This has been the most difficult blog to write yet because not only am I working through this mindful attitude as a teacher, and a student, but I have been working with this on a personal level for some time. So here are some thoughts on the subject followed by a short breathing exercise you may like to try.
It was only recently during a sitting practice that I realised that I have always been a ‘driven’ person. I had previously considered this a good attribute, after all I have a wall of certificates covered in Distinctions and 1st Class Honours to prove it. However, it suddenly struck me that being driven is not necessarily a healthy thing. That wall of certificates comes at a price and maybe we need to stop every now and then and decide if that price is worth paying.
Don’t misunderstand me, I am not trying to sell the idea that ‘being’ is good and ‘doing’ is bad; surely, we are doing something when we meditate? We are doing something when we organise our evening to get to meditation class, when we drive there, when we arrange an area in the house to ‘do’ sitting meditations.
But there is a difference between healthy doing and ‘driven doing’ and only now can I see where that lies for me. It is a personal thing, we each have to find out where that line is for ourselves. It involves asking difficult questions of ourselves such as, ‘who am I trying to impress or please?’, ‘what am I trying to prove and to whom?’
We habitually follow patterns that have hard-wired themselves into our brains through years of repetition without us even noticing. But when stop and ask, ‘is this thought still serving me? Is this behaviour still useful or helpful?’ the answers can be revealing.
Meditation helps us stop and notice our habits. When we take time to be with our current experiences and really notice them for what they are, we are sometimes surprised that we are still following an idea we formulated in primary school. Maybe we are not that seven-year-old anymore and a different idea would be more useful now.
Jon Kabat-Zinn (Full Catastrophe Living, 2013) brought the idea of the 7 mindful attitudes, or behaviours, into secular mindfulness practice as a way of presenting a working model of mindful awareness of our thoughts and behaviours, and it is a very useful tool. As he explains, non-striving is about not trying to get somewhere else but just to be where we are, ‘to be with the unfolding of life from moment to moment.’
Bhante Gunaratana (Mindfulness in Plain English, 2011) explains that mindfulness gives us time, and time gives us choices. When we take a mindful moment, when we remember to breathe, when we sit with our thoughts and experiences in mindful awareness with honesty and without judgement, we begin to see how being driven has taken us to places we may not have chosen to go.
We would hesitate to allow our car to drive without having any control over where we are going and yet we allow our habitual thinking and acting to do this all the time.
When we stop and notice the behaviour, we can take control back. We have a choice whether to ‘do’ whatever it is we are thinking of doing, and we know why we are making that choice. It is not habitual, it is not driven, it is a choice we have freely made based on a realistic appraisal of the situation we are in.
So how do we balance non-striving with achieving our aims? Surely, we have the aim of reducing stress, or improving sleep, or maybe reducing our experience of pain. When we sit down to meditate, we have some aim in mind, even if it is just to complete the meditation. Maybe we have bigger aims such as running a business or completing a Masters (two of my own) which require effort and endeavour.
Sharon Salzberg talks about ‘perpetual postponement’ – the way we put off being happy until we get this, or achieve that, and I interpret this to mean that it is ok to want to achieve as long we are content in the present. After all, what happens in the next moment depends very much on how we live this moment.
My own method is to learn to accept the striving thoughts without judgement and with a large dose of humour. To move towards a goal without grasping and regularly come back to the present moment where we can stop, breathe and see our thoughts clearly. Then, as Bhante says, we have time. And time gives us choices.
An exercise you may like to try:
This breath, this moment
You may like to try and find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for a few minutes, say three to five minutes, to practice this initially.
On an in-breath just think the words, ‘this breath’, and on an out-breath, ‘this moment’.
Remember that this breath is the only one that counts, the previous breath has gone and without this breath there will be no future breaths. So see if you can welcome this breath into your body.
Similarly, this moment is the only moment that counts. What happens in future moments relies on what you do with this moment. So allow yourself to truly experience this moment as it unfolds with the breath.
This exercise can also be used throughout the day as an informal practice, just stop and breath every now and again. You may like to set a timer on your phone (Insight Timer has some lovely meditation bells you can use) so that three times a day you remember to notice this breath, this moment. Or you may want to use it as you need, when you feel yourself being driven by some uncontrollable urge, or catastrophising about an imagined future event.
You may be surprised how many times a day you realise that you are racing ahead out of control with very little idea of where you will end up.
So, to end on a personal note, it is simple but not easy! So much behaviour and thinking is ingrained and we may never know why it is there. But I have found that when I notice I am automatically thinking or doing something I feel I ‘have’ to, I stop and notice how I am breathing and how my body feels; then I can tell whether this is useful doing or driven doing. Then I have a choice.
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