Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things

by Carol Russell
An essay adapted from a Dhamma talk given August 5, 2025.

Welcome everyone. The title of this talk is the fourth invitation from the book, The Five Invitations, Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully. I’ve been using each invitation as inspiration for a talk. If you’re interested in the subject, do seek out the book – I know some of you have. I have been taking each invitation as an inspiration and making it my own, but there is more in the book, plus many stories from the author’s work in hospice.

The title of this invitation - Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things – I find brings on a kind of settling, a quieting, a peacefulness. 

There are many reasons we are practitioners of insight meditation or another spiritual or mindfulness practice. Some of our reasons may be conscious, some based on unquestioned assumptions. Yet, I would dare to guess that the desire to have the skills to find a place of rest, to have experiences of peace, in the midst of our lives is something most of us share. I know it’s on my list. Raise your hand if it’s on yours.

What is rest? For me, after a busy and active day, it feels so good to come home and rest. Or when I go camping in nature or stay in a cabin on a creek, it is restful to be away from the tasks and projects I have in Prescott. Or when a big task is completed – ‘now I can rest and enjoy myself,’ I think. And I do. It’s rejuvenating to complete things. 

I also find it really useful to consider, what is the assumption behind these thoughts?  Am I imagining that rest is about changing circumstances? Is rest something that’s only available once everything else is complete? If that is the case, moments of rest will be few and far between – a kind of singular event in the midst of life – or maybe out of reach.

What if a place a rest is within, available most any time, and not dependent on getting the right conditions arranged? What if this place of rest is a reliable part of life?

Two weeks ago, Kenn gave a provocative and humorous talk about time. He talked about how in our society, it seems that time has become a commodity, connected to being productive. Making time count.  Time is something we spend, we save, we invest, we maximize.  He pointed out how rushing can become a habit. 

Do you think your life is too busy? All the time? Sometimes? Maybe most of us do. How much of that feeling comes from assumptions we have about time? Kenn did a great job of taking us on that journey – unpacking beliefs about time.

I want to give a full acknowledgement to the situation many find themselves in – living is very expensive and complex and requires a lot of hustle just to get by.  There are many people in the world who don’t have the luxury of slowing down. Still, it may be worth asking: How much of this driven-ness of our culture comes from the connection between productivity and self-worth, as Kenn addressed? How much from a fear of boredom? Are we accomplishing more and living less?

Sometimes being busy seems like a badge of honor. When I was in the working world and raising a family, my friends and I would ask each other, ‘How are you?’, the answer would often be something like, ‘So busy!’ I don’t know what we would have done if someone had said, “Hmmm, not much going on right now. Life is pretty chill.’

Frank Ostaseski, in his book, writes, ‘In truth, many of us fear rest.’ 

I talked last time about vulnerability, opening up and bringing our whole selves to the experience of life, even the parts of ourselves that don’t have it all together. Busyness can be one of the ways we avoid pain, one of the ways we armor our hearts, one of the ways we convince ourselves we have it all together.

Does slowing down help us open to a state of rest?

Years ago, I had a friend who was dating a new guy and he’d ask her if she’d like to come over and ‘watch the grass grow.’ He loved to just sit on the porch. At the time, we thought that was strange. I have a different opinion about that now. Now I think ‘just sitting’ on the porch is a high art.

Angeles Arrien: ‘Nature’s rhythm is medium to slow. Many of us live in the fast lane, out of nature’s rhythm. There are two things we can never do in the fast lane: we can neither deepen our experience nor integrate it.’

Here’s how Frank Ostaseski describes this place of rest: ‘Rest is found when we are present instead of letting our minds wander aimlessly through the hallways of fear, worry, and anxiousness. Rest comes when we become more by doing less, when we don’t allow the urgent to crowd out the important. It is the result of a decluttering of the mind and decoupling from fixed views. Rest is a Sabbath, when we stop and turn to worship the possibilities of the ever-fresh moment.’

So, slowing down is an important ingredient. Equally important is pausing and becoming present. Opening the mind. 

Sounds like mindfulness. If you’re like me when I first started meditating, it seemed like the mind was an unruly place of mental agitation, not because meditation made the mind agitated, but because quieting down showed me how the mind is. I remember once being in a print shop to make copies for one of our retreats. The clerk was very interested in meditation and asked me a lot of questions. She said she would come to a Tuesday evening. The next week when I picked up the print order, she said she decided she couldn’t start meditating until her mind calmed down.

This is one of the things that can be noticed by practicing mindfulness: the nature of the mind, how thoughts, emotions, and moods come and go. We can have an agitated meditation one day and the next day a deeply peaceful experience. Over time it can become clearer how impersonal this is. I’d like to think I can control my meditations, as well as how my life unfolds. I’d like to think I can calm my mind on command, like the woman in the print shop was hoping for. What seems to be closer to the truth is I can nudge things in a skillful direction. I can influence my experience, establish conditions that support mindfulness and restfulness. I can plant seeds of intention that might make a difference later on.

I didn’t make this body or mind. I didn’t choose the circumstances of my birth or my upbringing that have shaped who I am now. As Ostaseski says: ‘While we need to be responsible to the impact these conditions have on our lives, we are not responsible for their appearance.’ Mindfulness practice helps me not take things so personally or get caught up in the ins and outs and ups and downs of my life. This allows me to get curious about the specific ways I have been conditioned throughout my life. 

In Buddhist thought, there are three root causes of stress: often delineated as craving, aversion, and ignorance. I like these phrases that Martin Aylward uses: demand, defense, and distract. These are tremendous forces of conditioning at work in any human life. We frequently talk about them here, in a thousand different ways.

Craving, or demand, is like the hope that something out there will be ultimately satisfying. It is a pull toward what we want. ‘Inherent in demand is the belief that what is here now isn’t good enough.’

Aversion, or defense, is resistance or denial of the current circumstances. It is a pushing away of what we don’t want. It can manifest in blaming or outright avoidance.

Delusion, or distraction, or ignorance, blinds us to the nature of things - ever-changing, unreliable, and impersonal - which encourages the craving and avoiding. This hurts and disappoints, so we may develop strategies of distraction like substances, shopping, eating, social media, even meditation, to avoid feeling the discomfort. 

Those are the three forces of conditioning. Mindfulness helps us to recognize the cycle, so that healing can begin. Mindfulness can become that pause in the middle of the stress. Have you had a moment like that, when you recognize that you are caught up in some kind of craving or resistance or just spacing out? 

Sometimes, in one of those pauses, I like to bring my attention to awareness of my posture, or hearing – just bare sounds, or sensation. Especially if there is strong emotion, can I have the courageous presence to feel the sensations in my chest – tightness, constriction, wrenching – without getting into the story right away? It’s not easy to do that. The impulse and habit to distract myself can be strong, and often I do. 

Yet, if I can stay with it, there is something liberating about the tender recognition that it’s okay. This is how it is right now, and it’s okay. Over time, I start to recognize patterns. Oh, it’s you again, envy, hello. Ah, righteousness, you’re here. Just this right now. Fear, sadness, rage. This is what is counter-intuitive about mindfulness: allow it all. And then, because things change, and maybe also because it’s been recognized, it passes. A place of rest in the middle of things.

Here's a great quote from Ram Dass:
‘After many years of undergoing psychoanalysis, teaching psychology, working as a psychotherapist, taking drugs, being in India, being a yogi, having a guru, and meditating for decades, as far as I can see I haven’t gotten rid of one neurosis. Not one. The only thing that has changed is that they don’t define me anymore. There is less energy invested in my personality, so it is easier to change. My neuroses are not huge monsters anymore. Now they are like little shmoos that I invite over to tea.’

It could be that one finds oneself in a challenging situation, where there doesn’t seem to be any place of rest, and yet if there is some familiarity with the mind, a touchstone may be found to help us settle. Relaxing the body is a good place to start, as we often do in the meditation on Tuesdays.  A simple body scan can invite a relaxation of tense areas of the body. We can release thoughts and the physical tension associated with thinking.

Frank Ostaseski tells a story of a woman in hospice who was breathing with great difficulty as she was dying. She was rough around the edges and straightforwardly honest. She wasn’t interested in sentimental ideas about dying. She was sitting on the edge of her bed scared and struggling. He writes,

I pulled up a chair close to Adele, and our eyes locked.  I asked, ‘Adele, would you like to struggle a bit less?’ 

‘Yes.’ She nodded.

‘I noticed that at the end of your exhale, there is a little pause. Can you put your attention there on that pause for a little while?’ I suggested. Now Adele didn’t care beans about Buddhism and had never meditated in her life. But she was highly motivated in the moment to be free of suffering. So she agreed to try. ‘I’ll breath with you,’ I said.

After a while, Adele was able to place her attention on the small gap between exhale and inhale. As she did, the fear gradually drained from her face. We continued to breathe together for some time.

Eventually, Adele put her head back on the pillow. A short while later, she died quite peacefully. 

I appreciate this story for how it shows what is I think the most important point of this talk, that the circumstances don’t have to change for us to find a place of peace in the midst of it all.  Adele’s breathing was still labored, she was still dying, and yet she found that by bringing her attention to that place of rest, in this case, literally the stillness between the exhale and the inhale, she became less fearful, more at peace.

That is the message of this fourth invitation: we don’t have to alter the conditions of our lives to find the place of rest within. It is available to us at any time.

Savoring the deeper experiences of tranquility, rest, and peace that we experience provide a positive feedback loop. Gil Fronsdal expands on this idea that,
‘…tranquility is fostered by paying attention to tranquility, that peace grows by noticing what is peaceful, and that relaxation expands by appreciating relaxation. Being aware of even the smallest amount of tranquility, peace, or relaxation can foster more of these same states.’

Practicing finding a place of rest in the midst of things not only makes life more enjoyable, it is an important quality of the path to liberation. It prepares the mind for deeper realization.


There are other supports for finding a place of rest in the middle of things: Spending time alone or in nature, acts of generosity and compassion, a practice of gratitude, opening to wisdom, and being around calm people. 

The peace and calm that we embody benefit those around us and the world at large. I like what the Dalai Lama says about peace: ‘Peace does not mean an absence of conflicts; differences will always be there.’  He seems to be saying peace will not be found by trying to eliminate conflict. Peace will be found in the midst of it all.

Jack Kornfield writes about being on retreat, an intentional way of finding a place of rest in the midst of it all:
‘It wasn’t all easy. I was carrying the shared images and concerns of our global suffering, the wars and climate change and injustice……all needed to be respected. I knew I wanted to respond…. but first I had to become centered and quiet and deeply loving. There were also periods of restless thought and grief for personal losses, and spontaneous meditations on death. And in the midst of it, growing stronger, the vast, still refuge of loving awareness itself, the spacious witnessing of the dance of life, ineluctable, ever-changing, precious, empty and full, bringing compassion and courage and tenderness.’

May we all find rest in the middle of things