My mindfulness, gratitude and compassion journal

The path is not of spirituality. Spirituality is an overrated word. It's the journey of mindfulness,  gratitude, and compassion.

~Dosti Regmi.

The Science of Enlightenment by Shinzen Young 

Seeing, hearing, and feeling 

Gone...

Rather than trying to “get rid of thoughts,” Shinzen encourages investigating thoughts as sensory phenomena—especially those that arise as internal sounds (mental talk) or images (mental pictures). Emotions, similarly, are approached as bodily sensations that can be gently observed and allowed to change. Through this lens, the self becomes an illusion created by the binding together of various sensory events.

"If I could bottle this state, I could make the whole world addicted to it." The California woman sharing her experience after the moment of awareness in near-drowning. When fear passed and she was fully aware of what to do next.

Rather than striving for special mystical experiences, Shinzen emphasizes the refinement of perception and the dissolution of identification. He envisions a future where meditation is demystified, practiced universally, and studied scientifically—perhaps one day even measured like blood pressure or temperature.

“See, Hear, Feel” Practice

 

 
“See” refers to both external visual perception and internal mental imagery.
See Out: Noticing the visual field—colors, shapes, shadows, light, motion.
See In: Watching the inner screen—mental pictures, visual memories, imagined scenarios.
Sit and let your eyes be either open or closed. Notice what visual impressions arise. If you recall someone’s face or imagine your to-do list, silently label that as “See In.” If you notice a ray of sunlight on the wall, label it “See Out.”
“When you see a mental image as just light in the mind, the grip of the past begins to loosen.”

“Hear” includes external sounds and internal talk or narration.
Hear Out: Environmental sounds—cars, birds, a fan, distant voices.
Hear In: Your inner voice—thoughts in the form of words, songs, silent reading.
Close your eyes and tune into sound. If you hear your own voice in your head planning the day or replaying an argument, label it “Hear In.” Notice the tone, rhythm, and emotional charge of the internal sound. If a dog barks or a bell rings, acknowledge it as “Hear Out.”
“The voice in your head is just a sound. When you see it that way, it loses its power.”

“Feel” covers all bodily and emotional sensations.
Feel Out: Physical sensations—touch, breath, posture, heat, heartbeat.
Feel In: Emotions—tightness in the chest, tension in the shoulders, knots in the stomach.
Sit still and scan the body. Where do you feel pressure, heat, or tingling? When emotions arise, don’t name them as “sad” or “angry.” Instead, label the raw sensation as “Feel In.” This reduces mental proliferation and lets you stay grounded in direct experience.
“When you feel anger as a sensation instead of a story, it becomes manageable.” Putting It All Together


In time, you can practice noticing the vanishing of each sensation (“Gone”), or explore combinations like “See-Hear” or “Feel-Hear” when multiple streams are active.

I’ll Meet You There
Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing
there is a field. I will meet you there.

The Five Remembrances

I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health. I cannot escape having ill health.
I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature of change. I cannot escape being separated from them.
My deeds are my closest companions. I am the beneficiary of my deeds. My deeds are the ground on which I stand.

The God who only knows Four Words
By: Hafiz

Every Child
Has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of Don'ts
Not the God who ever does anything weird
But the God who only knows four words
And keeps repeating them, saying:
"Come dance with Me"
Come Dance

Guest House
Rumi

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

Journey
By Mary Oliver

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Too Soon to Tell

As the story goes, there was once a farmer and his only son in the days just before the Civil War. Having only one horse, the farmer and son worked long hard days, sun up to sun down, just to get by, with nothing left to spare.
One day as the father and son plowed the fields, their horse got spooked and ran off. The son was devastated; "What bad luck, now what will we do?"
The father replied; "Good luck, bad luck, too soon to tell."
The father and son continued to work the farm. Then one day their horse comes running back over the hill with 6 other horses. The son exclaimed, "What great luck, now we have all the horses we'll ever need!"
To which the farmer replied; "Good luck, bad luck, too soon to tell."
The next day as the farmer and son were working with the horses, one particularly difficult horse threw the son off his back and broke his leg. The son cried: "Oh father, I am so sorry, now you have to work the farm all by yourself. What bad luck!"
Once again the father replied: "Good luck, bad luck, too soon to tell."
Several days later the Civil War broke out and all the able bodied young men were sent off to war. The farmer's son, having a broken leg, was forced to stay at home.
After the leg had healed, the father had the only farm around with a son to help and seven horses to boot. They worked the farm and prospered.
Good luck, bad luck. It's too soon to tell.

Two Wolves - A Cherokee Parable

An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life...

"A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.
"It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
"One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.

"The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

"This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather,
"Which wolf will win?"

The old chief simply replied,
"The one you feed."

Relax

Bad Things Are Going to Happen–Ellen Bass

Bad things are going to happen.
Your tomatoes will grow a fungus
and your cat will get run over.
Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream
melting in the car and throw
your blue cashmere sweater in the drier.
Your husband will sleep
with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling
out of her blouse. Or your wife
will remember she’s a lesbian
and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat—
the one you never really liked—will contract a disease
that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth
every four hours. Your parents will die.
No matter how many vitamins you take,
how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys,
your hair and your memory. If your daughter
doesn’t plug her heart
into every live socket she passes,
you’ll come home to find your son has emptied
the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,
and called the used appliance store for a pick up—drug money.
There’s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.
When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine
and climbs half way down. But there’s also a tiger below.
And two mice—one white, one black—scurry out
and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point
she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.
She looks up, down, at the mice.
Then she eats the strawberry.
So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse
in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,
slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.
Oh taste how sweet and tart
the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
crunch between your teeth.

More mindfulness poems at https://cih.ucsd.edu/mindfulness/mindful-poetry

The root word of "anxiety" is "angere," which is Latin for "to choke or constrict." This reflects the feeling of tightness and constriction often associated with anxiety. 

Anxiety is inevitable. We all started our lives with anxiety, passing through the narrow birth canal. Face it. Pause, observe, and respond. Don't stay there worrying. You will be reborn in some form.

The root of joy is gratefulness...It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.

"The antidote to exhaustion may not be rest. It may be wholeheartedness. You are so exhausted because all of the things you are doing are just busyness. A central core of wholeheartedness is totally missing from what you're doing."  
"We are never more than one grateful thought away from peace of heart." ~ David Steindl-Rast

What question should we ask ourselves?

Before asking any question, we should realize the preciousness of our lives and ask what we can do to make the most out of it and align our thoughts, speech, and work with it.

Seneca said, "It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it".

Reflect on the cause of suffering - the ignorance and delusion. Everything is ephemeral and transient. Remember that you will be old, sick, and die, and so will everyone. So do the best action. And the best is already in the freshness of the moment. It gives you the inner peace and inner freedom.

Humans have special ability to use language for something other than what other animals do (food, mating, safety vs danger). Humans use it for storytelling. We have stories about ourselves that we tell ourselves over and over again and believe it to be true. We catastrophize things. This makes us overtly prepared and hypervigilant and this is the cause of anxiety.

Its not just about being aware non-judgementally. Its about being curious and welcoming. Just like you welcome a guest.

We all need to die to something in order to live.

All we need is "a moment" to live and be happy.

But we are all chasing it and running for it, but never arriving. Whenever there is this moment, either we chase it away or we run away from it. The art of arriving home is the art of mindfulness.

The silence is the sacred sound and in that spaciousness all other sounds arive.

Light will guide you home and ignite your bones. ~ Coldplay (Fix you)

Someway, baby, it's part of me, apart from me

And at once, I knew I was not magnificent
High above the highway aisle
Jagged vacance, thick with ice
But I could see for miles, miles, miles. ~Halocene (Bon Iver)

(This brings the sense of coldness, emptiness, fragility, and humility. "Holocene" refers to the geological epoch we’re living in now.  That name hints at the song’s theme: how small we are in the grand scheme of things, and yet how beautiful that smallness can be. It’s about feeling small in the world but still connected to something larger. It’s about realizing your place in the world—not as something grand, but as part of something much bigger. )