Category: Meditations

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Strengthening Anchor

During meditation, something is often calling for our attention, and we are easily distracted or feel restless. To cultivate steadiness and to stay in the present moment, we turn toward our chosen anchor such as the breath with curiosity and a beginner’s mind. This practice is also intended to help us stay anchored whenever triggered by what someone say or do. Inspired by Sarah Kay’s poetry “The Paradox”. Here is an extract.

When I am inside writing,
all I can think about is how I should be outside living.

When I am outside living,
all I can do is notice all there is to write about.

When I read about love, I think I should be out loving.
When I love, I think I need to read more.

I am stumbling in pursuit of grace,
I hunt patience with a vengeance.

I spend most of my time wondering
if I should be somewhere else.

So I have learned to shape the words thank you
with my first breath each morning, my last breath every night.

When the last breath comes, at least I will know I was thankful
for all the places I was so sure I was not supposed to be.

All those places I made it to,
all the loves I held, all the words I wrote.

And even if it is just for one moment,
I will be exactly where I am supposed to be.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Duration: 21 mins

Image credit: Andrea Caramello, Unsplash

To register for our Wednesday Pause, live Zoom sessions, go here

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Going Deeper On Feeling Tone

We further deepen our practice on noticing feeling tone (“vedana” in Pali) and what precedes and accompanies it. Do you notice unpleasant feeling tones arising around certain thoughts like “this meditation is taking forever”, accompanied by the restless need to quit? Or maybe there were beliefs such as “my mind keeps wandering, I suck at meditation.” What experiences accompanied those beliefs eg feelings of defeat? The purpose of this practice is to take a step back and watch for the whole chain of reactions surrounding feeling tones, recognizing that they are natural outcomes of the mind and body, and simply acknowledging them without needing to get caught up.

The practice ends with a reading of Wendell Berry’s poem The Peace of Wild Things.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Duration: 22 mins

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Caleb Woods, Unsplash

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Feeling Tone

Feeling tone or feeling sense is a sense of awareness that we typically interpret as unpleasant, pleasant or neutral. It is what puts us in a foul mood or a good one. The Pali translation in Buddhist text is “vedana”.

It is natural to desire pleasant experiences, to avoid unpleasant ones, and to zone out or feel bored, restless and even empty when there are neutral feelings (the mind constantly need stimulation). It is those underlying desires that cause us to be unhappy or stressed when things are not going according to our wishes.

The antidote is to become conscious of and to tune in to any feeling tones so that we are aware what is causing us to “suffer” in the first place. And then, we let these feelings come and go without needing to get caught up in them. We weaken the grip of reactivity, and find peace.

The practice ends with the poem On Pain by Khalil Gibran:

And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain.

And he said: Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Duration: 22 mins

Image credit: Tucker Good, Unsplash

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Patience

The lack of patience signals the desire to get a “pleasant” state or to run away from whatever the mind deems to be “unpleasant”. In this practice, we look beyond what often captures our immediate attention, which is our feelings, and appreciate pleasant moments that we easily overlook or take for granted such as temperature and sounds to cultivate patience. Inspired by the writings of Rumi, 13th century Persian poet and scholar.

Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing.

It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose.

Looking at the night, and seeing the day.

Lovers are patient, and know that they moon needs time to become full.

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Keeping Quiet, Resting The Body

During this Eid festive season, the invitation is to allow the mind to quieten and the body to rest and recharge. For those who had or will be receiving their vaccination shots for Covid-19, this mini body scan offers a helpful response to ensuing side effects like fever and body aches. Stay safe and healthy.

Inspired by Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda.

Life is what it is about…

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

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Transitioning

Transitions in our external world are also felt inside us, expressed in changing thoughts, emotions and sensations in the body. Sometimes the transitions feel painful, uncertain, worrying or hopeful. We may end up more fixated with the destination and lose the opportunity to learn something new about us in the process of transitioning. To get comfortable with change, we practice getting comfortable with transitions experienced in our inner world. This is done by noticing our experiences moment-by-moment while keeping our awareness on the breath and accepting whatever that is arising with a welcome mat.

Register to join us in future Wednesday Pause mindfulness practices here

For a complete archive of our meditations, visit here

Inspired by the poem I Am A Transition (extract), by Emu Getachew

Transition…I think I am? I am a progression! 

I am the vacancy between the alphabets. 

My feet travel silently.

Back and forth-side to side  with a blazing desire to transit.

Asking who I am? 

I am a transition-I reply, not a completion. 

But a passage, traveling between the alphabets of time  in self-expedition.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Duration: 22 minutes

Image credit: Astrid Shaffner, Unsplash

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Not Living A Half Life

Inspired by Khalil Gibran’s poem, this practice is about showing up for ourselves in the present moment instead of living following other people’s agenda and our to-do list which is often the case. Enjoy!

Not Living Half A Life (extract)

Half a life is a life you didn’t live, 
A word you have not said
A smile you postponed 
A love you have not had
A friendship you did not know
To reach and not arrive
Work and not work
Attend only to be absent
What makes you a stranger to them closest to you
and they strangers to you
The half is a mere moment of inability
but you are able for you are not half a being
You are a whole that exists to live a life 
not half a life.

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Dealing With Distractions

A thought easily produces a chain of ideas, intentions, stories, and next thing we know, time has passed. Life has passed. Sometimes we unwittingly shoot another arrow, for example, chiding ourselves for having certain thoughts.

Another trap is when a negative thought arises, we think “positively” to “neutralize”. That is helpful if the intention is to see a more realistic picture. It is not helpful if we’re adding thoughts that are potentially false and speculative simply to make ourselves feel better or to justify ours or other peoples’ actions. It’s a survival instinct.

An alternative response is to let thoughts be like water flowing in the stream instead of adding more. And if we choose to, mindfully directing our energy to thoughts that really matter and to be kind to ourselves for having thoughts. We look deep down to find what matters and what is true for us.

Inspired by Ryokan’s poem:

Keep your heart clear

And transparent,

And you will

Never be bound.

A single disturbed thought

Creates ten thousand distractions.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Duration: 22 minutes

Image credit: Yan Laurichesse, Unsplash

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Cultivating Presence

Cultivating presence by firstly paying attention with wholehearted, non-judgemental interest to the present moment, to ourselves or to the people we’re with. Part of this experience is to watch and let be our” baggage” often expressed in the need to react to unpleasant feelings. These reactions could range from avoiding, giving up to aggression. Here’s an invitation to let all that go by simply connecting directly with the present moment instead of living in the head, lost in thoughts.

Inspiration came from a poem by Taigu Ryokan, Zen master.

Yes, I’m truly a dunce

Living among trees and plants.

Please don’t question me about illusion and enlightenment

This old fellow just likes to smile to himself.

I wade across streams with bony legs,

And carry a bag about in fine spring weather.

That’s my life,

And the world owes me nothing.

To attend our meditation sessions live on Wednesday Pause, register according to your timezone here

Guide: Noelle Lim

Duration: 23 mins

Image credit: Chunlea Ju, Unsplash

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Sitting With Time

Practicing mindfulness helps us deal with impatience because it seems like it has a relationship with time – needing things now or yesterday. A practice might seem to take forever because our minds constantly need to be stimulated and “satisfied”. It’s this constant shifting attention, always searching, never resting, that keeps us in reactionary mode. So instead of perpetually seeking stimulation and getting lost in our thoughts and stories, the invitation is to engage with the present moment differently, and to be able to just sit with the passage of time.

The inspiration of this practice came from a poetry by Rabindranath Tagore.


The butterfly counts not months but moments,

and has time enough.


Time is a wealth of change,

but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.


Let your life lightly dance on the edges of time

like dew on the tip of a leaf.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Time: 22 minutes

Image credit: akifyevasvetlana, 123rf

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Steady Mind Warm Heart

A meditation session “Steady Mind, Warm Heart”, essentially mindfulness, inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s poem If. Seems appropriate in light of Prince Harry and Meghan Markles’ interview with Oprah.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Duration: 23 mins

Image credit: Barbel Kobus, Unsplash

If (extract), Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you      

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,   

But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,   

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,   

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,      

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,   

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute   

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,      

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

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Appreciation

Take time off to appreciate ourselves, our inner experiences—thoughts, emotions and pain that we might be experiencing—and others even if we don’t feel like it. Inspired by Ram Dass’ writing on Trees.

“When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees.

And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever.

And you look at the tree and you allow it. You appreciate it. You see why it is the way it is.

You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way.

And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.

The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You’re too this, or I’m too this.’

That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees.

Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”

Guide: Noelle Lim

Duration: 23 mins

Image credit: Yerlin Matu, Unsplash

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Just This Breath

A common meditation practice is to focus on the breath. In this session, we contemplate what it really means to do so – breathing, opening to life. Breathe away.

Inspired by David Whyte’s poem Enough.

Enough. These few words are enough.

If not these words, this breath.

If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to life

we have refused

again and again

until now.

Until now.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Duration: 22 mins

Image credit: Josh Couch, Unsplash

To register for our Wednesday Pause session at 12:30-1pm SGT on Zoom, please visit here

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No Expectations

Shaped by evolution, our minds are constantly busy scanning experiences and benchmarking it to some expectation to keep us safe and feeling pleasant. Here is an invitation to drop expectations to free up space in the head in order to truly hear ourselves and access our being.

This practise is inspired by Henri Nouwen, Catholic priest’s writings, “Only An Invitation”.

Duration: 23 mins

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Kim Davies, Unsplash

Only An Invitation, Henri Nouwen

Our world is so full of conditions —

demands, requirements, and obligations

that we often wonder

what is expected of us.

But when we meet a truly free person

there are no expectations,

only an invitationto reach into ourselves

and discover there

our own freedom.

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Only Kindness Ties Your Shoes

This Wednesday’s practise is about inviting kindness into our experiences, and is inspired by Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry “Kindness”.

Duration: 23 minutes

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Andriyko Podilynk, Unsplash

Kindness, Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

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Changing Moments

Kobayashi Issa, Zen poet and scholar wrote:

This world of dew

is a world of dew

and yet, and yet.

What he wrote could be interpreted as the law of nature is as it is. Accepting and adapting to these laws, we could become more comfortable with changes and be less unhappy.

In this practise, we observe nature that is our changing experiences such as thoughts, emotions and body feelings moment-by-moment, and cultivate the capacity to accept what’s here for us like unwanted thoughts without needing to have a different experience.

Guide: Noelle Lim

Duration: 24 minutes

Image credit Sven Mieke, Unsplash

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Emptying The Boat

Is there something that’s sitting on your boat that’s slowing your down? Causing you to crave or to resist? Causing unhappiness? Here’s a practice on letting go.

Duration: 25 minutes

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Natalya Erofeeva, 123rf

This is a recording of our Wednesday Pause sessions, 12:30-1pm SGT (4:30am GMT). Register here

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Stillness

Finding stillness in calm. Being still puts us in a state of not always needing to react and fix, and to simply let go.

Duration: 23 minutes

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Kote Puerto, Unsplash

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Facing Uncertainty

Whether you’re an entrepreneur or worried about your livelihood during this pandemic, how can we cultivate our capacity to face uncertainty, to face the unknown future? One way is to meditate and be kind to ourselves

Duration: 24 mins

Guide: Noelle Lim

Image credit: Mikhail Vasilyev, Unsplash

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Cultivating Attention

Start the new year with the resolution to keep our resolutions haha. Here’s to cultivating attention and being intentional in directing our mental energy. With a focused mind and warm heart, let’s conquer the world!