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When we think of meditation, we normally think of sitting motionless in a quiet place away from the distractions of daily living. This is actually sitting meditation. By limiting sensory input during sitting meditation, we are able to calm our minds and reach the meditative state more easily. But meditation is not just limited to sitting in one place doing nothing. We can meditate by simply doing the ordinary things we do everyday with mindfulness. What we want to achieve in meditation is stillness. Stillness does not necessarily mean physical inactivity or even mental inactivity. In anything we do, be it eating, walking, driving, washing dishes, and so on, we have a capacity for stillness.

While the mind is fully engaged in physical activity, it is less likely to wander away from the present moment. While washing dishes, for instance, we attune our awareness to the moment-to-moment bodily movements and sensations involved in the chore. While the mind is preoccupied with the physical actions and sensations, it is less likely to be thinking, “Oh, this is such mindless drudgery; I have better things to do with my time!” Thoughts and feelings will continue to come and go, but as long as we can manage to hold our attention on the small details involved in getting the dishes cleaned, our minds will be attuned to the present moment. Dishwashing then becomes our object of meditation.
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In mindfulness we embrace stillness. Stillness leads to clarity. If puddle of muddy water is left undisturbed for a period of time, it eventually becomes clear on it own as dirt particles settle to the bottom. Clarity is an addition by subtraction– we value what is not there rather than what is there. Just as clear water is a potential of a muddy puddle, a clear mind is a potential of mental clutter. When we breathe mindfully and observe the arising and passing of our thoughts, without resisting or clinging to them, our mental turbidity will gradually decrease, leaving a clear mind that dwells in stillness.

If we were lost in the woods and came across a small muddy puddle of water, we would be wise to wait patiently until the mud settles before drinking from it. To still the mind also requires patience. In the same way that agitating a puddle of water with a stick makes it muddy, we muddle our minds by getting caught up in our thoughts. Getting involved in thoughts saps our energy and contributes to the restless chatter in our heads. If we can gain some degree of detachment from our mental phenomena, our thoughts and feelings will come and go without taking hold of our minds. The mind then calms on its own.
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Having a desire to succeed in life is great. It drives us to work harder and to make the most of our abilities. At the same time, attachment to success habituates us to equate happiness with career achievements. When we strive for something, we should remind ourselves that what we really want is contentment. We may think of contentment in terms of earning an advanced degree, making a lot of money, driving an expensive car, and winning approval from family and friends. But these are just motivations for striving, not contentment itself. When we reach a new milestone in our career, we may be happy for a while, but our feelings of contentment are quickly replaced by a more powerful desire to reach the next target. Life then becomes a state of constant grasping, always reaching for something onto which we cannot hold.

Sometimes, children blame their parents for putting work before family. They resent their parents for not being a part of their lives as they grow up. The truth is, the parents are never present in their own lives, either. Obviously, parents work very hard to provide for their families. But material support should not be used as an excuse to pursue narrow self-interests. While the parents’ hard work may benefit their children materially, the parents still act out of selfishness when they put their career before the needs of their children. Fortunately, career and family need not be mutually exclusive. It is possible to maintain presence in our own lives and the lives of our loved ones as we strive for success.
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Sometimes, we awaken to panic and despair when we realize how many of our years had managed to slip away virtually unnoticed. We may blame our hectic lifestyles and the demands of work and family. The truth is, if we don’t dwell in every tiny moment that makes up our reality, our whole lives will have passed uneventfully. Every moment in our lives is immensely sacred in its own right. To awaken to the present moment is to experience the sanctity of being alive.

We may consider getting married and giving birth to a child as exceptionally significant moments in our lives. In fact, they are. However, if we reduce our lives to a handful of memorable moments, the countless other moments that make up our existence will have seemed pointless. If birthdays, anniversaries, and other milestones in our lives can have so much meaning for us, then why not the present moment, the moment in which we are truly alive? This is not to say that we should not celebrate our birthdays and anniversaries– just that every moment has an intrinsic value in itself. Attention is what gives meaning and significance to everything. By attending to every moment in our lives with great care and diligence, we render it as special as our wedding or birthday.
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We seldom ponder about being present in our own bodies because we already know that we are. Therein lies the problem. So many aspects of our lives have been put on automatic pilot that we have come to rely on habituated thought patterns to sustain a stable, predictable world. We know that we are in our bodies so that we do not have to be aware of being in them. While daydreaming, planning, speculating, and so on, we effectively have an “out-of-body experience” as our minds are projected away from our bodies into the realm of thought.

In reality the mind and body are inseparable and, to a large extent, indistinguishable from each other. We normally think of the body as the physical, tangible “stuff” of which we are made, and the mind as the nonphysical faculty of consciousness, perception, thought, emotion, and memory. In reality, every thought or emotion arises from an electro-chemical change in the brain or nervous system. That is, every mental event is made possible by a physical event involving bodily components– without the body, there can be no mind. Vice versa, the mind contains the cosmos of information that directs every aspect of the complex biological machinery that is the body– without a mind, there can be no body.
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