What is Meditation? What is Compassion?
Meditation is the practice or the art of non-distraction and compassion (in meditation) is the art of being compassionate for ourselves when we are distracted.
Meditation is the practice or the art of non-distraction and compassion (in meditation) is the art of being compassionate for ourselves when we are distracted.
In the past two weeks, we've talked a lot about meditation and compassion, and how the meditative mind opens up the heart of compassion. This week we'll continue on this topic by reflecting on a comment made by Sogyal Rinpoche, meditation master and author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. In a teaching that Sogyal Rinpoche presented on July 6, 1999, at the retreat center in Lerab Ling, France, he stated that, "...without an open heart, the practice of your mind [meditation] won't work...The true nature of your mind is wisdom and compassion..." I had to think about [...]
When we think about how to show up either in life, it’s good to remember that compassion isn’t something foreign to our minds and our hearts, we have it already.
BOLD STATEMENT: there’s no such thing as compassion fatigue! What? Have you heard all of the talk in healthcare and in the literature about "compassion fatigue?" I just did a Google® search for the keywords "compassion fatigue in nurses" and came up with 104,000 links, up from 46,700 links just last spring! What?! You’d think that we’re all suffering from burnout, which can’t be possible…or, is it? The notion that being compassionate can cause fatigue gives me cause to pause, how about you? Can compassion really lead to fatigue? Can caring so much for another cause burnout? Perhaps the [...]
Meditation Matters in Everything that You Do... Meditation matters in your life. It matters in your relationships and in your family. It matters when you drive the car and when you eat your meals. (starting to see the pattern here?) Meditation matters everywhere! It almost seems like I could start a Dr. Seuss rhyme here, "...in a park, on a train, in the dark, in the rain!..." Previous posts on this site, as well as posts on other sites like What Meditation Really Is, The Promise of Mindfulness Meditation, and even on Richer Life, have stressed the importance of [...]
A colloquialism favored in the state of Maine is that you can't get there from here, or - spoken as a Mainer "you can't get they-ah from he-ah." But, why talk about Maine when the topics of this blog are mindfulness, awareness and compassion at the bedside? (with bits of the mundane daily stuff tossed in for grins) The "from here" that we work with when beginning meditation is our ordinary - some might say deluded - mind. And, the "there" that we're working to achieve to some degree is a state free from delusions, free from distractions. The premise of [...]
In previous posts we've discussed how to work with the breath as an anchor for taming the mind, bringing our attention into the present, and maintaining an attention of moment-to-moment awareness. We've also covered how to work with thoughts, sensations, emotions, and...even sleepiness!! When caring for others, in this case, at the bedside, as a healthcare professional, we can use all of the methods that we've learned to ground out attention in the moment, for those we care for. Minding the bedside aware and compassionately comes from realizing the changing nature of our thoughts and from turning and returning the [...]
The topic of bringing our meditation practice into our workplace, whether as a nurse or as a supermarket cashier, requires of us an understanding of what we mean when we use the word, "meditate." For many people, meditation brings up images of monks or solitary souls seated on a cushion, mumbling "om" with incense and candles. Sure, that can be meditation, but more often than not, this isn't the case. And, in the case of how we bring our meditation practice to the bedside, these images don't represent what a meditative presence truly embodies when caring for another. As was [...]
We’ve discussed and shared a lot of different aspects of meditation and how to work with the mind on this site. One topic that we haven’t strayed into is how working with one’s mind can not only affect the quality of one’s life and the lives of those around us, but also how the stability that we can find in learning to meditate can also help us when we or our loved ones approach the transition of life into death. The Latin words memento mori—“remember death” or “remember that you must die”—were used in ancient Rome and in medieval times [...]
Integrating Meditation Into Physical Challenges Maybe I've been spending too much time on the cushion lately. Or, maybe I've been working too hard on integrating meditation into my family life and into the process of writing and publishing my book. Whatever the reasons, I recently experienced an entirely new level of challenge in working with my mind while training for the Colorado Triple Bypass (a bike ride, not a surgery!). The Triple Bypass is a popular, "lung busting" 120-mile bicycle ride over three mountain passes, climbing a total of 10,000 feet of elevation, in a day's ride. How I got [...]