Slogan #22
If you can practice even when distracted, you are well trained.
What does distracted look like? We are constantly preoccupied, multitasking, and planning. Does this sound familiar? What does being distracted feel like? We may be feeling closed, tight, hard, rigid sensations in the body, a spinning mind, a fear of being alone, or being uneasy with silence. The underlying feeling when distracted is that this moment is not enough. Distracted can also described as an excess of energy and not enough concentration or steadiness of mind to hold it in. Distracted minds result in distracted lives—addicted to thinking, talking, dwelling on past unskillful actions, stimulants, and drama. Boredom, insomnia, and lack of exercise are part of what we distracteds complain about!
One of the first things that we notice with mindfulness practices is that distracted mind states come easy for most of us. :) Therefore, “practice even when distracted” can be interpreted as “practice always;” ie, use everything in our lives to wake up. This slogan, like the previous one, is asking us to lighten up – that a gentle, curious, open, and accepting practice is the best strategy to support wisdom and sustainable happiness over time. The Buddha offered this metaphor for finding the balance between effort and surrender, between stability and ease: “Life is like the harp string, if it is strung too tight it won't play, if it is too loose it hangs, the tension that produces the beautiful sound lies in the middle.” Use your distractions, your thoughts, emotions, memories, and plans, as leverage to begin again. See your attachments, aversions, anxieties, worries, and doubts as opportunities for practice. Compassion is sitting with all the seasons of sitting. It may be enough to simply acknowledge that “distractedness feels like this.”
Meditation is an act of faith to dive into the depths of experience, a doorway to something bigger than ourselves. Distractedness often hides a difficult emotion; for example, let’s consider sadness or grief. Connect to the feeling tone. Own it. Acknowledge it. Let it in. Be curious and compassionate. Pay attention to the physical discomfort in order to bring the mind back to what is happening right now. Open to the feelings beneath the sadness and the interconnection between sadness and other emotions like fear, loneliness, shame, or boredom. Allow sadness to be a vehicle of mindfulness:
"Let yourself cry. Imagine that you are crying with and on behalf of the world. Especially imagine crying for those who have forgotten how to cry. Cry for those who do not know how to cry, who let their unmetabolized pain turn into violence against themselves, you, and others...If you choose to wrestle with truth, you will choose to be messy, confused, and disoriented. This is the experience of truth shaping us into more honest and caring beings who are in relationship with their pain. That relationship will remind you that you are not the only one hurting."
Lama Rod Owens