Something else I thought of about the benefit of difficult meditations is that by keeping on sitting through them and bringing the mind back to attention of awareness or attention of the breath, you are building an incredibly valuable skill. What you are doing is telling your mind that whatever you are experiencing mindfulness is most important. And back into life the benefits of training your mind give you strength.

This lead me to thinking about what are the qualities other than mindfulness needed to bring the mind to stillness; antidotes if you like. Forgiveness and acceptance are the obvious ones, both of oneself and others. Selflessness because of the snare of desire and the delusion of trying to maintain an identity. And paradoxically faith in oneself, that you’ll get through things. Commitment because we have responsibilities in the world and we can trust ourselves to meet those to the best of our ability, so stop worrying. Mindfulness of connectedness because that’s what makes us whole.

What do you think?