I join my hands in thanks
for the many wonders of life;
for having twenty-four brand-new hours before me.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Call Me by My True Names
Tag: Acceptance
Seeing the world directly
Facing the bluntness of reality is the highest form of sanity and enlightened 
vision….Devotion proceeds through various stages of unmasking until we reach the point of seeing the world directly and simply without imposing our fabrications….There may be a sense of being lost or exposed a sense of vulnerability. That is simply a sign that ego is losing its grip on its territory; it is not a threat.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Trusting in goodness
In order to communicate very openly with the world, you need to develop fundamental trust. This kind of trust is not trusting“in”something, but simply trusting. It is very much like your breath. You do not consciously hold on to your breath, or trust in your breath, yet breathing is your very nature. In the same way, to be trusting is your very nature. To be trusting means you are fundamentally free from doubt about your goodness and about the goodness of others.
Dr. Jeremy Hayward
Poppies
The other day I drove past a beautiful field of poppies. At least it seemed so, but when I stopped to look at it, 
it became clear that it was actually a field of wheat, with poppies growing up through it. It reminded me of the parable of the weeds among the wheat, in the gospel of St Matthew. In the story the servants notice that someone has planted weeds in among the wheat, weeds that are almost impossible to distinguish from the real crop. The Master’s instruction is to leave them grow together, until the harvest, when they will be easily divided.
Normally this parable is interpreted in a way that refers to the judgment at the end of time. However, it can also be a wisdom that applies to our life now. There are many areas of our life which we would like to change, which we feel do not contribute to our overall growth. We can be unhappy with aspects of our body, of our job or our relationship – whichever “weed” we think is ruining our field. Our attention is often drawn to that aspect of our life, and it becomes the focus of our happiness or unhappines.
And we often notice that out desire or our instinct is to fix ourselves, rip up these “weeds”, remove them immediately from our lives. We find ourselves believing that things would be better if this or that was changed. We notice that it is not easy to accept ourselves, that we almost always want to change ourselves.
However, the parable points us in another direction, and gives two insights. The first says let the weeds and the wheat grow together. This goes against our normal instinct which is to turn away from the things that disturb or scare us, and says let us start by tolerating or accepting them. The second draws our attention to the fact that we are always imposing conditions: it must be this way or that way, or we can’t be happy. These conditions can lead us to look elsewhere for happiness, and not realize that the all we need is already in our lives right now. Even with the weeds.
When we start meditation, we often think that somehow we are going to improve, which is a subtle aggression against who we really are: its a bit like saying “If I jog, I’ll be a much better person”, “If I had a nicer house, I’d be a better person”. “If I could meditate and calm down, I’d be a better person”. Or we find fault with others. We might say “If it weren’t for my husband, I’d have a perfect marriage”…. But loving kindness towards ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything…Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already.
Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertaintly
Not everything goes to plan 2: Don’t get alarmed
We have two kinds of fears. One is a fear that whatever is going on is going to go on forever. It’s just not true – nothing goes on forever. The other is the fear that, even if it doesn’t go on forever, the pain of whatever is happening will be so terrible we won’t be able to stand it. There is a gut level of truth about this fear. It would be ridiculous to pretend that in our lives, in these physical bodies, which can hurt very much, and in relationships that can hurt very much, there aren’t some very, very painful times. Even so, I think we underestimate ourselves. Terrible as times may be, I believe we can stand them.
Because we become frightened as soon as a difficult mind state blows into the mind, we start to fight with it. We try to change it, or we try to get rid of it. The frenzy of the struggle makes the mind state even more unpleasant.
The familiar image is a children’s cartoon character, like Daffy Duck, walking along freely and suddenly stepping into toffee. In a hasty, awkward attempt to extricate himself, he might fall forward and backward and eventually be totally stuck in the toffee. The best solution would be the nonalarmed recognition, ‘This is toffee. I didn’t see it as I stepped into it, but I felt it after I got stuck. It’s just toffee. The whole world is not made out of toffee. What would be a wise thing for me to do now?’
Sylvia Boorstein, It’s Easier Than You Think
Spring: Undoing and letting go
All though our lives, we experience loss, in little and big ways. Some we acknowledge explicitly and grieve for. Others we may not have had the time or space to grieve for and they can come up later on in life, and attach themselves onto some other loss. There can also be the gradual loss of our hopes and dreams, or the plans we have invested in our work, or the direction of our lives.
Robert Neimeyer, who has written extensively in this area, says that when we go through a significant loss we have an undoing of our individual and collective life histories. It affects our world, and changes our sense of self. If it is a significant loss, such as the death of one who meant much to us, or the loss of a partner or even a move from work or familiar suroundings, we can feel uprooted and homesick. He says that what is needed at such times is having people to turn to who care for us, as we “tell and retell our story”. We need someone who can listen.
Why is this? Because as humans we like to give our lives meaning by underpinning them with a coherent and consistent story. Thus when we experience these losses we need to reorganize our sense of sense and our sense of meaning in life. We reach a limit where we are invited to tell our story again, but in a new way. The losses of life can make us hard and fearful of life or can make us more open, more caring for others.
The Tibetan Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa talks about a soft spot, a raw spot, a wounded spot on the body or in the heart. A spot that is painful and sore. A spot that may emerge in the face of a loss. We hate such spots so we try to prevent them. And if we can’t prevent them we try to cover them up, so we won’t absentmindedly rub them or pour hot or cold water on them. A sore spot is no fun. Yet it is valuable. Trungpa Rinpoche calls the sore spot embryonic compassion, potential compassion. Our loss, our wound, is precious to us because it can wake us up to love, and to loving action.
Norman Fischer, Love, Loss and Anxious Times
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