Take Home Dharma:

How to Maintain Mindfulness in Daily Life

Meditation:
Sit every day. In a week permit yourself no more than one day when you do not sit. It needs to be the same day each week. Look forward to your sitting time. You are taking your mind on a mini vacation. Build up to 20 min. and do it twice daily.

Mindfulness:
Pick one activity and perform this activity with mindfulness for one week. Add another activity the next week. If you continue with this, at the end of a year, your relationship to your whole life will have changed greatly.

Silence:
Create “pockets” of silences in your life. Turn off the car radio when driving home this evening. Remain in silence with your discomfort (suffering) rather than escaping into world news. Don’t watch one-half hour of local news for the weather, just stick your head out of your door instead. (You’ve also saved a lot of time.)

E-mail:
Sign up to receive the daily Buddhist meditation from Beliefnet.com. This will help you to remember why you are here.

Eating:
Eat one meal mindfully each day or begin with one mindful meal each week if that is all that you can manage. Eat in silence. Enjoy your food. Follow the provided task analysis for eating. At least put your fork down between bites or eat with chopsticks.

Walking:
Just be aware of the contact of your feet on the Earth everywhere you walk.

Happiness for the Mind:
Practice the paramitas of generosity, patience, and restraint at every opportunity. Take a daily inventory at the end of each day to see how you are doing with these. This is the last thing that you need to do before going to bed. It takes about three minutes.

Sleeping:
Mindfully watch your breath until you fall asleep.

Most Important

Do not beat yourself up about meditation or mindfulness. If you find yourself doing that, just stop and practice The Great Mantra: “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

From Ayya Khema we have learned:

AWARENESS–NO CONDEMNATION–CHANGE.

Given to my students
With loving kindness,

Bonnie Beverage