The Stoop

TRAINING THE
MIND

POINT TWO
The Main Practice
Slogan:4
“Self-liberate even the antidote”

Some people say that they do not have to sit and meditate, because they always “understood.” But that is very tricky. I have been trying very hard to fight such people. I never trust them at all --- unless they actually sit and practice. You cannot split hairs by saying that you might be fishing in a Rocky Mountain spring and still meditating away; you might be driving your Porsche and meditating away; you might be washing dishes (which is a more legitimate in some sense) and meditating away. That might be a genuine way of doing things, but it still feels very suspicious.

--- Chogyam Trungpa

~

      The kind of meditation that is seeking a peaceful place where the mind relaxes as an antidote for stress is a fine way to start. On long highway drives; swimming laps; long-distance running or simply doing the dishes: I get into a groove where I am totally alert but almost in a trance. However good these are, they are only the doorsteps to the creative and liberating mind. It is though I approached that door through a wonderful and serene trellised arbor, but once at the door I hesitated or paused on the stoop a minute or two… turned away and said, “Navel gazing might be a good thing but I just do it just as well my own way.”

    Even if I do sit for a ten or twenty minutes... even an hour.... every morning. I can avoid going further and think that I have achieved something. Actually, it is true that such meditation and/or hypnotism... visualizations and chants, will reduce blood-pressure and a variety of stress related ailments... but I am suggesting, because I have found it true for myself, that this is only the beginning of the adventure that broadened and deepened the channel between myself and the Heart of Compassion.

     When I sit I can go further, with a calm alertness and assurance that sees through my deep deceptions. The fear of what lurks behind that door is the very essence of what I desperately tried to avoid through a dazzling plethora of diversions; from adrenaline addiction to alcoholism. I raced around trying to get away from myself when there was nothing behind that door to fear: nothing at all.

Sit and breathe and then...

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