Brief MEDITATION instructions

Eds., Wisdom Quarterly based on Ven. Thanissaro (Geoffrey DeGraff) AccessToInsight.org

Sati (American Buddhist Perspective)

Breath meditation is a useful technique for everyone. It is the kind of meditation the wandering ascetic Siddhartha Gautama was practicing just before he became "the Buddha" during his great enlightenment under the bodhi tree.

It is probably the most beneficial to the body, because the breath (prana, chi, energy) is more than the air coming in and out of the lungs and into the blood. It is what makes movement possible (see Buddhist physics about kalapas and cittas or practice Four Elements Meditation as taught by Burmese Theravada Meditation Master Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw in particular to personally verify this curious statement).

This energy is what makes the body function well so that it can be healthy, which gives our intention or mind a way to handle dealing with pain that arises in the body from time to time.

The Buddha atop Borobudur temple, Indonesia, in a bell or stupa (Ryanchanatry/flickr).

  

Sit comfortably erect balancing the bodies weight so that it's comfortable. Straight does not mean stiff like a soldier. It means soft like a martial arts master, calm, smiling, completely relaxed and alert. Lean forward and back and side to side to find balance.

Close the eyes and take a deep, cleansing breath. Then completely let it go. Exhale and relax on each exhalation so as to calm down and sink into comfort and ease.

Doom: resentment, anger...

Silently say, "May I be well and happy, free from suffering." Just as one wishes this for others, it is best to wish it for oneself first. This may sound strange or selfish, but if we cannot wish ourselves happiness, how will we wish others to be as happy as we are? "Love yourself like you love your neighbor" one very famous rabbi said but stated it, "Love others as you love yourself." How much do we love ourselves?

Some people (ourselves included) need to constantly remind themselves that they deserve happiness: we all deserve it, yes even the "bad" people. May everyone be happy. Or be miserable and wish misery on everyone, but then there is no sense in meditating. There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way! If we fail to believe this, we will be unhappy and constantly find ways to punish ourselves.

 

Why's the Buddha so happy? (Khorsani/flickr)

And what will we do to others? That's right, the same thing. We will end up punishing others in subtle and even blatant ways. If we insist on doing so, it is better to choose to practice one of the punishing Abrahamic faiths and sexist-racist religions like Judaism, Islam, Christianity, or Scientology so popular in the West, child molestation thrown in four free. Go on. You'll have plenty of company. Join a angry cult:

(Documentary) "Life Inside a [Christian] Religious Cult" A "cult" is a spiritual or social team with deviant or novel beliefs and techniques. What is "novel" or "deviant" depends on the society one lives in. Religions are cults until and if they can become religions.

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Happiness

I meditate.

What is "true happiness," and where it can be found? Reflect. Can it be found in the past or future? The past is gone, the future has never been. Right here right now is the only place we can be happy (whether we're remembering the past or projecting into the future, happiness is only to be found wherever we are in the present moment).

But we have to know where to look. If we try to base our happiness on things that constantly change -- sights, sounds, physical sensations, people, things outside ourselves -- we're setting ourselves up for disappointment.

It's as if we are building ourselves a beautiful house on a cliff where there have repeatedly been landslides in the past. True happiness has to be looked for within. Meditation is like a treasure hunt -- a quest to find what is solid and unchanging. What is worthy of our efforts, something that even death cannot touch?

 

I found treasure (Moondoxy/flickr)

To get to our treasures, we might need a few tools. The first tool is doing what we just did: develop goodwill for and toward ourselves and extend that out to others second. It doesn't work to do it the other way around. Be happy and then being happy, help make others happy.

We can remind ourselves, "All living beings -- no matter who they are, no matter what they've done to me in the past -- may they also find true happiness." If we do not cultivate this thought and practice with loving-kindness, but instead carry grudges into our meditation, that is all we will be able to see when we look inside.

 

Only when we have cleared our minds of resentment, harming, wrath, vengeance, and negativity, and set all outside matters aside, are we actually ready to focus on the breath, the subtle breath beyond breathing, at the tip of the nose.

Begin

Do protectors hover around?

Bring attention to the sensation of breathing right at the nostril. Breathe in long and let go relaxing, which means a long exhalation.

 

Stay with the spot just under the nose, the doorway where air comes in and out. There is no need bear down on it or press too heavily focusing and trying. This is the opposite of meditation. Meditation means allowing, accepting, being with. Let's be with what is but not involved with it. We can just watch it dispassionately. Let it go.

Let the breath be, and let's stay with it. The breath is allowed to flow naturally. All we do is simply keep track of it from beginning to end no matter how subtle it gets. If we are calm, it will get so subtle that we may think we are not breathing. We are. We need more attention (less distraction) to notice it.

Persist

Siddhartha had to endure boredom, anger, rage, lust, craving, delusion, confusion...

.

If Sidd could, I can! (Romila Barryman)

Sitting in this way with this practice means effortlessly building attention, patience, noticing, staying with it even if persistence and perseverance seem like the last things we feel capable of doing. We are doing it. The breath is. That is what is happening right here right now, so let's be with it.

If we experience an exquisite sensation, we naturally want to prolong it. What meditation will yield is a blissful enthusiasm (piti) and happiness (sukha, good feeling, soothing ease, the opposite of dukkha). So if the mind (attention) wanders off, simply bring it back. And bring it back again. And again. Rather than allowing discouragement, we develop persistence. Get up if need be.

 

Then sit down again. The mind may wander 60 times (in a minute), so we bring it back 61 times. It's not important that it wandered; it is important that we bring it back and keep it here. Show it that we mean business, and eventually it will listen to us. This is the tough part, the getting started, the reason we would be better off starting sooner. But now is when we do it, now is what we have, and now is when we will start feeling the benefits. Be here now. It's all there is.

When we sit without having to try, zen begins.

Once we ease and comfort with attending to the breath at the chosen spot, we can get used to keeping it there. It will stay right here under the nose, at the center of the nostril opening.

There is the sensation of motion created by the breath, which may get so subtle that it seems like a mere squiggle. The breath reflects the state of mind like a mirror. When the mind moves, the breath will immediately move, so quickly that our attention only notices a moment later. The mind is very swift.

Stay with the breath without deviating to distractions -- thoughts, noises, worries. If something arises, the mind is there to attend to that, too, then bring it back.

What will happen? Meditation will unfold. Be like a person full of confidence that just doing this, just attending to the breath will allow meditation to unfold -- access concentration, absorption, stillness, happiness.

Happiness will eventually engulf the body due to the Factors of Absorption and the falling away of defilements. The basis of successful meditation is virtue (sila) and having tried to meditate and develop oneself (paramis) before, so practicing the Five Precepts in life greatly helps meditation success. Residing in a quiet place with calm companions also helps. Not all locations and companions are suitable for success in meditation, but we will never know that until we meditate.

Meditating in a quiet group is often very helpful in the beginning (redlotusjourney.com).

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When we focus or rest our attention on the breath just below the nose, our attention settles there comfortably. We let awareness spread from there to fill the entire body so that -- like a spider sitting in the middle of a web while sensitive to the entire web yet remaining at one spot -- we are present.

Keep awareness of the breath, and awareness will expand. Our tendency is to want to shrink attention to a single spot and think of the breath as coming in and out of the body, but this is gross breath. Our real object of meditation, which will reveal itself, is the subtle breath when the mind and body are calm and attention has grown so powerful that we are able to stick with it in conjunction with its subtlety.

Sound waves can help still the mind.

Let awareness simply stay right under the nose where the breath travels from the outside world into the inside-body. There is nowhere else we have to go, nothing else we have to "do," nothing to think about... Gently allow meditation (jhana, zen, ch'an, seon, dhyana) to happen.

Come out when the bell rings or after an hour. Getting to an hour may take some time, but it is doable and gets easier with time. The benefits are astounding, eventually leading (with the addition of insight-practices founded on a foundation of absorption) to enlightenment and the end-of-all-suffering the Buddha called nirvana.

• Need help? Try binaural beats from the Monroe Institute

Using LSD to escape from prison (video)

Wisdom Quarterly; Gabriel London (defriest.com), Amy Goodman (democracynow.org)(DemocracyNow.org) See Minute 37:13 for LSD episode and its unintended consequences.

Democracy Now! investigates the shocking case of Mark DeFriest, known as the "Houdini of Florida prisons" because he has tried to escape 13 times -- seven of them successfully. In 1979, DeFriest’s father died and left him a set of tools. He picked them up before they were probated. The teenager was arrested for stealing and sentenced to four years in prison. [The U.S. does not torture, for we are a land of law and order.] Thirty-four years later he is still there, having spent 27 of those years in solitary. [The U.S. does torture, but we call ourselves a land of law and order.] DeFriest spent much of it in the notorious “X Wing” of Florida State Prison (FSP), where he went for many years without seeing the Sun. DN! is joined by Gabriel London, director of the new film about the case, "The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest." More

Unindicted white collar meditator

If drugs fail to gain one one's freedom, might there be another way to escape the insanity, to escape to reality? What if it were possible to overcome the distractions -- external and internal -- and successfully meditate? All meditation is an intention in the right direction, but it is not all equally effective or ultimately successful. It matters what we do, what we intend, what we practice. "A pure heart," it is said in the opening verses of the Dhammapada ("Dharma Imprint/Path"), "brings happiness in its trail like our shadow that never departs" even when it seems not to be there. "An defiled heart," on the other hand, "brings suffering like the cart dragging behind the draught ox." Just to focus on the breathing taking place at this moment, not "thinking about" it but simply aware of it so fully that discursive thinking wanes and one is living directly in this moment, even if this moment seems from a distance to be unpleasant, is a great start. What do most of us instead? We look for substances and activities to blot out blissful reality, allow our mind/hearts to spin in the insanity we assume to be real, and yearn for more powerful hallucinogens, narcotics, sleeping pills, and forms of liquid and inhalable ignorance. Wouldn't it be so much better to Escape to Reality?

 

Preserving the Harvest (Gardening)

Amber Larson, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; OrganicGardening.com; UCLA.edu

The ideal home/meditation hut in the back of a big backyard garden (g2bgreen.com).

Permaculture gardening in a large metropolis works well with raised plots (UCLA.edu)

Is there a better way to "meditate" -- to cultivate serenity, calm, attention, and insight -- than gardening? Sometimes it only by sticking one's hands into the earth that we can become grounded. Finding the ground, our support, is the first step. Preparing the soil in a natural way (without deadly chemicals, toxins, pesticidal GMOs, etc.), in an organic and sustainable way, comes next.

(Rainbow Gardens) After planting, cultivating comes harvesting to eat well from the yard!

Preparing Farmory Arts garden (WQ)

Permaculture offers creative solutions to all difficulties industrial chemical corporations like Monsanto or BASF say to poison. The best thing about permaculture is that it offers a whole new way of thinking and seeing the "problem" as an advantage that needs no solution.

The sky devas offer free water. The temperature tells the seeds, bulbs, and fruit what to do. Having gardened and allowed the bounty to ripen on the vine, it comes time to harvest the abundance. But how to preserve it? OrganicGardening.com offers many options.

(Late Bloomers) Visiting the winder garden with Kaye Kittrell to wash off cute aphids with soapy water and see what vegetables are good to eat (chard, kale, bok choy).

• Int'l Permaculture Convergence 2015 (IPCUK)
• VIDEO: Learn to garden vegetables instead of lawns
  

Chem-free Plum Village (Quest4pce)

UCLA: Landscape Regeneration as a Key Strategy in the Future of Global Health Chris Shanks (Nov. 13) is a permaculture enthusiast and has worked with some of the finest permaculture and ecological designers in the Western hemisphere. Fascinated with living systems, Shanks studies whole systems design, ethno-botany, horticulture, mycology, and ecology. His interests have led him to study agro-ecosystems and cultural anthropology on both US coasts, Mexico, Hawaii, as well as the temperate and sub-tropical regions around the world.

6 Top Rules of Canning: Canning is not without its challenges. Follow these guidelines from Tart and Sweet to keep it fun, easy, and delicious.

Andrea Cooper's Spicy Salsa: Once you find a perfect salsa recipe, you need no others

Share the Harvest: Preserves save the best of summer for the dead of winter.

Rumtopf: Preserve fruit with rum for a fun holiday treat.

Harvesting & Storing Squash: Welcome winter with a nutritious cache of squash in the cellar.

Herbs All Year: What’s the best way to preserve fresh herbs? The answer may surprise you.

Making Fermented Pickles: Nothing beats the taste of a real (cucumber, gherkin) pickle.

Blackberry Lavender No-Cook Freezer Jam: Tuck this tasty treat away in the freezer.

Freezer Jam: Homemade preserves with half the sugar and none of the fuss? Here's how.

Truly Green Preserves: Here's a great way to use those end-of-season green tomatoes.

Bhumi deva (Buddhist fairy) relaxing in the home garden (WeGoTwo/flickr .com)

"Life is a Playground," comedian Kyle (video)

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Kyle Cease (evolvingoutloud.com)

• Join Kyle at Evolving Out Loud LIVE, June 27-29, 2014 in LA: A comedians way to meditation and money
• Listening Party with Roy of Hollywood Tuckman, Buddhist Radio: Alan Watts' "Ecological Awareness, Part 4"; "Mine Enemy: German POWs in America in WW II"; Oliver Stone's "Untold History of the United States"; Christine Blosdale with Kyle Cease Something's Happening - A (PLAY), Something's Happening - B (PLAY)
• Pacifica, LA with Christine Blosdale (KPFK 90.7 FM)

 

"Comedy Meets Purpose" is about Kyle Cease's previous 3-day event in

Los Angeles, which took place July 19-21, 2013 (KyleCease.com).

How to meditate: Don't "meditate"

Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; KyleCease.com, KPFK.org

A kuti is a "meditation hut" or "cell," lodging to withdraw, absorb, and contemplate. It is likely to feel like a prison cell if one does not enter with the right intention and view.

Oh, to have a Thai Buddhist meditation hut like this shrine hall (Richard-Perry/flickr.com)

 
It is easy to meditate, too easy. So easy that one should not "do" and it will happen.

It will happen. So be meditated rather than meditating. In yoga class I say to practitioners, "Remember to breathe." Newcomers roll their eyes. But before long, they're forgetting. They're clenching, sucking in their guts, getting dizzy. "Breathe, breathe," I say.

Eventually, they ask, "O, you mean remember to do deep abdominal breathing without clenching." "Yes," I answer, "what else would I mean?" Breathing would just happen if we got out of our way.

Samsara or Bhavachakra thangka (Stephen Shephard)

But better than breathing, let the breath breathe you. That's tougher to get one's head around. No need. Just do it. It will happen if we allow. Look, it was just happening! You, reader, you were just doing it! The breath was breathing you...

By the same token, meditate. And remember to meditate. How? Pay attention. We're always paying attention to something. Choose. Rather than wandering and wandering -- endlessly wandering on in this tragic samsara (wheel), blinded by delusion, baited by craving, dejected by aversion -- choose. Focus. Stay.

Easy meditation steps: Stop. Stay. Awake. Too easy? Really stop, completely stop. If I were doing nothing, what would I be doing? Not nothing. "Nothing" is not something we do. There would be breathing going on. We wouldn't be breathing. In a sense, Breathing breathing us. We wouldn't be meditating. In a sense, Meditation would begin meditating us.

would be

• (Here "meditation" does not mean "contemplate" or "rotate in the mind." That comes later during the insight exercises for liberation. At this stage, it's all about acute-serenity, complete peace full of wakefulness and attention. For those of us with ADD, the two just don't seem to go together. But they will if the way we get to serenity is by prolonged attention. It purifies the heart/mind).

Downward Dog, also known as the Lululemon Test Pose (businessinsider.com)

 

All the words in the dictionary won't do it. Just do it. Practice. For one who practices -- who is persistent in following the directions, in "trying," as it were -- success comes. It can't help but come. Others go faster, still others go slower...some don't go at all. Look at yourself. Practice. It's not about them. It is about you.

The comedian on the radio

Christine Blosdale had comedian Kyle Cease on Pacifica on Tuesday, May 13, 2014, 11:00 am. He said it exactly, describing "flow," which is both a kind of yoga and a psychological state world class rappers like to enter. Athletes, too. And meditators can learn a lot from it. As a comedian and motivational speaker, Cease had something to say about meditation, realization, and having an epiphany about the illusions we live in:

• Christine Blosdale Special
• PLAY (or DOWNLOAD)

Evolving Out Loud (kylecease.com)

"How to Clear Your Mind" (Allure Magazine)

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Andy Puddicombe (GetSomeHeadspace.com), Brooke Le Poer Trench (Allure.com, Oct. 2013 issue); ilanadonna (video)

Mind racing? Focus on something concrete -- like the sensation of touching something.
 

"Insider's Guide," p. 142 (Oct. 2013 issue)

The former Buddhist monk Puddicombe cofounded Get Some Headspace and is the author of Get Some Headspace: How Mindfulness Can Change Your Life in Ten Minutes a Day.

Everyone feels overwhelmed at some point... But what is the most profitable way to respond? We can react -- follow patterns dictated by habit, neurosis, or social conditioning. We can also respond purposefully, try a new way of coping, enter upon a mindful solution.

The thing is, we would first have to be aware. And the habit of bare awareness with clear comprehension (sati-sampajañña) is not the habit most of us have been developing. But it is the  good habit the Buddha recommended on the path to enlightenment.

Even on the path to mundane success, mindfulness is useful. There is no such thing as too much mindfulness. In the development of five crucial factors for success in meditation, there can be too much confidence (faith), there can be too much wisdom. One should temper the other. There can be too much energy, there can be too much concentration. These, too, should be balanced, one by the other. 

Definition
But the fifth, this sati, which we translate as "mindfulness" (bare awareness, thoughtless awareness, nonjudgmental awareness, vigilance, diligence, wakefulness, nondistractedness, effortless mono-tasking, nonforgetfulness, remembering to remember, childlike presence of mind or beginner's mind, etc.), cannot be overdone.

• Mindfulness has a separate meaning with which it should not be confused. "Recollection" or active-contemplation is the "memory" or remembering/bringing to mind side of "mindfulness." It is the turning, thinking over, pensively considering or "rotating" a theme in mind. This rotation (ratiocination, cogitation) is the actual meaning of the English word "meditation." The Buddhist word we commonly translate as "meditation" is bhavana, which has the much broader meaning of cultivation, development, or literally "bringing into being." There are three other words that might better be translated as "meditation" in this older English language sense -- janeti (from jhana, getting to "absorption"), kammatthana (field to be cultivated or worked or acted upon, from kamma, karma, one's meditation subject or theme), and anussati (pondering, recollecting, contemplating, from anu = "scrutiny" + sati = "mindfulness," i.e., long consideration or "consideration all the way around"). More

One is aware-and-clear as one goes about one's day, as one sits on a meditation cushion, as one thumbs through Allure and gets to page 142. Mr. Andy Puddicombe explains the rest, showing how just 10 minutes of practice a day can change a life.

(US.Macmillan.com) A former Buddhist monk with over 10 years of teaching experience, Puddicombe has been acknowledged as the UK's foremost mindfulness meditation expert. Like so many of his students, he began his own meditation practice as an ordinary, "busy" person with everyday concerns. He has since designed a program that fits neatly into a jam-packed daily routine proving that just 10 minutes a day can make a world of difference.

Beautiful Mindfulness

Is Allure good reading? Not really.

Body News: Beautified Minds 

(Allure/Lois B. Morris) Does plastic surgery actually make people happier? Yes... Ugh, actually it's hard to tell because we now cannot wipe these stupid expressions off our Botoxy faces.

Mood News: Open Minded

Can something as simple as twisting on a faucet or spinning the wheel on an iPod have a psychological impact? Hmm, let me hold my chin and scratch my head while I think about that. 

Body News: Mind, Body, Colds

(Allure/Kristin Sainani) Meditation and exercise help prevent colds and flu, research suggests. 

Mood News: Night Lights 

Does exposure to brightness at night affect your mind? 

Body News: Hunger Games 

A woman's mind-set while eating may influence her metabolism, surprising research has shown.

Mood News: Romance Risk

When women have romantic relationships on their mind, they're more likely to consider unhealthy ways of enhancing their appearance.

Mood News: Seeing More Clearly 

It's possible to improve your eyesight by changing your mind rather than your prescription. 

Insiders' Guide: How to Get a Great Facial

A facial can make or break your skin. Keep a few rules in mind and your skin will glow.

Scents of Self

Everyone knows fragrances [stink of chemical odorants and flavorants and pungent volatile organic compounds that harm the brain with excitotoxic effects. But did they know that...]

Meditation is making me crazy!

Wisdom Quarterly editors interview a new meditator

 (whiteshutterbox/flickr.com)

AngerDespairTranquilityRainbow: struggle for inner peace (David Stuart/Zazzle.ca)

  

"Though one may conquer a thousand times a thousand adversaries in battle, yet one is indeed the nobler victor for conquering oneself. Self-conquest is far better than the conquest of others.
  
"Not even a deva, mara, or brahma [angel, demon, or god] can turn into defeat the victory of a person who is self-subdued and ever restrained in conduct" (Dhammapada, Chp. 8, vv 103-105).
  

Crazy?
Yoga says unite with the breath (spiritus, prana), unite with GOD (godhead, Brahman), unite with wisdom (transcendental knowledge, jnana).

I say meditation is driving me crazy! I feel settled and calm, but when I begin to sit, my mind races and my emotions bubble up until all I want to do is stand up. Can this be normal? I'd rather have peace of mind than a sitting-practice.

  

And do you?

Well, no. That's where it all falls down. I'd like more peace of mind, but sitting cross-legged doesn't seem to be the way to it.

At first it can seem like quite a strain. Relax. Let your mind wander. But look at the wandering rather than participating or getting "caught up" in it.

Let it wander? I thought the whole point was to bring it back?

It is. But you can't very well bring it back if it hasn't wandered. And when it is brought back -- gently, smiling, with tremendous love for it -- it will settle down and become quite useful. The mind is miraculous. We expend it until, spent, it is of little use to us and often becomes quite harmful.

Sit. Watch the exhales as you utterly let go. Let go each time you exhale. Do this and see what happens.

But I thought I had to watch the entire length of the breath. Isn't that the point?

It is. But begin by watching the breath go out and with it let it take your cares, concerns, and angst. Rather than trying to control the process, let go.

It seems hard.

Friendship immediately makes an end of enemies.

Any idea may seem hard, but in practice it just is -- pardon the expression -- what it is. Which is just practice. When you approach Peaceful Mind, you will become annoyed with anyone interfering with your meditation practice. Why? Because meditation will have started becoming a fountain of very pleasurable interest and effervescent joy. It's like when you thumb through those magazines or flip through the musical selections on your phone, you don't want to be disturbed. They are sources of soothing ease. Imagine a more powerful source.

Sitting?

Meditation. Mindful (present moment) awareness of what is. Whatever is. Wherever and whenever it is -- standing, laying down, walking, running... There is always a space for awareness. "Stand in the place that you are," as Guru REM teaches.

It's like a war in there, in  my head.

  

Better to overcome yourself in that war than a thousand adversaries in a thousand wars. Befriend yourself and you will put an end to that "enemy" then and there.

"Spiritual" advice replete with thousands of verses is of no value if it has no useful meaning, no practical purpose. A single line is more valuable if hearing it one is pacified.

"Although a thousand lines one composes,

A tome of meaningless lines, one supposes,

For far better would be a single useful one
If by hearing a person is thereby calmed."

(Wisdom Quarterly translation, Dhp. 8:101)

Overcoming difficulties: Let it R.A.I.N.

Tara Brach [adapted from her book True Refuge (Bantam, 2013)]; Wisdom Quarterly

 

Tara Brach (examiner.com)

Years ago some American Buddhist teachers began to share a new mindfulness tool that offers in-the-trenches support for working with intense and difficult emotions. 

  

Called RAIN (an acronym for the four steps of the process), it can be accessed in almost any place or situation. It directs our attention in a clear, systematic way that cuts through confusion and stress. 

The steps give us somewhere to turn in a painful moment. And as we call on them more regularly, they strengthen our capacity to come home to our deepest truth. Like the clear sky and clean air after a cooling rain, this mindfulness practice brings a new openness and calm to our daily lives. 

I have now taught RAIN to thousands of students, clients, and mental health professionals, adapting and expanding it into [True Refuge]. I’ve also made it a core practice in my own life. Here are the four steps of RAIN presented in the way I’ve found most helpful:

• R Recognize what is happening
• A Allow life to be just as it is
• I Investigate inner experience with kindness
• N Non-Identification.

RAIN directly de-conditions the habitual ways in which we resist moment-to-moment experience. It doesn’t matter whether we resist “what is” by lashing out in anger, by having a cigarette, [by sex, drugs, rock 'n roll or rap], or by getting immersed in obsessive thinking.

Our attempt to control the life within and around us actually cuts us off from our own heart and from this living world. RAIN begins to undo these unconscious patterns as soon as we take the first step.  

  

Recognize what is, accept that it is, investigate what's going on inside, and realize that there's no reason to identify with situations. More