Balanced Existence

About a month ago I set out by myself for a property in a very isolated part of the country. The closest neighbor is at least 5km away and there is nothing but forest and wild animals including packs of dingoes and pigs. Essentially I went into the wild. It was a twelve-hour drive from where I live in Sydney just to get there. I didn’t have any sort of plan of what I was going to do there or even why I was going except that I had been going flat out for the previous 15 or so months and I felt like it was time for some isolation in nature to recharge.

The practice of being mindful of the breath while sitting in meditation strengthens one’s capacity for mindfulness in daily life. It is in daily life, in the context of this discussion, that the ability to be mindful of mental events allows one to deal wisely with desire and aversion as they arise in response to feelings. Goldstein describes each mind-moment that is free of greed, hatred and delusion as having a certain purifying force in the flow of consciousness. Therefore it is important to cultivate such mind-moments not just on the cushion during meditation but also during daily life. Combined with deep insight in the fundamental nature of phenomena arising out of mediation practice the weeds in the mind can be pushed back and eventually removed for good.