A thought is an object to be known
just as the absence of thoughts is an object to be known.
What is the difference?
Sayadaw U Tejaniya
Year: 2013
What we long for
If you want to build a ship,
don’t gather people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work,
but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
photo: Staffan Ström
FInding our own Mango grove
What could be more relaxing than letting go of preferences and worries? What can liberate our hopes and fears other than letting them arise and disassemble themselves naturally in the space of an open mind? Meditation leaves plenty of room for everything: all of our hopes, fears, and anxieties as well as our joys and aspirations. There is no need to control our thoughts, because when we practice we have committed ourselves to letting them be—not judging them as good or bad, spiritual or not spiritual, helpful or harmful. The only thing we need to practice is a quiet place to sit: a room, a park bench, or our own bed. The sutras describe a peaceful mango grove as an ideal place to practice. The Buddha and his disciples practiced meditation in such a place. If you think about it, in the midst of our busy lives, any quiet place to sit can be our modern-day mango grove.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, Take Charge of Your Practice
A gift of clarity
In mindfulness meditation, we work to create the conditions favorable to the arising of mindfulness, relaxing the body and the mind, focusing the attention carefully but gently on a particular aspect of experience, while producing sufficient energy to remain alert without losing a sense of ease and tranquility. Under such conditions, properly sustained, mindfulness will emerge as if by some grace of the natural world, as if it were a gift of clarity from our deepest psyche to the turbid shallows of our mind. When it does, we gradually learn how to hold ourselves so that it lingers, to relocate or re-enact it when it fades, and to consistently water its roots and weed its soil so that it can blossom into a lovely and sustainable habit of heart and mind.
Andrew Olendzki, The Real Practice of Mindfulness
Bare attention to the now
Everything appears – in the present moment, right now. Things happen, right now, not in past or present. So practice should be the practice of “right now.” When we, you know, catch things, how you catch it? You cannot…..you cannot catch past or future. You can catch just the present moment, right now. If you want to catch someone, you should catch him right now, not past or not in future. So if you want to practice, you should practice right now. But because we are always, you know, involved in thinking mind, and because we try to understand teaching, you know, with seeking mind, in term of present or past or now or later, or always….. The wave and water, right now, it is – wave is water, water is wave. But if you think about it, you have the idea of water and idea of wave because you saw it, because you saw the wave and you have idea of water. And you may think: “But that is water. Water is something like this, you know.” But right now when you see waves on the water, wave is water and water is wave, right now, when you don’t think.
From a transcript of Suzuki Roshi talk, 1969, Emptiness is Form
Seeing ourselves as our thoughts
In our ordinary, confused way of seeing, we tend to view our thoughts and mind as one. For example, if we think “I am an angry person,” or “I am a jealous person,” then we are identifying who we are with our angry or jealous thoughts. There is a sense of mixing up the relative with the ultimate. When we confuse our temporary, fleeting thoughts and emotions with mind’s genuine nature, it becomes difficult to see beyond that—to see who we truly are. This kind of misperception is like thinking that the ocean is just the waves. When we look at the ocean but notice only the waves, we may think that is what the ocean is all about. But that is not true; the ocean is not simply waves. In the same way, we usually misunderstand the nature of mind. We are not able to see through the confusion of our thoughts and emotions to recognize the true nature of our mind. However, when we look with penetrating insight, or prajna, then we can see clearly: This confusion, these fleeting stains, are not who I am. They are not what my mind is all about. My true nature of mind is beyond this.
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
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