Oakville Zen Meditation
Mindfulness on the GO: Noticing & accepting our dislikes
This is another good on the go mindfulness exercise: become aware and paying attention to your aversions, what you dislike, the arising of negative feelings toward someone or something. This is the opposite of fighting them and be upset.
These dislike/aversions could be mild feelings, such as irritation, impatience, negative judgment,
don’t like the taste of something or strong feelings such as anger, hatred, fear, jealousy and anguish.
Notice when they start and how they affect first your body - a great sensor - than your mind.
It is important to do it without trying to oppose to them. Just observe and accept them as they are as dictate by the practice of mindfulness.
Aversion that is dislike/refusal/pushing away/fighting is one of the 3 most afflictive mind-states poisons described in the Zen literature. The others 2 are: greed/clinging (opposite of dislike) and delusion or ignoring.
They are called afflictive because they affect us the same way a virus is afflicting us, causing distress and pain not only to ourselves but also to those around us.
Dislike and aversion are the hidden source of frustration, anger, unhappiness, discouragement, chronic fatigue, and even anti social behavior.
It starts from the wrong belief that if we could just manage to get rid of someone or something we will be happier. This is pure delusion because the cause may linger or new sources of aversion will pop-up immediately.
Mindfulness to what we dislike sounds masochistic but it will help you to become more at ease no matter what conditions exist and how they change.
Learning to be simply aware and paying attention of we don’t like without too much emotional reaction, without resistance or fight will greatly help you to accept it. Acceptance becomes the key to find, latter on, a constructive approach to the issue..
One of the Buddha’s famous saying is:
“ Anger will never cease by reacting emotionally, on the contrary, it will grow. It will fade out simply by accepting it first as it is and mindfulness is the instrument to use.
In other words:
Learning to become aware and accepting what we dislike can be done by using our most powerful antidote: the practice of mindfulness-based loving-kindness”.
