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At first we feel hopelessly clumsy — like when we”re learning to play the guitar. When we first start playing, our fingers are so clumsy it seems hopeless, but when we”ve done it for some time we gain skill and it is quite easy. We”re learning to witness what”s going on in our mind, so we can know when we”re getting restless and tense, or when we”re getting dull. We recognize that: we”re not trying to convince ourselves that it”s otherwise, we”re fully aware of the way things are. We sustain effort for one inhalation. If we can”t do that, then we sustain it for half an inhalation at least. In this way we”re not trying to become perfect all at once. We don”t have to do everything just right according to some idea of how it should be, but we work with the problems that are there. If we have a scattered mind, then it”s wisdom to recognize the mind that goes all over the place — that is insight. To think that we shouldn”t be that way, to hate ourselves or feel discouraged because that is the way we happen to be — that is ignorance.
We don”t start from where a perfect yogi is, we”re not doing Iyengar postures before we can bend over and touch our toes. That is the way to ruin ourselves. We may look at all the postures in the Light on Yoga book and see Iyengar wrapping his legs around his neck, in all kinds of amazing postures, but if we try to do them ourselves they”ll cart us off to hospital. So we start from just trying to bend a little more from the waist, examine the pain and resistance to it, learn to stretch gradually. The same with anapanasati: we recognize the way it is now and start from there, we sustain our attention a little longer, and we begin to understand what concentration is. Don”t make Superman resolutions when you”re not Superman. You say, “I”m going to sit and watch my breath all night,” and then when you fail you become angry. Set periods that you know you can do. Experiment, work with the mind until you know how to put forth effort and how to relax.
We have to learn to walk by falling down. Look at babies: I”ve never seen one that could walk straight away. Babies learn to walk by crawling, by holding onto things, by falling down and then pulling themselves up again. It is the same with meditation. We learn wisdom by observing ignorance, by making a mistake, reflecting and keeping going. If we think about it too much it seems hopeless. If babies thought a lot they”d never learn to walk, because when you watch a child trying to walk it seems hopeless, doesn”t it
When we think about it, meditation can seem completely hopeless, but we just keep doing it. It is easy when we”re full of enthusiasm, really inspired with the teacher and the teaching — but enthusiasm and inspiration are impermanent conditions, they take us to disillusionment and boredom.
When we”re bored, we really have to put effort into the practice. When we”re bored, we want to turn away and be reborn into something fascinating and exciting. But for insight and wisdom, we have to patiently endure through the troughs of disillusion-ment and depression. It is only in this way that we can stop reinforcing the cycles of habit, and come to understand cessation, come to know the silence and emptiness of the mind.
If we read books about not putting any effort into things, just letting everything happen in a natural, spontaneous way, then we tend to start thinking that all we have to do is lounge about — and then we lapse into a dull passive state. In my own practice, when I lapsed into dull states I came to see the importance of putting effort into physical posture. I saw that there was no point in making effort in a merely passive way. I would pull the body up straight, push out the chest and put energy into the sitting posture; or e…
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