Meditation And Everyday Life Practice

When we meditate, we try to make our minds bright. It is not so easy! At first we find our habitual scattered thoughts, confusions, distractions and nervous tensions, and gradually we try to let them go; we allow them to calm down, relax, and eventually melt away. We put special effort, attention and energy into this.

We try to return to the present moment, the sense of place, the feeling of being in the body, with no mental interference, and no internal commentary on what is going on. Sometimes we focus hard on a chosen object (a candle, breath in the nostrils, or the rise and fall of the belly), so that no room is left for chaotic thoughts. Sometimes we focus on a word or phrase, like a mantra. The focus keeps the mind occupied with our method and disciplines it. The skill we are learning is: paying attention to the now, with a clear mind, that brightens as it becomes clearer. I shall now address how the attentive skill of mindfulness can bring benefits into our everyday working lives. 

Daily life practice 

After a while we get up from our meditation mats and return to the affairs of everyday life. 

As soon as we put our conscious interest into something other than observing the mind, we automatically allow our well known chaotic anxieties and tensions to come back. We are so familiar with them that their presence seems quite ordinary and natural. Scattered thoughts control us again, while we see no need to escape that control or even to study what the runaway thoughts are doing to us. We are not alert to how much they shape our mental environment. 

In our daily life we take our visual or verbal view of the world for reality itself. We treat it seriously and believe it. The more energy we put into creating it and the more we cling to it, the more difficult it is for us to distance ourselves from it. We can meditate and live this way for years, with no progress. It doesn’t help us with our life, which runs along its old tracks. 

But meditation can develop in another way. Mindfulness, first practised on the mat, can enter fully into our lives and into all our daily activities as well. Life then goes on with less tension and chaos, concentrated on the present experience moment by moment; in touch with what just exists rather than with the fictional world created by our imaginings and thoughts. We still may plan for the future and reach for the past – however, we clearly know that we are in the present. Our attention is embracing not only our everyday tasks, but also the manner in which we perceive them and the manner in which we just exist in the midst of them. It is directed not only to the external world, but also inwardly, to our own consciousness, to our perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and motivations. We try to avoid identifying with them and, instead, keep some distance from them. We perceive the way thoughts and feelings come and go as an ongoing process of apparently random flow rather than as something stable and constant that is me. 

Repeated patterns, old habits 

In everyday life many various events occur around us, and we react to some of them habitually. We have a chance to discover the repeated patterns of our unwholesome responses. We can see more clearly in the larger context what we do and why we do it. Instead of reacting habitually and mechanically to some well-known situations, we discover a space between the stimulus and our reaction to it. If the reaction is unwholesome, we can stop it. 

Revising the reaction doesn’t need to be necessarily a deliberate, goal-oriented activity. We don’t necessarily need to continually talk to ourselves in silent words about what is going on or to undertake any special intention. We don’t need to straighten up our attitudes methodically or to strenuously shape our emotions or responses, according to what we think they should be. It is enough in many cases if our reactions and habits reveal themselves in silence, just as they are. In silence – that means, with no additional comment, no explanation or valuation. All the manoeuvres of the mind are brightened then, due to the focused attention on what is. 

When we perceive them this way, our affairs are slowly going to straighten up by themselves. Sometimes the causes of troublesome states of mind or of harmful behaviour just drop out under the spotlight of scrutiny. The same happens with long-standing emotions that are out of date and now irrelevant. We don’t need to look into their origin or to examine our past. If only we see them clearly, they gradually give way. We don’t need to condemn ourselves and also we don’t need to blame others. We know ourselves directly, become more familiar with ourselves as we are, and in this way can develop self-acceptance. 

With mindful attention we can develop more sensitivity and more compassion towards others. And then, as a result, we are more likely to restrain ourselves from harming them, and to support them when needed. Moral life becomes easier and more natural. Having given up our critical attitudes to others, we are more disposed to accept them, as we accept ourselves. 

Meditation and everyday life practice 

If we sustain such attention all day long and then we come back to the formal meditation, it proves to be smoother and easier. We don’t need to impose ourselves on it. If there are some disturbances (and usually there are) they don’t blow us over. They are not strong enough because they had no opportunity to flourish or to be invigorated during the day. 

Mindful life and meditation support each other, and after a time the split between them fades away. They are not two different ways of dealing with the mind. Rather, there is one flexible way, which can be naturally adjusted to the circumstances. Mature practice of meditation is not different from life itself. Meditation that does not forcefully impose anything on the mind, and by means of sharpened attention allows the chaos and tension just to leave us gradually, expands itself to embrace everyday life as well in quite a natural way. The mind just reflects what there is, without adding anything. We can more and more easily hear the silence of the mind in the midst of everyday noise. 

Meeting people, thinking, making decisions – there are far more stimuli in everyday life. But although there is much more going on, the mindful mind is still just reflecting what there is. And the mind still doesn’t add anything extra to what there is. Its focus is observing, not interpreting and elaborating. We do not need to add a moral ambition either. Mindfulness is not a crusade. It is just alert awareness. That doesn’t mean we should limit our concerns to the absolute minimum. We can write poems, meet friends, joke with them, visit other countries… However, whatever we do, we are aware of what is going on around us - and within us – at each moment. Then all the unnecessary burden of worry drops out by itself. 

Attention adapts itself to the circumstances. In the course of daily affairs it embraces as much as it needs to in any given situation. In everyday life attention is primarily directed to external events, while on the mat it is more directed to the still mind (or indeed not quite still, if that is the case). 

Meditation extended to daily life strengthens our practice, and it serves life. Meditation limited to sitting on the mat constantly starts from the beginning, since the mind goes back to the state it was in before the meditation, as soon as we get up and go about our business. 

How can we help the process? 

A question arises: how can we deal with integrating meditation into life itself ? How can we help the process? 

The attention we learn on the mat expands into other situations by itself, if it is strong enough. And sustaining it in the midst of activities strengthens it. But what if meditation is not strong enough, if it hasn’t reached the critical mass needed to be extended naturally? Which kinds of meditation are helpful for bringing into our daily lives and which ones are not? Which attitudes are helpful for developing everyday attention and which ones block it? 

First: what it is better not to do. If, especially in the case of beginners, our attention is only developed on the mat and not strengthened in daily activities, and we become dissatisfied with the results of the meditation, we tend to put pressure on the mind and try to make it fulfil our expectations better. And we try to force the mind to be quiet. This can only be effective in the short term, if at all. Longer term, it will exhaust us, or even dispose us to give up practice for a while. It may be the case that we can keep our mental discipline on the mat, by force, for better or worse, however with our exhaustion, and our disposition to stop, the mind reasserts its habitual patterns as soon as we stop meditating. Mind’s unwholesome habits and tendencies are reactivated. Later on we go back to the formal meditation on the mat - and the cycle starts all over again. 

We may not find our forced meditation good enough, or effective. We blame ourselves for meditating “badly,” and feel displeased, helpless, frustrated. The negative feelings carry over into daily life. In order to “improve” the quality of life we can try to suppress the problems we have generated in this way. We might try to apply narrow meditation methods such as focusing on the breath to our everyday life, intending to sustain it in the same way as it is done on the meditation mat, forgetting that life is governed by other rules and needs. Such a practice would be useful neither for discovering the patterns of our behaviour nor for transforming them. 

Another strategy would be more useful: even if our meditation is burdened by a large amount of tension, and thoughts are scattered, we can just try to diminish that excess stuff gradually, bit by bit. The first crucial step is to notice it. And acknowledge it. The second step is to see that we ourselves are involved in the confusion somehow. Although we try to relax, we feel our muscles tighten. Although we notice a wandering thought, we prefer following it to leaving it alone! So we must observe our own tendency to like the habits of the chattering mind. Then we can try to stop sustaining them, just letting them go whenever we are conscious of them. They come back repeatedly, and we repeatedly perceive them, and repeatedly let them go. Every letting go weakens them. Meditation is not doing something special; rather, it is ceasing doing habitual things we have been doing constantly. But first they must be recognized. Even if we stop indulging our habits, we find that they return. However if the mental chatter does not meet conducive conditions it weakens, and bothers us less frequently, fading to a flicker like a fire starved of fuel and oxygen. 

As habitual anxieties and obsessions weaken, more space opens up for mindfulness in everyday life. The strength of meditation increases as well. However, now it is a real, stable strength, different from the strength based on a firm intention of controlling something forcefully. Attention starts to embrace various aspects of daily life in a natural way. 

In order to support this process, it is good to think of meditation as a series of efficient, slight steps, that we enjoy. Every letting go of a thought is such a step. In our everyday life we will more willingly find room for a positive mindset in place of the frustration caused by overambitious expectations and by pressing the mind. 

If our practice doesn’t embrace our life in a natural way, by itself, we can try to make it do so by means of a conscious intention. However, we should be cautious. Practice in the midst of daily activities has so many different aspects that trying to remember all of them all the time and to bend our lives to desirable attitudes which are not yet “ours”, can interfere with the flow of our energy. As a result, we can get dispirited. The ideal obscures the reality. 

Actually, we can only practise with what is real, so it can be useful to narrow down, at least at the beginning, our demands on ourselves. For example, we can allocate a certain time of the day to set aside for diligent attention. Sustaining attention all the time is exhausting for a beginner, while keeping consciously mindful for an hour or two is more realistic. Or we can identify what means work particularly well for us, helping us to sustain attention during formal meditation, and we can try to apply just those means in everyday life, in short breaks between our activities. For one person it might be coming back to the present moment. For another person, noticing the feelings in the body. For another, focusing on the sense of his or her own existence. Or it could just be relaxation. It is not necessary to keep constantly in mind the whole list of things to be kept in mindful awareness through a busy day. Those issues will emerge by themselves, according to the circumstances, and our goals will take care of themselves. Anyway, it is still worthwhile to apply skilful means wisely for sustaining attention. 

Later on, when the practice unifies with life more and more, attention still needs to be sustained without being forced. Mindful attention enables us to see things as they are and to adjust our actions to what can reasonably be helpful. Mindfulness enables us to stay in harmony with the current circumstances.