We have to cultivate contentment with what we have. We really don’t need much. When you know this, the mind settles down. Cultivate generosity. Delight in giving. Learn to live lightly. In this way, we can begin to transform what is negative into what is positive. This is how we start to grow up.
Ani Tenzin Palmo
During meditation we treat all thoughts as if they are of equal value. We try to be aware of them when they come up and then we intentionally return to the breath as the major focus of observation, regardless of the content of the thought! In other words we intentionally practice letting go of each thought that attracts our attention, whether it seems important or insightful or unimportant and trivial. We just observe them as thoughts, as discrete events which appear in the field of our awareness.
Jon Kabat Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living
From a different tradition to this morning’s post, but with a similar point to make. Catholic writer Henri Nouwen encourages the development of patience in order to fully enter into and see what is in front of us. Too often we rush and do not allow the moment, the person, or the event reveal themselves as they are. We dismiss the moment as not interesting, or see it from our own place, not able to leave it “right there, right there” as the Buddha said this morning.
If we cannot be patient, we cannot become patient. We cannot be compassionate. If we ourselves are unable to suffer, we cannot suffer with others, which is the meaning of compassion. Patience is the capacity to see, hear, touch, taste and smell as fully as possible the inner and outer events of our lives. It is to enter our lives with open eyes, ears, and hands, so that we really know what is happening. Patience is an extremely difficult discipline precisely because it counteracts our unreflective impulse to flee or to fight. Patience requires us to go beyond the choice between fleeing or fighting. It is the third and most difficult way. It calls for discipline because it goes against the grain of our impulses.
Henry Nouwen, Compassion
photo schnaggli
You shouldn’t chase after the past, or place expectations on the future.
What is past is left behind. The future is as yet unreached.
Whatever quality is present
you clearly see, right there, right there.
Not taken in; unshaken.
That’s how you develop the heart.
The Buddha, Bhaddekaratta Sutta
Another quote from Irish poet W.B. Yeats today. I was just watching the news reports from the Philippines and seeing the scale of the destruction and death caused by Typhoon Haiyan. This along with some other events recently make me more aware of the fundamental fact which comes into focus when we do our meditation practices, namely that things change, moment by moment, day by day, in ways that we are not able to predict. We try to keep our sense of balance on the present moment. Everything else is uncertain.
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass
W.B. Yeats, Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors
The enlightened mind is a mind that is always contemplating impermanence.
Suzuki Shõsan Rõshi
At almost any point in my day if I stop and check down inside, I will find some version of my silent mantra – this moment should be different! – going on. I dislike how it is right now. It is not so pleasant. I want it to be like it was the other day, last week, last year. Or, I love how it is right now. It’s very pleasant. I want it to stay. How can I make this pleasant feeling stay? How can I keep the flow of experience from snatching it away? Oh don’t let it go. Each of us has our own silent War With Reality. And whatever our particular War With Reality is, the result is always a pervasive sense of the unsatisfactoriness of the moment.
Stephen Cope, The Wisdom of Yoga
