Today’s Meditation on Headspace: 5 Great Quotes
“Perspective—choosing how you see your life”
― Andy Puddicombe
A little while back I wrote about my use of the Headspace app and what I learned from my multi-year streak of daily meditation. I spoke about my man crush on the voice behind the app, Andy Puddicombe. While his British accent and pentameter reel me in, it’s the Zen-ness that really has the impact.
Andy practiced as a Buddhist monk for 10 years after a series of horrific situations occurred around him when he was in his early 20s. His colloquial lessons carry the weight of the experience and benefits of meditating with practical applications to everyday situations. He is one part peer and one part sage when he speaks.
In the “Today’s Meditation” feature on the Headspace app, he provides a unique introduction to the guided meditation each day. The topics vary but the lessons are always pointing in the same direction: meditation and mindfulness can make you a better person.
Here are 5 of my favorite introductions to his meditations.
Note: I transcribed these myself and they disappear after a day so I apologize for any errors in a verbatim copy.
Today’s Meditations
Without Fear
The more at ease we become with the mind the less our thoughts can harm us. A quiet mind might be enjoyable but the true benefit of meditation comes from a mind that's free from fear and harm. As we start out on our meditation journey, that sense of calm and relaxation is probably our number one sort of aim. And in many ways, why not? Most of us live in a busy world, we have a busy mind. It's nice to have that idea of a quieter, calmer mind. But if we're too attached to that one aspect of meditation then we miss out on the full range of benefits. It's there where it gets more interesting. We calm the mind so that we can see more clearly and we see more clearly so that we are no longer ignoring thoughts, no longer chasing after or attached to thoughts, no longer fearful or resistant to thoughts. From this position of awareness, we are able to experience thoughts that are free from fear, free from harm. There is no thought that could appear from the perspective of awareness that that is either good or bad. There is simply the thought as it is in that moment. It's only the commentary that follows the dialogue that follows that turns into something good or bad.
Never Ending Journey
Like a flowing river, the journey of meditation does not have an endpoint. At some stage, we might flow out into the ocean and experience more spaciousness but the journey continues nonetheless. So often in life, we begin things with an idea of a destination, of an endpoint, of learning something, perhaps, until we master it. But meditation is a little bit different in that sense. The truth is, there is no end to the journey of the mind. To begin with, I think we experience it in a limited way. It's not that the mind is limited but our perspective of it is In some way. So we might see it as water in the swimming pool, contained in some way. Then, as we continue to meditate we find there is a continuous sense of flow and then the mind is perhaps more like a river. And then, in time, the more we sit the more we experience a sense of spaciousness. It's the equivalent of the stream running out into the ocean. But the water is still flowing, it's still moving, we're still experiencing it. It's just that our perspective has changed. That we start to experience not only our own mind, but the world around us, in a very different way.
Known Unknowns
As we observe the coming and going of the mind, we begin to realize how little we actually know, how fragile the storylines and opinions of the mind can be. It's a deeply humbling process. So, over our entire lifetime we have created a story in the mind. We've created an identity. We tend to think in a very particular way. But as we sit to meditate, as we sit to train the mind, we start to see that everything is in a constant state of flux, a constant state of flow Thoughts are very transient. Everything is always changing. And as we experience it directly–not as an idea but as an experience–then we start to see holes in the storyline. The storyline no longer appears quite so fixed, quite so permanent, quite so definite. Instead, we begin to see that, actually, the storylines are very fragile and often don't even reflect what's going on in our life right now. It's almost as if they've existed for so long that we've just continued to repeat them in our mind and when we stop to look at how our life appears right now, how are living in the world right now, the storyline is no longer even so. This can be a liberating process on the one hand but also very humbling because typically we like a sense of security. We like to think that we like to know where we are and what's going on. In truth, as we sit to train the mind we know very little at all.
Giving it Away
The process of meditation is not about collecting but rather, giving away. It's not about possessing but rather, appreciating. And it's not all about learning but rather, letting go of the known..... I think there are so many different ways and approaches to meditation but when we really look at the essence of meditation we see just how counter it is, how different it is to so many other aspects of our life: the way we approach life, the way we live our life. Typically, we are in the mode of collecting and the idea of letting everything go can be quite foreign so it takes a little time to sort of settle into that idea. Even from an achievement point of view within the meditation, to let go of the idea of any particular goal or accomplishment and simply be okay with the mind as it is right now. We also tend to live a life where we’re more caught up in what's going on right now or might be happening in the future or what did happen in the past than simply appreciating this moment–this unique moment. And of course, there might be the temptation that because it's a skill there is a process of learning but the learning is more about familiarization. It's not an intellectual learning. It's not about bringing our intellectual knowledge to the skill. If anything, it's shutting down our opinions, our thoughts are beliefs, and anything we ever thought, and in that moment experiencing that freedom of mind.
Praise and Blame
It's easy to praise or to blame others for their action in the world. But unless we know the intention, the motivation behind the actions, then we really know nothing at all. You live in a culture where praise and blame are not only common but they're even encouraged. It's really just another way of talking about judgment. Instinctively, reactively we tend to either praise or blame whether it's ourselves or the things we think we're say or the things we do in our lives or when we see the actions of others or when we hear the words of others perhaps when they talk about their thoughts, again we fall into that trap of judging. Normally, quite quickly we forget that even ourselves You think sometimes with the very best intentions but they don't necessarily turn out The way we wanted them to or expected them to but even if they do they're not necessarily perceived that way by others. So when we we're listening to others, watching the actions of others it can be really helpful to, as much as possible, listen or watch with a sense of openness, a sense of interest, of curiosity rather than judgment. Because, in truth, we don't know what exists beyond what we're seeing or hearing. We don't know what happened before. We don't know the story that happened before. Slowly, if we bring this curiosity, this interest into our lives then we start to notice a little more patients, a little more understanding maybe even a little more empathy towards others.
