Maintaining Your Practice While Travelling

Mindfulness On The Road

It is often easier to keep a steady mindfulness practice when we are in our familiar settings like home or work. But what about while traveling?

With travel for work and leisure beginning to resume after a long and necessary pause, we can often find it challenging to maintain our meditation practice.

Although challenging this does not have to be the situation or a barrier to your practice. On the contrary, as mindfulness practitioners we understand that meditation can be done anywhere and during any activity. Meditation is not always sitting in a lotus position, quiet and still for a period of time.

For example, suppose you are on a business trip and you are attending a conference or seminar. As you walk from one location to another you can easily practice a walking meditation. Look around you, there are many wonderful observations to been seen in the architecture or even the indoor floral arraignments.

Or perhaps examine the floor, is it carpet or tile? What are the patterns, if any? Think about the care the workers had to use to place the tile or carpet down. This skill is how they earn a living to care for themselves and family.

What smells are around you? Are there vendors selling food? Maybe you can smell hotdogs or popcorn? Consider where these foods came from and the process in which it took for it to get here. Know that the vendor themselves is providing you a service so that they may support themselves as well.

As you sit and wait for the speaker to come on stage to talk think about how your body is feeling in the chair? Or perhaps your feet if you are standing.

At night when you return to your hotel room affords a wonderful opportunity to quietly meditate and reflect on the days activities and feelings.

Or perhaps you are on vacation with your family. Maybe you went to a large amusement park in another state. Lines are something one typically encounters here and provide a unique opportunity to practice patience and meditate as well. 

Everyone is waiting to form what will hopefully turn out to be a pleasant memory, one that they too can share in the future. Maybe you can smell cotton candy? 

One recollection I have is seeing birds and squirrels running around trying to scavenge food that has been dropped. Do they eat this reward right away or do they bring it back to a nest to feed their offspring? 

In the mornings, perhaps you will need to rise a little earlier to have your solitary mediations.

Both of these situations have taken us from our mindfulness and meditation routines but this is exactly why we have undertaken them in the first place. These changes in routine provide a gentle illustration of impermanence too. 

And these adjustments to our routine also offers us helpful insight as to where we can improve our practice as well. Remember to bring gentleness and openness to your practice wherever you may be and take the lessons given and use them to improve your wellbeing.

I wish you peace and ease,

Vladimir

Blue Lotus Mindfulness and Meditation Center is a registered 501(c)(3) religious organization.

Walking With Gratitude

Cultivating Gratitude For Connection

Gratitude allows us to connect with others on a level that is very granular down to the very essence of what it means to be a loving being. Loving towards yourself. Loving towards others.

In many societies showing self-love and kindness towards others is regarded as a sign of softness and is something to be shied away from. But when we embrace gratitude, let go of hardness, we are able to see the beauty the world truly has to offer.

But how can we walk with gratitude? How can we cultivate and foster gratitude within?

First, let's ask what is gratitude?

Gratitude is having a sense of happiness or appreciation with what we have in the present moment and for the gifts we receive. Gratitude does not lie in the future because we cannot be grateful for what we do not have. 

If someone has a lot they may find it hard to be grateful. But the same may hold true for someone who has very little. And yes, this may even hold true of someone who is in between, neither extremely wealthy or in dire poverty.

Gratitude does not depend on one's home, car, career, income, geographic location, political affiliation, sexual identity, or marital status. Gratitude originates with a sense that everything is a gift and that all we have is impermeant. It could disappear at any time without notice.

So what are some ways or actions we can employ to foster gratitude and graciousness?

We all begin our days with waking up and this is a wonderful time to include gratitude into our morning routine. Before getting out of bed you can start with a simple ‘I am grateful that I have woken up’. This is truly something to be grateful for because sadly many people today will not. You could follow this up with I am grateful for the shelter I had last night, the fresh air I am breathing, and the clothing I will put on. Start with and keep it simple. Then set the tone for the day with an ‘I'm going to do my best today’.

Waking up affords you the opportunity to do so much good. For example, perhaps you’re meeting a friend at a coffee shop later, maybe you could, without announcing it, pay for their purchase.

Each morning is a fresh start from the day before and is truly a gift.

Overthinking can easily diminish our sense of gratitude. When we overthink we play so many unlikely scenarios in our imagination that it begins to overwhelm us. This causes undo anxiety and stress about the future and it’s a future that is non-existent.

So how do we begin to stop overthinking?

By looking at what we do have right here, now.

For example, suppose it’s a few days until your next payday. You’re hungry and you open the refrigerator and you see a half o head of lettuce, some condiments, and a half a jar of pickles. Your first thought is ‘I have no food, what will I do? ! I’m going to starve’ 

But is that entirely true? No, it isn't. You have overthought your present situation to a ‘catastrophic’ outcome. You do have food. It may not be the amount you want. The variety you’d like. But it is food and what you have is more than what most have. This is where overthinking has dominated and diminished your gratitude.

To tie in with the previous example of food let’s consider eating. This is a practice best done alone or with someone of the same mindset. It’s an opportunity to consider all that goes into the food you’re about to eat, from the Sun, rain, and soil, to harvesting, shipping, stocking, selection, preparation, to eating.

Everyone involved in this process has done their part to ensure that you, at this very moment, get the necessary nutrition your body requires to live. This certainly is something to be grateful for.

You can embody kindness and selflessness in all acts you perform and with all gifts received. When we give to someone with sincere generosity we are promoting the growth of compassion and selflessness within.

Acts of kindness and generosity never need to be grandiose. Instead focus on doing the small acts such as buying a coffee for the person next in line, letting someone merge on the freeway, asking how the cashiers day is. Recognizing someone's existence as a living being is so very vital to promoting kindness we all want to experience in the world.

Lastly, we can change our perspective from one entitlement, that no matter how hard we work, or good we may think we are, or effort we put into a task, that we are not entitled to a reward or recognition. Instead, appreciating all rewards we receive can be viewed as a gift. This appreciation begins with the moment we wake up and open our eyes. You were not promised this day.

When we change from the entitlement perspective to one of graciousness and gratitude the world looks different. We’re able to see much more of the kindness that truly exists and not the apathy and sarcasm and indifference that seem to make the headlines.

So as you go out into the world don't compare what you have with someone else. What you have and what they have is impermanent. So walk with gratitude with what you have, share your compassion with others, and give the gift of yourself to others. This is how we can develop and share the Buddha nature we all carry inside. 

I wish you peace and ease,

Vladimir

Blue Lotus Mindfulness and Meditation Center is a registered 501(c)(3) religious organization.

Right Thought And Thinking Traps

Fostering Right Thought For Wellbeing

Why do we oftentimes support others more than we do ourselves? Do we feel others are more capable than we are?

Recall the Noble Eightfold path – Right Thought. Wholesome thoughts that serve to uplift us. Now, that doesn’t mean not to evaluate with honest reflections on mistakes, that’s how we learn. 

But Right Thought can mean we search with sincerity so we can improve ourselves, not belittle ourselves.

So what are thinking traps? Thinking traps are ways we process , rationalize, or justify actions or results thereby holding us back from being truly connected with ourselves and our surroundings. They are traps that do not promote nor foster Right Thought.

I’ve selected five that I feel are most common although there are a few more to consider.

i. Mind Reading

This is a common trap that a lot of people do and it is still very detrimental. Mind reading is when we assume we know what others are thinking or what they think of us. 

We may misinterpret an innocuous look or gesture and have mentally determined an outcome.

Try to recall a situation in your life when you had a preconceived notion of an outcome (positive or negative) and the person did the opposite.

For example, as you sit with friends as a restaurant you 'just know' that this attractive person is looking at you intently but you soon realize you're sitting under the TV.

ii. Fortune Telling

Although similar to mind reading this is more situational mind trap. Here, we've already determined the outcome of a particular situation.

It doesnt necessarily have to be what we would consider a negative outcome and could easily be a positive result as well. 

For example, I just know I'm not going to get that promotion so I wont even try. Or, this teacher is so easy I wont study for their exam.

Or another example, you 'just know' that Tabitha will forget to bring a side dish to our company picnic. But as you approach the table, she's unwrapping her dish.

Both of these examples result in an outcome opposite of what you had 'predicted'.

iii. Black/White Or Binary Thinking

This thinking trap is dangerous on several levels. For one, it doesn't allow you to accept a middle ground. Very few events in life are binary. But the dangerous aspect comes from others and ay also be a sign of a manipulative and controlling person.

When one is only able to consider such binary outcomes from a situation one is minimizing another persons perspective of the situation, particularly intention. 

For example, if someone offers you assistance in a task they are not very proficient with and as a result does not perform it well the black and white thinker would be quick to point out the faults instead of the loving, supportive effort offered.

iv. Fallacy Of Fairness

You think you know what is right or fair. If someone gets something you feel you're entitled to as well or they're not deserving of you may feel that the world is out to get you. 

Going through life judging what is fair and what is not, one may become angry, resentful, unhappy to the beauty that surrounds you.

For example, currently the US Government is considering some form of student loan forgiveness. There are some individuals who have successfully paid off this debt and feel that others being relieved of all or some portion is unfair.

In ones lifetime, there will always be some person or group of people who receive a benefit that you may not have. Certainly there have been times when you were the beneficiary and others were not.

When we are happy for someone else that elicits compassion for others as well as yourself.

v. Always Being Right

You or others may go to great lengths to prove yourself right and someone else is wrong. Being right was more important than being kind.

This is very often seen in social media posts where two people, most likely unknown to one another, disagree on a result or comment and one goes on a search to find some small piece of evidence to support his claim.

This is a misuse of your time and energy.

Protecting ourselves from harm, physically and mentally, is an evolutionary self-preservation product but we have also been conditioned by society to be negative. Too much positivity, empathy, and compassion and you are labeled 'soft'. As a result our mind tells us to 'hold back' resulting in limited growth and imbalance.

Developing Right Thought, cultivating what is wholesome and good mentally, is necessary to avoid Thinking Traps. Once we are able to recognize these traps we are able to flourish and embrace the positive life we are capable of having.

Wishing you peace and ease,

Vladimir


Blue Lotus Mindfulness and Meditation Center is a registered 501(c)(3) religious organization.