Sunday Quote: Getting out in Nature

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Perhaps the truth depends upon a walk around the lake.

Wallace Stevens

 

Living life more fiercely

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Yeats’ quote could almost be written about meditation.

I love the way he says we can life a “fiercer” life by touching into calm, or seeing what is truly important, by simplifying things down to the essential.

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.

W B Yeats

Reasons to be cheerful

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In this mild weather the first snowdrops are beginning to appear in the garden. I love the old legend about this flower. Adam and Eve were banished from the warmth and security of the Garden of Eden. They longed for the original sense of belonging and attunement which they once had. And then,  to make matters worse,  it became cold and started to snow. Eve began to cry, believing that she would never see  warmth and love again. Seeing this,  an angel felt sorry for her,   caught a snowflake in his hand, breathed on it, and when it hit the ground it turned into these delicate flowers. This beauty gave  her comfort and hope in the winter of her difficulties. Like Eve,  we all search for that original safety which we know deep down. We all need little signs to keep us going. We can look for them today.

Cheerfulness comes naturally with meditation. It is a quality of space created within the mind. When there’s space in the mind, the mind relaxes, and we feel a simple sense of delight. We experience the possibility of living a life in which we are not continuously aggravated by emotions, discursiveness, and concepts about the nature of things…. Despite all the ups and downs of our life, we are fundamentally awake individuals who have a natural ability to become compassionate and wise. Our nature is to be cheerful. This cheerfulness is deeper than temporary conditions. The day does not have to be sunny for us to be cheerful.

When we practice meditation, we are encouraging this natural state of cheerfulness. We don’t have to regard meditating as a somber activity; we can think of it as sitting there and being cheerful. We are using a technique to build clarity, strength, and flexibility of mind. In training our mind in pliability and power, we’re learning to relax, to loosen up, so that we can change our attitude on a dime. Strength of mind and pliancy are the causes and result of cheerfulness.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Seeing what really matters

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From time to time we get glimpses of what really matters in this life.  Maybe  when we spend some time in silence,  or in being with others, or by the beauty of nature such as seeing the swans in a walk along the Lake today as echoed in this poem. If we allow those experiences inside us  they let us see what makes life worth living, what brings us joy.  We connect deeply and are filled with a sense of gratitude which stays with us forever. And even when they fly away and are out of sight, the wonder which they awoke stays in the heart.

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air – An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

Mary Oliver, The Swan

Working with things we wish were different

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When meditating I use an App on my phone as a timer. When the timer elapses it rings a bell and a phrase appears on the screen. So for the last two years I have been greeted at the end of my practice by the words Anyone who understands impermanence ceases to be contentious.  By this time I know the words of this ancient phrase very well.  However, I realize there is a big difference between knowing the words and knowing this in reality. Sure, I know that things change, the seasons come and go, and mental states change frequently. But I still have a strong investment in things staying as they are. And so I struggle. And whenever we struggle with how life actually is we suffer to some extent.  So it seems to me that we really need to experience change in a very real and personal way in order to learn what it means to accept it as a fundamental principle of life. And sometimes  this is forced upon us when we lose something or someone dear to us, when we have to deal with  illness or when we are with someone who is close to death.

Sooner or later we all have to work with things in our life that we wish were different.  And distinguishing when to fight for something and when to let go is not always easy.  However, ther are times when we have to accept the message from others or from life that there is nothing we can do. When this is the case  we allow ourselves feel the sadness which these situations provoke because that is only natural and the pain is often substantial.   And then we try to do what  the wisdom traditions teach :  the best response to things that are beyond our control is to work at not struggling with them.  It is not an easy lesson to learn, and I find that this learning it is always ongoing. But it is the big challenge in this life, to become a knower of change and to let it teach us.

On how to turn the mind into a friend

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Learning to be present for the moment is the beginning. By sitting still and training the mind to be with the breath, we begin to relax our discursiveness. We see how the mind creates our solid sense of self and begin to discover the mind’s natural state of being. With this experience we can being to cultivate our garden. The flowers of love compassion and wisdom gradually take over, and the weeds of anger,  jealousy and self-involvement have less and less room to grow. In peaceful abiding we become familiar with the ground of basic goodness. This is how we turn the mind into an ally.

Sakyong Mipham,  Turning the Mind into an Ally