Detachment

Many books have been written about the Zen Buddhist practice of meditation or zazen.The idea of 'beginner's mind' is also practiced during savasana or 'corpse pose' in yoga whereby one sits or lies quietly and learns to observe the thoughts without changing them. "If you want to obtain perfect calmness in your zazen, you should not be bothered by the various images you find in your mind. Let them come, and let them go"*

In the yoga sutras this is called vayiragyam  or non-attachment. I used to like to use the image of watching the thoughts as you would watch a pot of boiling water...the bubbles (thoughts) form in the bottom of the pot, rise to the surface, then ripple in ever expanding circles to the sides of the pot. I wonder how one would explain this according to my grandmother's old adage, 'a watched pot never boils...'?

*Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki