Month: December 2011

Where we focus the mind

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Sometimes a lot of our thoughts and feelings can be connected with what we do not have, or by what has been done to us. The mind seems to have a great desire to hold on to things or events,  and this is the same no matter if the experience is positive or negative. We can see this when we find ourselves remembering negative words spoken years ago, or encounter people holding decades-old grudges. If we focus on what we do not have, we frequently  compare our condition to other more “desirable” conditions.  And when we look at our life in terms of what did not work out for us, we can feel a deep sense of lack and go on to cultivate a profound sense of dissatisfaction. However, if we are spending ongoing time noticing what we have lost or do not have, rather than what we actually have, it is clear that, paradoxically, it is not truly lost, but is still present and recurring in a transformed form, to remind us or even haunt us with its presence. Meditation is essentially a practice of de-grasping- of working with a mind that likes to push away or hold onto reality – by patiently sitting with conditions as they actually are. 

Losing too is still ours;
and even forgetting still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation.

When something’s let go of, it circles;
and though we are rarely the center of the circle,
it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous curve.

Rilke, For Hans Carossa

Finding our confidence within

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When we are well with ourselves, then whatever happens, it really doesn’t matter, because we have equilibrium and stability. We don’t feel any lack of confidence.

If not, we’re always on edge, waiting to see how someone reacts to us, what people say to us or think about us. Our confidence hangs on what people tell us about how we are, how we look, how we behave.

When we are really in touch with ourselves, we know ourselves beyond what others may tell us. So these three qualities – a good heart, stability, and spaciousness – these are really what you could call basic human virtues.

Sogyal Rinpoche

Active waiting

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Waiting is not popular. In fact, most people consider waiting a waste of time. Perhaps this is because the culture in which we live is basically saying, “Get going! Do something! Show you are able to make a difference! Don’t just sit there and wait!” For many people, waiting is an awful desert between where they are and where they want to go. And people do not like such a place.  

But there is none of this passivity in Scripture. Those who are waiting are waiting very actively. They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing. That’s the secret. The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun. Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening. A waiting person is a patient person. The word “patience” means the willingness to stay where we are and life the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. That, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.

Henri Nouwen, A Spirituality of Waiting

Sunday quote: Silence

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Don’t look for meaning in the words.

Listen to the silences.

Samuel Beckett

Doing the 24 hours well

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All of us are appointed to the same teacher that religious institutions originally worked with: reality. Reality insight says: “Master the 24 hours, do it well, without self-pity”.  It is as hard to get the children herded into the car and down the road to the bus as it is to chant sutras in the hall on a cold morning. One move is not better than the other; each can be quite boring, and they both have the virtuous quality of repetition. Repetition and ritual and their good results come in many forms: changing the oil filters, wiping noses, going to meetings, picking up around the house, washing clothes, checking the dipstick. Don’t let yourself think that these are distracting you from more serious pursuits. Such a round of chores is not a set of difficulties we hope to escape from so that we may do our practice, which will put us on the path. It is our path.

Gary Snyder, poet, quoted in Gil Fronsdal, Evaluate your Meditation

Seeing how the mind adds on..

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Someone calls you an idiot….Then you start thinking “How can they call me an idiot? They’ve got no right to call me an idiot! How rude to call me an idiot!  I’ll get them back for calling me an idiot”  And you suddenly realise that you have let them call you an idiot another four  times. Every time you remember what they said, you allow them to call you an idiot once again. Therein lies the problem.

If someone calls you an idiot,  and you immediately let go, therein lies the solution.

Why allow other people control your inner happiness?

Ajahn Brahm, Who Ordered this Truckload of Dung?