Tag: Awareness

Our true nature

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The winter solstice, in the northern hemisphere: the shortest, darkest day of the year

In dark times  when we feel even more burdened and insecure, we should be contemplating our true nature more than ever. It can cheer us up on any day. 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. We are free of having to depend on something else to make us happy. We can bask freely in the natural radiance of our mind.  This is the equanimity of true cheerfulness — nothing more, nothing less.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, A Simple Sense of Delight

Dark and bright

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We are the driven ones.
But the pressing on of time,
Takes us as small things
Into the everlasting.

All this rushing
Will soon be over;
For it is in lingering
That we receive insight.

All is in repose:
the darkness and the brightness,
the flower and the book.

Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus First Part, 22

Bareness of being

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So often we run from feeling and yet it is only through feeling that we can know the depth of life. Only through feeling can we hold the smallest shell or bone and feel the tug of the Universe. Such raw being aches, for, as the Buddhists say, the bareness of being here is so full. …With no way to that bareness but through feeling and the listening that feeling opens….. Through this bareness of being, we refresh our openness and enliven our innate connection to the one living sense. Through our unblocked, sincere response to life, we can tune our inner person with the great mysteries.

Mark Nepo

Lacking

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Craving leads to suffering whenever we fail to see that what we crave won’t really provide us with the kind of lasting satisfaction or happiness that we are seeking. The nature of craving is not to be satisfied. It is about lack. When we get stuck in this place of lacking something that we believe will bring us happiness, then we can really suffer.

Walt Opie

Patience

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Qualities to keep the heart open: Be as patient as the moss and as vulnerable as the oaks. 

Isn’t it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience? Isn’t it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Mary Oliver, Landscape (extract)

When things don’t turn out as planned

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Patience and waiting are some of the themes of this season of Advent

So there has been a blockage in terms of what we expect. It happens quite often: the bus or train is late; the visitor doesn’t show up; the machine breaks down – and so on. And when that happens, your mind can do one of a number of things. Firstly, you can get annoyed and blame someone (or blame yourself). Secondly, you can feel depressed and cheated by life. Thirdly, you can wait patiently. And finally, your mind can pause, open and appreciate the space where the will relaxes and it feels good to be conscious with nothing to do and nowhere to go. 

The significant point is that when you can’t get what you want, your underlying tendencies to get exasperated or feel let down come up – and they then interpret the situation as ‘lazy disorganized people’ or ‘no one considers my feelings’. Actually there are generally a number of causes as to why things don’t go my way — the Buddha just called it ‘dukkha’ – but the immediate reaction and interpretation are an indication of tendencies in one’s own mind. 

We don’t have to guess at why things aren’t going according to plan; and jumping to a conclusion is always a move into the shadows of one’s own mind.  So, pause. A pause is not a disapproval or a judgement; it’s an opening of attention.  Pausing is an essential, deep and accessible practice.

Ajahn Sucitto, Learning the Pause