When we come to meditation, we might be carrying a lot of things with us. There are lots of things swirling around in our mind: A concern we are worrying about, what someone said to us, an upcoming vacation, the list goes on and on.
Mindfulness meditation is an opportunity to “put it all down.” That’s something Zen Master Seung Sahn used to always say to his students. When we put down all our thinking, opinions, and fantasies, we can see our life clearly.
If we slow down and take a look, we notice that, at any given moment, we are carrying a lot of things with us. Some things we carry all day long. Some things we might have been carrying for weeks, months, or years.
When was the last time we put those things down? Just completely put it all down?
What’s it like to hold on to and carry so many things all the time? No wonder we feel tense, heavy, tired, anxious, and irritable!
So what would it be like to put it all down? Even just for a moment? In mindfulness meditation, we practice putting those things down, letting them go.
As we practice putting things down, we might find ourselves picking them right back up. But that’s OK. We just put them down again. We might find that we put down one thing and pick up something else. We just try to put that down, too.
As we do this practice, we might find ourselves checking how we are doing with it. Am I getting relaxed? Why is my mind so busy today? I feel so tense, why is the meditation not working today?
We can put all of that down, too.
And we keep trying and making this effort, moment to moment to moment.
Mindfulness FAQ 