دار بيبليون
The ten commandments for developing mindfulness: Mindfulness, Videoconference by Lwiis Saliba on Zoom, July 2024
1-Slow down: everything you do in your daily life, do it more slowly. Meditation and the meditative life is a Clinic of Slowness, said Tich Nhat Hanh (1926-2022).
The age of speed in which we live is one of the greatest distractions. We have the illusion that by doing things faster, we get more done, when it’s exactly the opposite.
2-Speak less: If words are money, Silence is Gold, says an Arab proverb. Keep hours of silence during the day: This is what most Sages command, such as refraining from talking for an hour or two before going to bed, which calms the mind and prepares for a deep, restorative sleep.
There is one tiring and even exhausting factor in our lives to which we rarely pay attention, and that is the telephone. The situation is even worse with the mobile phone, and statistics show that the Westerner spends between three and five hours a day on the phone, which is a bad habit that exhausts the nerves.
Swami Vijayananda’s advice on this subject remains fundamental: Save your energy.
3-Don’t divide your attention: i.e. don’t do two things at once. In Buddhist spiritual psychology it is said that the mind cannot have two thoughts at the same time. And therefore, if you do two things at the same time, you are, in a way, violating the laws of Nature.
I remember that one day, after spending two weeks at the sanctuary of Ma Ananda Mayi in Khankal, India, I went to see my Master Swami Vijayananda to say goodbye and I said to him: ‘Advise me. He answered simply and literally: ‘Don’t divide your attention’, and that was perhaps the last commandment he gave me.
4-Be attentive to your breathing in your daily activity: Tich Nath Hanh advises us: fall in love with your breathing. But why does Hanh advise us to fall in love with our breathing? We automatically pay attention to those we love and to the things and creatures we love. In Christianity, we say that love is attention, and so if we love our breathing, we will automatically pay attention to it.
Hallaj on the other hand sings: By God: no sun rises or sets without your love being associated with each of my breaths.
Thich Nhat Hanh advises us to fall in love with our breath, and Al-Hallaj fell in love with the Haqq (truth, God) through and with his breath, as if this mystical experience were one and the same with different expressions.
5-Relax: Ananda said after the Buddha’s death: ‘The friend (Sariputra) has died, the Master has gone, and all we have left as a Master is attention turned towards the body’.
What’s the point of turning our attention to the body? Any emotion (especially a negative one) is expressed by the body tensing up. So we relax the tense part to erase the negative impact of the emotion and regain our attention.
A wise Buddhist once said: there is only one mantra in Buddhism and that is: Let go.
6-Consider sudden or urgent daily events as a bell calling for renewed attention.
Instead of these events being a distraction, such as the telephone ringing, a knock at the door, etc., make them a bell that alerts you. Make them a bell that alerts you and calls you back to what you were doing.
7-Make each meal of the day an opportunity to regain and refocus your attention.
Never eat while doing something else: watching TV, talking on the phone, etc. And let each of your meals be a festival of attention and refocusing. We often eat without tasting. Gautama Buddha’s first teaching after attaining enlightenment was to teach the children who brought him food during the long period of meditation how to eat a mandarin orange with full awareness. Swami Vijayananda, the intelligent doctor, used to tell us that every meal I eat is like being in the operating theatre of a hospital, and it is well known that surgery requires the surgeon’s full attention, as any distraction on his part could kill the patient!
8-Simplify your life, give up small pleasures to achieve greater satisfaction.
The sage Swami Chidananda always recommended a simple life. He added: The spiritual life can only be lived with the minimum of possible needs.
Stop ranting and complaining about events and what is happening politically, socially, economically and otherwise, and always try to follow current events and new developments with a certain neutrality, and do not make following and listening to the news a distraction that provokes emotion and negativity.
Most people think that all it takes to develop attention and concentration is to take a pill morning and night. I remember a student of mine at university who suffered from constant distraction and an inability to concentrate. She was always coming to me for help, thinking that I could simply prescribe an exercise, food or medication to improve her attention. I tried in vain to explain to her that it’s a question of overall life etiquette, and that she can’t regain her concentration if her daily life is full of distractions of all kinds! When I gave up trying to convince her, I said to her one day: ‘Stop wearing short skirts and your attention will improve! This advice wasn’t just a joke. Modesty is wisdom, says the Lebanese proverb, and if we instinctively and covetously attract the attention of others, it’s only natural that our level of concentration and attention should decrease.
Our meditation teacher, Robert Kfoury, used to tell us: Look at your daily life and reduce distractions so that your attention improves during meditation. We were astonished by this advice, because we expected the practice of meditation to improve our attention and concentration in everyday life, and not the other way round!
9-Generally speaking, to improve attention you can use intention: staying awake and alert, calming the mind and remaining as awareness itself.
10-Remember that mindfulness leads to wisdom, and meditation is the best way to develop it.
You must realise that what attracts your attention sculpts your mind and that consequently adjusting your attention can be the most effective way of shaping your brain and therefore your mind.
Buddhism talks about the five traditional factors that stabilise the mind: applied attention, sustained attention, ecstasy, joy and oneness of mind.
And the American psychologist and psychiatrist William James (1842-1910) said: ‘An education in attention would be the education par excellence’.