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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
Benefits of Mindfulness: Mindful Living Can Change Your Life
Mindfulness 101: A Beginner's Guide
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Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.
Today, I'm going to talk about how
everything can become your teacher.
So there's a story from a meditation
teacher, Larry Rosenberg, about
his experience of meditating
in the forests of Thailand.
So after many years,
There's a Zen monk in Korea.
He goes on this journey to Thailand
to study in this particular
tradition, the Thai forest tradition.
And so what he didn't realize is that he
also, on this journey to Thailand, took
a whole bunch of expectations about what
his experience was going to be like there.
So he arrived.
He was assigned his lodging there.
And he was going to be in this
small hut each day with an
attendant bringing him food.
He was just going to be in
isolation, just meditating.
So there he was at this retreat,
this place where he came to cultivate
inner peace in a serene forest.
And it turned out that this
particular forest was overrun by loud,
screeching, scratching, wild chickens.
This was not what he was expecting.
So as he started to meditate, he
started to think to himself, you
know, how am I supposed to be at peace
with all of this noise around me?
My retreat is ruined.
I came all this way just for this.
So he started to feel really distressed
and defeated and disappointed.
But after enduring his own annoyance,
frustration, and dismay day after day,
he finally realized he had a choice.
He cannot control all of those
wild chickens, but he could
control his response to them.
He could choose to keep resisting
the fact that the wild chickens
were there or he could accept them.
Now, as he chose to accept the presence
of these chickens, all the negativity
and annoyance in him melted away and
he found peace in the middle of it all.
As the story shows, our teachers
can appear in our lives at any
time in the most unexpected ways.
And if we're curious, open and
willing, we can receive gave teachings
from the most surprising sources.
Stranger on the street, curious
child, an illness, a loud
neighbor, even from chickens.
To recognize these teachers, all we need
to do is stay receptive to being taught.
When you do that, life itself and
everything that unfolds within it
becomes an opportunity to shape your
ongoing development in awakening.
As Bruce Lee once said, "Life is
your teacher and you can be in
a constant state of learning."
So that's the invitation
for practice today is to let
everything become your teacher.
And as always, thank you for your
practice and your presence here.
And let's settle in
for today's meditation.
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