In our ordinary, confused way of seeing, we tend to view our thoughts and mind as one. For example, if we think “I am an angry person,” or “I am a jealous person,” then we are identifying who we are with our angry or jealous thoughts. There is a sense of mixing up the relative with the ultimate. When we confuse our temporary, fleeting thoughts and emotions with mind’s genuine nature, it becomes difficult to see beyond that—to see who we truly are. This kind of misperception is like thinking that the ocean is just the waves. When we look at the ocean but notice only the waves, we may think that is what the ocean is all about. But that is not true; the ocean is not simply waves. In the same way, we usually misunderstand the nature of mind. We are not able to see through the confusion of our thoughts and emotions to recognize the true nature of our mind. However, when we look with penetrating insight, or prajna, then we can see clearly: This confusion, these fleeting stains, are not who I am. They are not what my mind is all about. My true nature of mind is beyond this.
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
From time to time we come to a stuck place … After a while, the doing, fixing mind gets to the end of what it can accomplish and becomes the problem rather than the solution. Then we get stuck. And that sense of stuckness spins out into blaming our apparent self, our system of practice… we assess our character, our heart, our history, our past, our flaws, and our virtues. We fidget, become distracted, and jump to conclusions that will cement the stuckness into a situation...We can note that the stuckness, having eluded our attempts to get rid of it or gloss over it, takes us to an ‘edge.’ We want to hold on to some identity, or to a conviction in our practice tradition, but we can’t quite do it. We are taken to a place of uncertainty, a place where there is a feeling of not being anything solid but where there is still a hankering to be something. This is the edge.
S
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
Anyone who’s interested in meditation in the first place probably already senses that we are all in a mess, the human mess, and that we have no choice but to clean it up. People who are ill — with heart conditions or cancer or stress-related illnesses or simply greater-than-average unhappiness — or people who have been forced to recognize the inescapable truth that life isn’t easy and smooth, that it inevitably brings problems, that going along with business as usual as if none of this were so is simply not sustainable. Such people have realized that life is always in crisis, not only for them but for everyone. Meditation practice helps us to face this crisis as it really is and nourishes our process for working on it.
As a young doctor, I thought that serving life was a thing of drama and action and split-second judgment calls….larger than ordinary life,and those who served were larger than life also. But I know now that this is only the least part of the nature of service. That service is small and quiet and everywhere. That far more often we serve by who we are and not what we know. And everyone serves whether they know it or not. We bless the life around us far more than we realize. Many simple, ordinary things that we do can affect those around us in profound ways: the unexpected phone call, the brief touch, the willingness to listen generously, the warm smile or wink of recognition. All it may take to restore someone’s trust in life may be returning a lost earring or a dropped glove.
Mindfulbalance 