“When we swim underneath a wave to avoid getting crashed by it, we catch a glimpse of the unexpected serenity that often lies just below the chaos. Similarly, our minds have something of an ocean floor where our thought formations can settle and rest if we allow the activity of our mind to quiet.”

Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche once said, "When we meditate, we have a flat bottom, and our thoughts do too." What does it mean to let our thoughts settle to a flat bottom, a place where they can rest rather than dart around endlessly in every direction?

In the third step of Dharma Moon's mindfulness meditation instruction — after we've assumed our posture in step one and placed our awareness on our breath in step two — we practice gently returning our attention to our breath whenever we notice that our mind has strayed.

Utilizing the idea of the middle way, we can identify one extreme of this action as pushing a thought away because it's unpleasant to us and the other extreme as indulging a thought because it feels comforting or gratifying to us (imagine a bowl of chocolate fudge ripple ice cream). Somewhere in between, we practice letting our thoughts settle into stillness without categorizing them as positive or negative, pleasant or unpleasant. We observe them all equally as thought formations, then detach with a light touch, rather than engaging them in a way that continues to add energy and push them around in various directions.

Sand kicked up by a powerful current will eventually settle down and find a resting place if the water calms down enough or if we go deep enough. The surface of the ocean is where the strongest activity occurs; when we swim underneath a wave to avoid getting crashed by it, we catch a glimpse of the unexpected serenity that often lies just below the chaos. Similarly, our minds have something of an ocean floor where our thought formations can settle and rest if we allow the activity of our mind to quiet. Flat bottom outside, flat bottom inside!

In your mindfulness practice, do you notice yourself pushing thoughts away or clinging to them in a way that actually creates more activity? What kind of adjustments can you make in those moments to bring about stillness instead?