The fixing mind

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We need to question our concepts about how we want things to be and what we want people to become. If we can let go of some of that, we can see more clearly what we can and cannot do. We can learn not to obsess about all the problems we cannot solve, but to sort through them to find the one or two things we can actually do that might be helpful. It is better to do one small helpful thing than punish yourself for the many things beyond your power and ability to change or affect. Some problems can be solved, some cannot, and some are best left unsolved.

Judy Lief, The problem with problems

photo olgierd rudak

Just doing nothing

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What we are talking about is very practical. Mindfulness practice is simple and completely feasible. And because we are working with the mind that experiences life directly, just by sitting and doing nothing, we are doing a tremendous amount.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

It belongs here

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Letting go of form is trusting in the immediacy of awareness.

And awareness is real. It isn’t abstract, it isn’t some kind of concept I have that I don’t recognize immediately. Its more like the space in this room and the forms in space. They are what they are. and I no longer go from one thing to another saying “I like this, I don’t like that” but recognize that whatever is in this space belongs here at this moment. It doesnt matter whether I approve or disapprove of it or whether it is good or bad. It is here, this is the way it is, and this is learning to trust in awareness, which doesn’t pick or choose.

Ajahn Sumedho

 

Keeping one’s day light

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Develop a mind that rests on no thing whatsoever

The Diamond Sutra

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Being at home in our deepest self

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At times in life we can have a sense of just wandering on, feeling a bit lost, when the moments we find ourselves in don’t seem to quite fit with what we were hoping for. At other times we find ourselves at home, when a spacious sense of acceptance becomes the more constant abiding. This can happen whether we are in Ireland or Geneva, at work or on pilgrimage, when the mind gets in contact with its own essential goodness and we switch off the need to be elsewhere. We realize that we are not really going anywhere, but not really staying anywhere either.

Meditation is …. not about getting somewhere else, 

but about allowing yourself to be where you already are.

Jon Kabat Zinn,  Wherever you go, there you are

photo of Ruwanweliseya Stupa, Anuradhapura, by dear friends Patrick and Bow on pilgrimage in Sri Lanka

Giving up the fight

Buddha-Flowers

I’ve discovered there are only two modes of the heart. We can struggle, or we can surrender. Surrender is a frightening word for some people, because it might be interpreted as passivity, or timidity. Surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control. Getting old, getting sick, dying, losing what is dear to us, what the Buddha taught as the first Noble Truth or life’s unsatisfactoriness –  is beyond our control. I can either be frightened of life and mad at life –  or not. I can be disappointed and still not be mad.  Stopping being mad – when I can – translates, for me as being compassionate – to myself as well as to other people.

Sylvia Boorstein, That’s Funny you don’t look Buddhist