The Power of Habit

TEACHER: Jeff
THEME: The Power of Habit
MEDITATION: Habits of mind
INTERACTIVE: What habits are you building?

Jeff: “You hear teachers say it again and again, in every tradition: explore for a bit, and then choose one practice and commit. They’re right – sort of. It is absolutely true that if you want to build up a new habit, you have to repeat the same mental action again and again. That’s how to create healthy conditioning – there is no way around it, and for many teachers, that means sticking to one practice. But the higher-level truth here is that as long as you know what qualities of mind you are training, then you can repeat those same habits of mind in any technique or practice. This is practice as the quality of attention (ie, concentrated, equanimous etc), we bring to an object, vs the object itself (ie, sounds, emotions, mantra, breath). These qualities of attention are where we build our continuity: they are out habits of mind. So what habits of mind are we building? This Monday, we explore.”