Year: 2013

Clouds

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Good practice is about fear. Fear takes the form of constantly thinking, speculating, analyzing, fantasizing. With all that activity we create a cloud to keep ourselves safe in make-believe practice. True practice is not safe; it’s anything but safe. But we don’t like that, so we obsess with our feverish efforts to achieve our version of the personal dream. Such obsessive practice is itself just another cloud between ourselves and reality. The only thing that matters is seeing with an impersonal spotlight: seeing things as they really are. 

Charlotte Joko Beck

Right here, right now

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Through recognizing the distinction between appearance and illusion, you give yourself permission to acknowledge that some of your perceptions may be wrong or biased, that your ideas of how things are may have solidified to the degree that you cannot see any other point of view but your own. When I began to recognize the emptiness and clarity of my own mind, my life became richer in ways I never could have imagined. Once I shed my ideas about how things should be, I became free to respond to my experience exactly as it was and exactly as I was, right there, right then.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, The Joy of Living

Going deeper on this journey

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SM: Pilgrim on the Camino

Every step we take, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh

In this part of the world there are not so many English Speaking Retreats available, besides the excellent ones offered all year round at Gaia House in the UK. Therefore, deepening practice through an extended period of silence can be difficult to organize without the extra expense of long travel.  For this reason I am delighted to be able to post that James Baraz, the author of the well-known book and programme Awakening Joy, will be leading a Mindfulness Retreat,   from June 27 – July 5, in the lovely retreat center at Götzis, Austria, just across the border from Switzerland. The title of the retreat is Being Present for Your Life and the emphasis is on quieting the mind, opening the heart, and developing loving-kindness, clarity and depth of practice.  Because the format includes periods of silent sitting and walking meditation along with discussion and mindful movement, this is a great place to start one’s retreat experience, with an excellent teacher. It would be very suitable for all who have completed the MBSR programme and who wish to deepen their practice. More details can be found by clicking on the link : http://www.arbor-seminare.de/being-present-your-life

Here in France,  the 4th International Forum on Buddhism and Medicine will be held at the end of May in Lerab Linn near Montpellier, with a range of international speakers coming.  Again, details can be found by clicking the link  http://2013.buddhismandmedicine.org/en/

Finally, since this is a practical post, the blog had its 200,000 visitor last week, one year after we reached our first 100,000, which took over two and a half years.   I want to thank everyone of you  who stops by for your readership and comments, and all who follow the Blog for your support, practice and presence on this journey.

Listening

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Essential for working with what is unknown is an attitude of unknowing.

This leaves room for the phenomenon itself to speak.

It alone may keep us from delusions

James Hilmann, The Dream and the Underworld

photo: Solveig Askjem

Simple presence

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Moments of natural meditation are happening to us all the time. We pause at a stop sign while driving or taking a walk, just for a moment, preoccupations of that important meeting tomorrow or memories of yesterday’s flood of emails fall away. We are simply there, noticing other walkers and drivers, cars and sunlight, clouds and trees.  A dog barks, and in the distance we hear a siren. For a  fleeting moment we have a more intense experience of simple presence.

Gaylon Ferguson, Natural Wakefulness

Open to being surprised

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Our capacity for surprise is often an unused blessing. With every appearance, it prods us to ask, “Beneath our problem-solving, what is life asking of us”? “Beneath our ideas of happiness or suffering, what does it really mean to live”? So often we try to change things, only to find that our honest engagement with experience often changes us. In trying to make life fit our needs, our sense of need is often softened or broken,  until we fit life.

Mark Nepo, The Gift of Surprise

Photo:  Steve Evans, Monastery Door, Ladakh,