A spiritual community lost its entire supply of coffee beans when the cellar flooded. A few weeks later, they invited a visiting Monk to give a Dharma Talk. The residents gathered around, and the Monk told a joke. It was funny, and everyone laughed. Then he told the same joke again, and only a couple of people laughed nervously. On the third telling, no one laughed.
The Guru addressed the gathering, “You do not laugh at the same joke over and over, so why do you continue crying about the same problem?
Much like the resonating chamber of a guitar, the human mind is capable of dampening or amplifying signals. Without realizing it, we often amplify negative and suppress positive experiences. This tendency, however, can be reversed.
A monk living at an ashram in the Australian Outback had a bad toothache. Everyone urged him to make the 5-hour drive to see a dentist. One day he walked out to the garage, picked up a pair of pliers, pulled his tooth, and then returned to his work in the garden. A student asked if pulling his tooth had hurt. “Of course it hurt,” he answered, “but I did not spend a lot of time anticipating the pain, and now that it is over, I do not dwell on the memory of the pain.”
We can use the opposite approach to amplify positive experiences. I teach a variety of different eating meditations. One of them I call Temporal Resonance. Imagine you were about to eat a tangerine. First, pause and anticipate the experience with all of your senses. Imagine the weight, texture, shape, size, color, and smell of the tangerine. Then enjoy being fully present, in the moment, as you eat the tangerine. Finally, take time to remember the anticipation and the experience of eating the tangerine. In this manner, we can prolong and amplify the pleasure of the experience. You can find more meditations on my website.
September 16, 2020
