Tag Archives: Mindfulness

The Joy of Surfing

I spent all day today out at the beach surfing. I was recently hooked on it after going up to a friend’s holiday house and going out on one of her foam boards (typically reserved for learners). I had an absolute blast and wasn’t atrocious so I decided to buy a board myself. I went up to her house again with a few friends and the swell was pretty small but very good fun at a beach around the corner from her house, short rides but not intimidating so great to practice on. Later in the afternoon we went to the beach right out the front of her place and the waves looked very small but I was determined to get the most surfing out of my day up there so we went out. I went out on her foam longboard and the waves ended up being perfect, moderately sized and really nice, cruisy rides. I caught several waves for a good 20-30s each, carving around the wave and walking up and down the board.

This day and my time surfing made me realise how present you have to be when you surf, if you are not focussed entirely on what is happening at each moment, you will either: not catch any waves, get smashed, or fall off your board if you do get on one. There are many components to surfing, you have to be able to pick the right spot, where the wave is breaking enough to allow you to get on and surf it. You have to be able to paddle hard enough to get on it, this is crucial and if you are worried about stacking it, or what other people are doing, you won’t get on the wave. When I first got out there today I was like that, nervous I was in the wrong spot and would look back at the wave all the time and my friend said “you’ve just got to look forward, paddle and commit” and thereafter I did and caught many more waves. After paddling to get on the wave you have to pop up and surprisingly this isn’t the hardest part for me, but you need to pop up and be perfectly balanced for where you are on the wave, if you’re up high on it you need to lean forward to move down it and stay on it, if you’re in the middle its a good idea to start turning to go with the break, and if you’re down the bottom you’re probably going to lose speed and get a big push from behind by the crashing wave, so you must lean back in anticipation without falling off. Now, once you’re on the wave you’re constantly re-adjusting your weight so you can stay upright and moving, and finally voila, you’re surfing.

As you can see there are many things going on that you have to rapidly adjust to in real time, therefore, have to be present and mindful, without other things clouding your mind. There is a reason surfers are usually very chill.

The feeling you have when you’re on a nice wave is magical, you’re feeling the wave, feeling it pull and push underneath you whilst you glide over it. I’m just stoked to be learning how to surf and genuinely enjoying every aspect of it, the ocean is a magical place and when the surf is good, it’s hard to have a bad day.

Blame.

Our family eat a lot of fresh fruit, so, as is typical after a big shop at the markets the Esky came in as temporary overflow. I was digging through the Esky to find an avo for guacamole and saw that 4(!) punnets of raspberries which we bought for Christmas Day pavlova had quite significantly put down roots. It wouldnt be unusual for my brother to eat 3-4 punnets of berries in a sitting and I assumed he would have eaten one of the many punnets of blueberries spread around the raspberries since we had bought them. I immediately thought “how could he not notice!” Followed by “how could he not tell anyone! We could have put them in the fridge.” I told Mum and she wasn’t happy, mostly that the raspberries had gone mouldy but was also annoyed at my brother. When he came down later that night we both had a chat to him about how could I realise that they were mouldy and he couldn’t and continued having a small dig at him about it all. He had a good reason not to, he had some blueberries on the top of the esky that afternoon and didn’t look at anything.

After this short encounter I thought, “why did I automatically blame him for this” because it clearly wasn’t his fault, it was the fact we had humid weather and no space in the fridge, as well as just bad luck. Nobodies fault, just bad luck. I think we blame people automatically for mistakes to remove any accountability from ourselves. In this scenario, it may have been a minor percentage my fault for not thinking to make some more space in the fridge, thus the raspberries stayed out in the esky longer than they had to; if it was my brothers fault, then any slither of blame was off my shoulders.

I realised that sometimes these things happen, things that are nobody’s ‘fault’ go wrong, for no reason other than a slight oversight or sheer bad luck. Resorting to blame is a very unproductive but also unfair move to make because it doesn’t change the outcome. At the end of the day, even if someone is to blame from whatever has happened, if my brother saw the raspberries getting mouldy and did nothing, yes its a bit annoying, yes he’s lazy, but it doesn’t change the fact that we can no longer eat the raspberries. Therefore, there is no point getting worked up about because you cannot change the outcome.

Similarly, I find we often get worked up about the smallest thing, continuing with the raspberries, they are just raspberries, we can very easily go 5mins up the road to buy some more. Yes they are just about the most expensive per/g fruit you could buy but it’s a very small expense at the end of the day. Life would be so much more enjoyable if we didn’t get fuss the small stuff. This is what I’m hoping that meditation will help with, and I think the fact that I realised this soon after means I was being more mindful.

P.S. Raspberries is such a weird word and I’ve never seen it written so many times before, what makes them rasp-berries, what does rasp even mean? what a weird thing language is hey, and we don’t even notice this stuff!

Mindfulness, Buddhism and Happiness

“While those enlightened will most likely still encounter unpleasantness and pain, such experiences cause them no misery. A person who does not crave cannot suffer.”

Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens

I’m very late to the party but decided to finally read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, it’s definitely lived up to expectations. Whilst I enjoy the history in the book, I love the way that Harari reflects on what has happened, drawing comparisons to our lives today. There are many aspects of the book I could talk about but one which was surprisingly enthralling was a chapter on religion and specifically “The Law of Nature.” in this section the main topic was buddhism which was something I knew of but did not understand. Here’s my summary of this fascinating section of the book.

People pursure wealth and power, aquire possessions and build houses and palaces, although, nobody is ever content. Everyone is constantly in the pursuit of more; more money, fame, land, nobody is every satisfied. Harari says “Life is a pointless rat race. But how to escape it?” where he begins to introduce buddhist philosophy.

Everybody seems to suffer, but “suffering is not caused by ill fortune, by social injustice, or by divine whims. Rather, suffering is caused by the behaviour patterns of one’s own mind.”

The story goes that Guatama, the person who became known as Buddha had an insight which shows that “no matter what the mind experiences, it usually reacts with craving, and craving always involves dissatisfaction.” These cravings may not seem obvious but I can see how they are ever present in our lives, when we experience something uncomfortable, we crave it to go away, when we experience something pleasant, we crave it to stay, thus, no matter what emotions we feel, we are always in a state of tension, as Harari puts it “the mind is always dissatisfied and restless.” This is the feeling of always having things flying around your head: ideas, worries, random thoughts, the feeling of your mind being clouded.

The route out of this state of unrest is proposed to understand that things simply are as they are, and if you accept that, there is no craving, thus, no suffering. The part which got me hooked was the following lines

“If you experience sadness without craving that the sadness go away, you continue to feel sadness but you do not suffer from it. There can actually be richness in the sadness. If you experience joy without craving that the joy linger and intensify, you continue to feel joy without losing your peace of mind”

This really resonated with me because I do very much feel as though we should all experience the full range of emotions and a lack of any one can be harmful, but there becomes a point where the worry or ‘craving’ for the emotions to come or go can also be harmful. This notion of being able to experiencing your emotions and not wishing for them to stay or go longer than they will is fascinating to me and what I think we should all strive for.

Its clearly not easy to get to this point of observing your emotions and being at peace with them but the buddhist belief is that meditation is the path out of craving. I have been meditating on and off for a while now and have noticed myself not getting swept up in my mind as much as I have in the past; stopping to notice whats actually going on in the world rather than what I’m creating in my mind.

There are many different types of meditation but I have been doing mindfulness meditation which has permeated western society more than any other. All this entails is sitting down and focussing on the breath, or other sensation. I’ve been using Sam Harris’ ‘Waking Up’ app which has been amazing in guiding and teaching me about meditation.

Follow this link for a free month trial of the Waking Up app.