don’t hate the straw. Hold it in a friendly way—lightly and compassionately. Set it down whenever you can and expand your view.

Be sky-like.

Until next time, be well. Please take really great care of yourself.

Warmly,

Paul

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

One of the more pervasive factors that stops us from being truly present with our moment to moment experience is the tendency to place expectation on how things ought to unfold.

If you take some time to meditate, surely you ought to feel more peaceful by the time you finish.

If you treat people fairly, they ought to return the favour.

If you do your best to stay healthy, you ought not to get sick.

If you plan for every eventuality, things ought to go smoothly.

And yet we all know what it feels like for reality to not live up to our expectations.

People might take offence at our friendly, well-intended advice.

A perfectly planned project might go disastrously wrong.

We might lose out on opportunities, to people far less qualified and experienced than we are.

We might still feel anxious, despite hours of meditation.

The root of our disappointments and frustrations in life is not so much the events themselves, but rather that they fall foul of what we believe should have happened.

When we’re attached to outcomes we become prey to our own emotional reactivity. Rather than being open and present, we close ourselves off to what is.

We get lost in our stories of how this can’t be right or why it’s not fair, and we enter a cul-de-sac of self-doubt.

The most reliable way to create suffering for ourselves is to make our happiness dependent on things turning out the way we want and then hoping that it lasts.

Mindfulness offers a way of being released from this cycle of expectation and disappointment.

With practice, we can begin to accept and appreciate the simple truth that we don’t know what’s going to happen to next.

Rather than this being a source of uneasiness, it invites us to bring interest and curiosity to the unfolding flow of our experience.

Over time, we can recognise there is wisdom in having a “don’t know” mind.

When we act in the world with a true acceptance that we don’t know what is actually going to happen - that events could transpire in any number of ways - we’re less likely to attach ourselves to one particular outcome.

We continue to set our best intentions and do what we feel is the right, but all the while we can stay present to, and curious about, the reality that unfolds. And as it’s unfolding, it’s like we can say, “Ah, so this is how it is”.

Having a don’t know mind is not the same a being passive. It’s simply a quality of mind that allows us to stay mindful and to make wise and flexible choices as we move through life in harmony with the way things are.

Think about the rest of the day ahead of you; the tasks you’ll complete, the conversations you’ll have, the things you’re looking forward to.

Can you recognise any expectations you have about how it all ought to go?

Can you let go of any attachment you have about the day panning out that way?

It may well pan out that way, but the truth is we really don’t know.

Practice developing comfort with not knowing.

Starting with what’s here right now, simply move through the day with awareness and interest about how it actually does unfold.

Be flexible, stay present and enjoy the big reveal.

Be well. Please take really great care of yourself,

Paul

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

There’s a common misunderstanding about the Buddhist approach to engaging with life, and it has even spilled over into the most modern of secular mindfulness practices.

It’s an innocent misconception that has countless people trying to train their minds to think “I ain’t bothered” when faced with any of the infinite ways that life can be difficult.

It has to do with the very normal, natural tendency that we human beings have of clinging to our ideas of what’s true. About the world, about our experiences, about ourselves.

A fundamental practice of mindfulness is learning to let go of our ATTACHMENT to…

* Thoughts

* Judgements

* Possessions

* Circumstances

* Outcomes

* Ego

* …

The reason is that it’s our attachment and identification with these things that sits at the heart of so much of our stress and suffering.

That’s not to say we can or avoid them. Just that we can, if we choose, cultivate more poise and equanimity in our relationship with them.

It’s easy to hear this and conclude that there’s an obvious solution. If attachment is the problem, then surely the goal of practice is to learn to become DETACHED. The mistaken belief being, if we can make ourselves ‘not care’ about things then we’ll be protected from the inevitable pitfalls and disappointments of life.

This couldn’t be further from what the Buddha meant by his teachings.

Rather than being detached, the encouragement is to learn to be non-attached.

It may sound like petty semantics, but the difference is huge.

Being detached means closing yourself off emotionally, even to potentially joyful circumstances. Whereas being non-attached means honouring your emotions, allowing yourself to feel them fully, and not pinning your happiness and wellbeing on specific outcomes or conditions having to be met.

Being detached means backing away from situations that put your comfort at risk. Being non-attached means remaining open, receptive, and welcoming to all experiences, without judgement, knowing that discomfort is a natural but temporary experience.

Being detached invites us to view the world through a cynical or sceptical lens. Being non-attached helps us see the innocent, non-personal nature of cause and effect, helping us to find our safety and balance amid the ever-changing flow of life.

Being detached means not letting yourself get your hopes up or, when things are going well, waiting for the other shoe to drop. While being non-attached allows us to take in and savour the good whenever it’s here, for as long as it’s here, but also gracefully letting it pass, as all things must.

Detachment is underpinned by an attitude of indifference or apathy. Whereas non-attachment is grounded in an attitude of unconditional acceptance and care.

Please don’t feel bad if these descriptions of detachment feel somehow familiar too you. They feel familiar to me too. It’s easy to unwittingly side with them, believing we’re developing a healthy resilience to life.

But a life of peace should never feel guarded.

A question you might consider asking to realign yourself with the open, spacious quality of non-attachment is:

In what way is the mind attempting to be right or protecting me from what’s real right now?

And with whatever comes up – if anything – see if it’s possible to settle back and simply feel the immediacy of this moment. Is it possible to soften the mind, just a little bit, and loosen the grip of anticipation or expectation. Just for the next few breaths, can you recognise the enoughness of this moment? This moment that’s alive and present in you.

Learning to cultivate non-attachment within the heart and mind is an ongoing and squiggly journey. It’s a journey of remembering, forgetting, and beginning again many, many times. But as the Buddha spent much of life his teaching, it’s an incredibly important journey that leads to greater peace, contentment, and compassion for the world.

In parting, here’s another question about non-attachment that I invite you to contemplate (you may have to read it twice!)

What would you allow yourself to attempt in life if you knew you didn’t have to be unhappy if it didn’t work out?

Until next time, be well, please take really great care of yourself.

Paul 🙏

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

What can looking around the space you're in teach you about having a more calm and settled mind?

A great deal, it turns out.

All these objects that punctuate the otherwise empty space that surrounds you are very much like your thoughts and emotions. They need an environment to exist in.

Without space there can be no objects.

Without silence there can be no sound.

Without consciousness there can be no thought.

Prior to any experience being known, there first has to be a space out of which it can all arise and flow.

It is this space, so often overlooked, that holds the key to us being less overwhelmed by our experiences.

In this short video, I’ll explain the role of spaciousness in contemplative practice and why it helps us unhook from identification and attachment to thoughts and emotions.

Wishing you a wonderful week.

Be well,

Paul 🙏

Thanks for reading dharma⌁licious! Please share it with a friend who might benefit.

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

Have you ever asked yourself, “Why does it have to be like this?”The answer is always…Every moment is exactly the way it is because it couldn’t possibly be any other way.Having the thought(s) that something shouldn’t have happened, or you could have done better, or a different decision could have been made, or they should have responded more kindly, are reasonable.

But they are all untrue assumptions. The kind we make when events fail to meet our expectations or standards.Why are they untrue?

Because the moment in question was already pregnant with infinite causes and conditions geared to only one outcome being possible.The one that transpired.We can invest a lot of energy ruing the way situations turn out, convinced it could have been otherwise.But the truth is, in that moment, it couldn’t.Including the extent to which we were able to access our own potential or ‘better judgement’.But as I share in the video, this doesn’t mean we’re screwed when it comes to the agency we have with our choices or abilities.Practicing mindful awareness helps us influence the causes and conditions of moments yet to come; stacking the odds that more favourable outcomes can be realised.Looking forward to hearing yours thoughts on this video.

Warmest,

Paul

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

On the face of it, the path to a more peaceful mind is quite a simple one.

As we practice being mindful, we repeatedly get to witness the mind’s tendency to generate thoughts, judgements, stories and compulsions that lead to unnecessary suffering. And it’s through this seeing - this awareness - that we learn we can choose to simply let them go.

We develop a clear recognition that the activity of the mind is just that - activity - patterns of energy - and that our thoughts are not describing reality as it is.

Nor are they instructions for how we have to feel or behave in the world.

It’s just the mind doing what the mind does; playing out it’s conditioning.

This is why so much emphasis is placed on the willingness and ability to notice our thoughts and to let them go.

Simple? In theory, yes. Easy? Not always, as may have found.

Possibly the biggest hurdles to letting go are the misunderstandings as to what letting go really means.

Letting go is often confused with getting rid.

If an unwholesome thought or feeling emerges, there can be the temptation to calmly banish it as quickly as possible.

But we can’t let go of something simply by ignoring that it’s there, or turning away from it each time it emerges.

If the mind creates a pessimistic story about your current circumstances, letting go of it doesn’t entail looking on the bright side or consciously creating a better version of that story.

To understand what letting go really means, it can be helpful to consider it’s opposite, which is to hold on.

In terms of our human experience, holding on refers to the way we tend to identify and attach ourselves to the thoughts and stories our minds create.

We take them personally.

“This thought is MINE. It’s significant. It’s describing something important about the world and my place within it. It’s a reliable indicator of who I am and the way things are.”

It’s holding on in this way that’s the cause of so much of our suffering.

Letting go is the process of ceasing to hold on; of becoming non-identified and non-attached.

When we let go of a thought or feeling, we’re not trying to drop it like a stone. We’re simply loosening our grip to such an extent that it becomes free to leave, all on its own.

Because that is the nature of all human experience. Thoughts, sensations, feelings and emotions arises on their own and, if let be, they pass on their own.This is rarely an immediate process, because all patterns of energy need time to play out.

Our job is to just trust the process. Its not our job to keep feeding the pattern with our rationalisations and justifications. Because that just introduces more energy to keep it held in place.

It can be surprising how quickly thoughts, feelings and emotions do play out and pass through, when they’re unencumbered by the grasp of identification and attachment and story.

When we let them be we’re leaving the door open for them to leave.

So what thoughts are standing between you and a more peaceful state of mind right now?

Notice what happens to those thoughts as you simply rest in the awareness of them.

Can you see them simply as patterns of energy?

Just watch them play out, without judgement or interference.

And when they leave, notice what’s left behind.

Warmest,

Paul

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

A cornerstone of mindfulness practice is the willingness to accept our present moment experience exactly as it is; to recognise it, acknowledge it and allow it to flow unimpeded, without grasping at it or pushing it away.

But you don’t have to have practiced for very long to realise that some moments are just easier to accept than others.

When you don’t feel ok, it’s natural to bump up against the urge - or the habit - to remedy or fix any discomfort that has arisen in the body or the mind.

Acceptance can feel hard and even unnatural.

One insight that can help is to recognise that acceptance is not the same as resignation.

You’re not condemning yourself to be a sitting duck for unpleasant thoughts, feelings and sensations to do their worst.

You’re simply providing the conditions from which you can more clearly see the impersonal, ephemeral nature of moment to moment experience.

It comes and it goes.

You don’t have to, nor should you, reactively force and control your way to into a state of wellbeing.

This insight can create enough separation and distance from your thoughts to allow for a wiser, more easeful response when deciding what to do about your current situation.

But that doesn’t necessarily make acceptance easy.

So, another way to work with unpleasant experience is to recognise the phenomena of awareness itself.

To look for what it is that’s knowing.

Maybe you already intuitively know that no matter what happens in life and how you subsequently feel about it, there is always a part of you that seems to remain ok.

That aspect of you that remains unchanged and untouched by whatever you experience is awareness.

Awareness is always ok.

Right now, even as you’re reading this, thinking about what’s being said, seeing your environment, feeling sensations in the body, can you recognise that there is also just a simple knowing that it’s all happening? And that this knowing isn’t embroiled with what’s being experienced, but rather it’s a kind of impartial container in which all experience is being held?

Even if everything were to change in an instant, this quality knowing - this awareness - would remain unmoved.

Because awareness is never concerned with what it is aware of.

Hot, cold, pain, pleasure, joy and anger - they’re all held equally.

This is an important insight when it comes to personal freedom.

Learning to hangout out at the level of awareness - to practice being the container in which all experience flows - can allow us to be more accepting of what is, more settled in unsettling times, to feel less at the centre of the story.

In other words, awareness is what helps us to know we’re still ok, even when there are plenty of reasons not to be.

Warmest,

Paul

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

With whatever you’re looking at right now; to what extend do you feel you are having to make ‘seeing’ happen?

Or are you just seeing?

And with nearby sounds, how hard are you having to work to pull them into your awareness?

Or are you just hearing them whether you like it or not?

When you pick up a cup of coffee, how much freedom do you have to NOT sense its weight? Or the feeling of it in your hand? Or it’s aroma?

The idea of cultivating mindful awareness is, to a large extent, to become intimately aquatinted with the simple ‘happening-ness’ of everything; to recognise there is no 'Controller' within you pushing buttons and pulling levers, choosing what its like to be you moment by moment.

We are receivers of sight, sound, tastes, smells, physical sensations. We’re not making any of it happen.

And the same is true of our thoughts.

This can be tricky to comprehend at first. After all, can’t we choose our own attitude? What to pay attention to? To go left instead of right?

Of course, the answer is, yes you can.

However, arriving at those points of decision is dependent on the myriad of prior choice-less causes and conditions that have already happened, or are happening.

Even when you think you are choosing your thoughts, are you really?

Or are you simply claiming authorship of whatever the mind has served up.

If a totally different arbitrary thought had happened to have arisen in its place, chances are you’d have the same sense of authorship over that too, like it were precisely what you intended to think.

If I ask you to think of any film from the 80’s, one is likely to just pop into your head.

But why that one?

Why not one of literally thousands of other films you could have chosen.

So, how much control did you really have in making the choice? Or did the mind just serve it up for you?

How confident are you that you know what your very next thought is going to be?

Or is it more likely that it will just arise, accompanied with the feeling that you made it happen?

Recognising the true nature of thought is significant. Getting to see the mere ‘happening-ness’ of it all.

If we’re not choosing what we think, then it can’t be personal.

If it's not personal, then it doesn’t make sense to be identified with our thoughts.

Thoughts are happening, but they’re not you.

Knowing this at an intellectual level is interesting at best.

Feeling it as a matter of direct experience is a source of incredible freedom.

Warmest,

Paul

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

For most, the point of engaging in contemplative endeavours such as mindfulness and meditation is to get to experience the practice bearing fruit in our lives.

Whether its generally to be more present, appreciative, connected or equanimous amid our ever changing, and often trying, circumstances, or specifically to be a more patient parent, an understanding and compassionate boss, or an exquisite listener, the truth is the path of real progress can only ever be a non-linear one.

Because, counter to our preference - and often our expectation - there is no straight line between what we’re struggling with today and what we’re able to master in the future.

Thanks to our monkey minds, the reality is almost always: we set an intention for change and then our attention gets highjacked by something else. Sometimes for a moment, sometimes for days or weeks at a time.

We might fall prey to the pernicious belief that it’s because we were weak willed, or we didn’t value it enough.

But, as important as intentions are, progress towards the cultivation of wholesome qualities and behaviours is not dependent on the strength or conviction of our original intention. It’s entirely dependent on the frequency with which we are able to notice we’ve been distracted and to simply begin again.

Yet another way in which the boundary between formal meditation and the rest of life dissolves.

Its beginning again that catalyses progress. It doesn’t matter if we have to begin again a thousand times. All that matters is that we do.

It doesn’t matter how far off track you think you’ve strayed. Right now is as good as any other moment to remember, reset and recommit.

So, the secret to meaningful progress?

Set an intention, get distracted, and begin again.

Warmest,

Paul

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

Are you being followed by the Thought Police?You’ll have noticed there’s no shortage of advice on how to master your mindset.But there’s a big problem with how a lot of it is given.

And, more importantly, how it’s received.The message:→ Your thoughts are powerful→ What you think is what shows up→ Don’t allow yourself to think negatively→ If you do, flip it around as quickly as you can→ Don’t let it take root or you’ll block the good stuff→ Remember, if you want to be successful mindset is everything!There are some helpful aspects to this.There are some hugely detrimental aspects too.Taking the ‘mindset is everything’ mantra too much to heart can lead us into battle with our own minds.An uneasy vigil.Trying to make ourselves think ‘correctly’.Anxious about the consequence of having doubts and fears.In this video, I share the alternative way to train your mind.The way that leads to greater ease and flourishing,Regardless of what you think.

Warmest, Paul.

Thanks for reading dharma-licious! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

There’s a reason we take life so personally.And a way to NOT take it so personally.Enter the KitKat*(and no, it has nothing to do with taking a break)(although you really should be taking breaks)(but that’s not what this is about)(I digress)I know you’re busy.You really haven’t got the time for this.Buuuuut, if you’re up for some powerful Buddhist insight that might make a big difference…Maybe now is a good time to have a break.

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

Did you know that mindfulness has a best mate and its best mate is compassion?

For thousands of years mindfulness and compassion have been described as two wings of the same bird.

You see, in those moments when we feel genuine compassion, either for ourselves or for others, we're naturally in a very mindful state. And then mindfulness, itself, is a state of being that naturally leads to a greater sense of compassion. So we could say the decision to practice and learn what mindfulness is all about is also a decision to make compassion a much more prominent feature in your life.

But what is it about these two qualities of the heart and the mind that make them so joined at the hip?

Why does mindfulness lead to compassion? And when it does, what are we actually being compassionate about?

Well, in a nutshell, the more we practice mindfulness, the more we begin to see with increasing clarity the behind-the-scenes mechanics of exactly how this experience of being a human actually works.

And because of that clarity, we can begin to appreciate that as joyful as life can be, there are also many aspects of the human condition that are just difficult to be with. We have uncomfortable thoughts and emotions, discomfort in the body, physical pain, things that change when we don't want them to change. Things are always changing whether we want them to or not.

We have our deep conditioning that causes us to grasp at and crave for things that we want when sometimes we either don't or can't have those things. And it also causes us to reject and resist the unwanted, unpleasant, but inevitable aspects of our lives.

The list goes on and it's a long list.

But with mindfulness we learn that none of this is happening because of who we are as individual people. It's happening because it's a natural consequence of being born into a human body with a human mind.

Mindfulness connects us to and teaches us about our common humanity.

Sometimes, life can be bloody hard and no one's to blame for that. It's the same for all of us. But that's where compassion comes in.

Imagine that someone you know and care about deeply was to experience some terrible misfortune that was in no way their fault. What would your natural response to that be?

What would you feel for them and what would you want to do? The chances are you’d probably feel really empathetic and want to do whatever you could do to help.

That powerful combo of empathy and the desire to help is compassion, and mindfulness helps us to cultivate that same kind of caring response for ourselves. By letting go of our judgments and accepting things as they are, in the moment, and being willing to be with whatever happens to be present in our experience, recognising the impersonal nature of everything that's happening, then self kindness and compassionate action seems to bubble up as a response that makes the most amount of sense.

Why wouldn't we be kind to ourselves when we can see so clearly what's actually happening? And why wouldn't we want to extend that same kind of compassion to others when we can clearly see that it's the same for them as well?

The great news is that you don't have to wait until you've been meditating for so long that compassion has just become your automatic default way of dealing with stress and struggle. You can start building that muscle of compassion right away by taking it on as something to practice and to be intentional about.

So whenever you notice that you're feeling stressed, or sad, or frustrated, or in pain - or anything else that's difficult to be with - rather than diving straight into those usual judgments, and criticisms, and stories, or justifications, see if you can take a moment to simply recognise what's happening as yet another example of what all humans are subject to experiencing from time to time.

You can acknowledge that it's a difficult moment and that it's hard, but then ask yourself the question, "What's the most kind and helpful thing that I can do to support myself in this moment?" No doubt if you're not used to responding in this way it's gonna feel strange. And that's okay. It's normal.

Things always feel strange when we're just starting out. But as long as you keep practicing you'll be doing yourself a huge service because whatever we practice gets stronger.

Thanks for reading dharma-licious! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

What’s Your Relationship With Change?

If I was to ask you the question, what's your relationship like with change? I wonder what your most reflective and honest answer would be.

I know, it's a really deep and rhetorical question, no need to answer it now.

But one of the healthiest things we can do for ourselves in service of our happiness and that sense of inner balance is to ask the question and to really get to know our most truthful response to it.

If you are thinking about it, there's a good chance that an answer that pops up is "Well, it depends."

No surprises, we seem to be pretty good at dealing with change when it's change that we like and that we wanted. But so often, we tend to struggle when things change and we don't want them to change.

I know, not rocket science, is it?

Mindful Of The Flow Of Change

When we allow ourselves an opportunity to explore that question a bit deeper, we start to see that change, and our relationship to it, sits at the heart of every single moment we get to experience.

Because everything is changing all the time. Everything. Things outside in the world, things inside our bodies and in our minds.

It's all moving parts. And it's in a constant state of flux.

Sometimes this can be quite an enjoyable process to be a part of. But all too often, it can be a real problem for our human minds that have evolved to become very attached to the way things are.

And that become very identified with the way they think things should be.

And we try to unconsciously hold things in place when the truth is, we just can't.

Accepting Change

A great example of this is my little boy. He's a lovely age right now and if I was to pin my satisfaction on him staying like that (there's a part of me that wishes he would), there's only one way that's gonna go.

There's no way that tomorrow he can be the same configuration of a little boy that he is today.

So, a big part of my job as a dad is to accept him for however he shows up and to do my best to try to enjoy all of his transitions.

What The Buddha Said About Change & Impermanence

You may already know that the work that I do as a mindfulness teacher is heavily inspired by Buddhist truth bombs. And in my humble opinion, the most profound truth bomb the Buddha ever gave was delivered in one line when he said...

“Whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away.”

Now that sounds really simple, doesn't it?

But if we think about that for a second, whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away.

What does that include?

Pretty much everything.

We live in a world that is governed by this non-negotiable law of impermanence.

If you ever want to keep yourself awake at night, you might want to try thinking of anything to which that doesn't apply.

Happiness & Change

What this really means is that the quality of our happiness over the long term is highly correlated to the quality of our relationship with change.

In order for us to experience more of that genuine and authentic kind of inner happiness, and that sense of inner balance and peace of mind while we're going through all the trials and tribulations of our lives, the best thing we can do for ourselves is to learn how to hold change a bit more fluidly and a bit more lightly.

Of course, it's easier said than done, and it really is a practice.

If it's something that you feel that you would really like some help and guidance with, to practice this, then get in touch.

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

The best way to learn and embody what the Buddha taught is to contemplate his lessons and guidance through the medium of meditation.

This way, we allow the teachings to take hold at the level of direct experience, rather than remain concepts that linger as intellectual ideas.

This meditation, recorded live during a dharma⌁licious community gathering, follows the instructions the Buddha gave for working with the first foundation of mindfulness: Mindfulness of the body.

Become a FREE dharma⌁licious member here: https://dharmalicious.substack.com

How do we consistently show up in the world when the world feels overwhelming?

How do we face up to the suffering we see around us (and within us) without becoming numb or detached?

And how do we prevent ourselves from closing off to others when their own struggles cause them to speak and act unskilfully?

Answer: We draw on our natural capacity to hold ourselves with dignity, while safely holding an open space within that invites patience, understanding, and love, for us and them.

We don’t have to choose between being tough or being caring. We can practice cultivating equanimity and compassion as a unified state.

This meditation was inspired by a practice of the same name, guided by Roshi Joan Halifax.

Please note it was recorded live during a dharma⌁licious online community gathering. It has been audio enhanced, but there may the odd background noise such as light coughing from fellow meditators.

If it resonates with you, please share your experience in the comments below.

Paul 🙏