David Michie began writing fictional books about Buddhism after pondering the life of a cat the Dalai Lama once had. “When you write stories, you engage people on a completely different level than when you write nonfiction.”
“I’m a great believer in keeping things as simple as possible,” David Michie says. “When we decide to meditate, the first thing we notice is that our minds are completely out of control.” David says we all have ‘mental fleas’, similar to the fleas that felines may suffer from. Agitation can be subtle or gross. On the other end of the scale is dullness. These are both barriers to mediation.
“There are many ways that cats can illuminate what happens when we try to meditate,” he says. One of the most important things to cultivate for mediation is a sense of curiosity. This will help us to avoid agitation or dullness.
“Another important characteristic is that of balance,” he says. Cats, of course, have a wonderful sense of balance. David says that your mind must be neither too ‘loose’ nor too ‘tight’, but perfectly balanced.
We must also remember not to take ourselves too seriously, rather like a large leopard squashing itself into a cardboard box. Being judgmental while we meditate is not very useful. When our critical faculty is turned on all the time, we can’t achieve the focus we need to meditate. However, with practice, over time, our concentration improves.
“I’ve noticed a big change in the way people walk their dogs over the last ten years,” David says. These days, animals are seen as a distraction from our phone conversations,” he says, which is unfortunate, because animals can teach us a lot about mindfulness. “Cats have a wonderful way to show us how to enjoy the catnip in life,” David says.
“When we can spend some time observing our minds for ourselves we discover some amazing things,” David says. The true nature of our mind is that it is very clear, luminous and boundless. “Mind is also a feeling,” he says. “The feeling is of deep peace and deep tranquillity.”
For one minute, David gets the audience to listen to the sound of a cat purring – a sound clinically proven to make you more relaxed, lower your blood pressure and reduce your risk of heart attack by 40% – how purrfect.
David Michie is an internationally best-selling author, meditation teacher, Mindful Safari guide and co-founder of Organisational Mindfulness (OM)
The post The power of meow with David Michie appeared first on Happy + Well.