Here, Ajahn Sucitto, who gave a talk last evening in Geneva, sums up the whole of practice in an insightful way: Getting to know the mind, and the unskilful habits which lead to suffering:
We are all in this together
— wanting peace and harmony – but disappointing and irritating each other nonetheless.
‘It shouldn’t be this way, there shouldn’t be any suffering.’
But then isn’t understanding and letting go of suffering what it’s all about.
What else are we here for?
Ajahn Sucitto, Parami
At times, I guess we all see life through our fears and our conditioning. In these moments we fail to relate to what is actually here, but filter life through our ideas of where things should be, or how others are out to get us and who is to blame and how we should defend ourselves.
The aim of our practice is to release the mind from suffering and stress. This is best achieved by dropping these judgmental filters and by being willing to be here with whatever is arising, in an open way. The day as it unfolds is always within our reach. We just have to stay connected to it.
The great blessings of humankind are within us and within our reach;
but we shut our eyes,
and, like people in the dark,
we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it.
Seneca, Roman Stoic philosopher, 4 BC – 65 AD
The whole of life lies in the verb seeing
Teilhard de Chardin
A prayer, this time from the Hebrew tradition, encouraging us to embrace each moment and the “ordinary blessings” of this day:
Days pass and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles. Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing. Let there be moments when your presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk. Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed. And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder, “How filled with awe is this place and we did not know it.”
Jewish Sabbath Prayer
One of the most persistent of all delusions
is the conviction that the source of our dissatisfaction
lies outside ourselves
Alan Wallace
The breath is not something that we create or imagine; it is a natural process of our bodies that continues as long as life lasts, whether we concentrate on it or not. So it is an object that is always present; we can turn to it at any time. We don’t have to have any qualifications to watch our breath. We do not even need to be particularly intelligent — all we have to do is to be content with, and aware of, one inhalation and exhalation.
Wisdom does not come from studying great theories and philosophies, but from observing the ordinary.
Ajahn Sumedho, Now is the Knowing
Mindfulbalance 