(Week 1) Wherever you go there you are!

During the first class, I became very interested in Jon Kabat-Zinn and his book entitled "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life" and how this is connected to ancient Buddhist practice. 

As I mentioned in my 2nd post, I spent 15 years living and working in Korea where, of course, Buddhism is widely practiced.  My Korean wife, who comes from a is Buddhist family, and I would often take time to visit temples in and around the city of Daejeon.  We marveled at how simple things seem from the Buddhist perspective and how the monks, living at these temples, appeared to be in harmony with themselves and with the world.  As we visited these temples, we noticed a few "foreign" monks who had traveled to Korea to join this tranquil way of living and/or get away from the distractions of the modern world.  I could not help but to think about the reasons that might force one to choose this path in life...

Reading through Jon's description of mindfulness, I cannot help but think how out of tune the majority of people in the Western world are with themselves, both with their bodies and with their spirit.   I think about the rat race we live in, about how people are so preoccupied with the notion of making money, buying a new car, a new house - all the materialistic things that tend dominate Western society. 

As for myself, I, like most of my friends and colleagues, lead a very hectic life, with work, with my family and much of my time is dedicated to making my family comfortable.    Unfortunately, I am not able to set aside much time to look inwards - to reflect on my current situation.  The only real chances I get to be alone are when I go cross country skiing on the weekends and the time I spend in my garage woodworking.  Here lays the main challenge, how does one one reflect if they not able to dedicate time towards this practice?

At the start of Jon Kabat-Zinn's book, he explains what is meant by meditation, "From the Buddhist perspective, our ordinary waking state of consciousness is seen as being severely limited and limiting, resembling in many respects an extended dream rather than wakefulness" (page 3).  This description left me questioning whether or not the majority of people, are just walking around unaware of their own existence.  Jon Kabat-Zinn goes on to explain that "meditation helps us wake up from this sleep of automaticity and unconsciousness, thereby making it possible for us to live our lives with access to the full spectrum of our conscious and unconscious possibilities" (page 3).  Have  the monks at the Buddhist temple in Korea woken up?  Are they more aware of their own existence than other people?

I think without sacrificing some of the creature comforts in life, time will always be one of the determining factors on how far one can take mindfulness and meditation.   Not to get ahead of myself here, but I was amazed how one of the participants in our class, Lisa, described going on retreats, in week 5 of this course, where she would dedicate days if not weeks of time to this endeavour.  

(Week 1) Mindfulness: Getting in Tune With Your Body!

On January 12th, Dr. Lorayne Robertson dedicated most of the first class to getting to know all the participants in her course while reviewing the course outline.  However, at the end of the session, Lorayne did manage to introduce the concepts of "the learning log", "personalized learning reflection" and "mindfulness".  It is the short description of mindfulness which I would like to reflect on in this post, especially about becoming more in tune with your body.

On this particular day, I was excited to attend Week 1 of this course but I was also little distracted because of something that happened to one of my closest friends over the holidays.   My friend Mike, who is in his early 40's, started to complain about headaches and blurred vision a few days before Christmas which led to a complete loss of his sight in both eyes on Christmas morning.  To this day, he remains completely blind despite visits to different doctors/clinics/specialists who are all trying to determine what is causing this abnormality. Of course, my friend's situation continues to preoccupy my thoughts so far in 2016 and Lorayne's description of mindfulness really hit home for me. 

As the old adage goes, "We all take our health for granted" and until something of this gravity happens to you, a family member or friend, people have a natural tendency to not think about it. My friend Mike is employed as a head plumber for a company in Sault Ste Marie and he is responsible for quality of his crew's work.  This was very stressful for him as he was constantly training new apprentices and had to be at the job site both day and night.  The last few times I talked to him before he lost his eyesight, he told me that he hadn't been sleeping or eating well and feeling very exhausted from all the overtime he had been putting in.

For my job, I have similar workload issues as I have to keep irregular hours and I take on a considerable amount of responsibility.  My goal for 2016 is to listen more attentively to my body and start putting more focus on my eating/sleeping habits.  As Lorayne mentioned in her talk, just concentrating on your breathing patterns for 5-10 minutes every morning can be a good start to a healthier living.  

I will be reflecting more about mindfulness in later posts.  As the picture above portrays, you need to strike a balance between work, family, friends, your hobbies while saving time for yourself to concentrate on your own wellbeing.