The life that we have in our mind, the life that is a reflection of our planning, the life that has been constructed out of bits and pieces in our environment — external conditioning, things we have observed in other people, things that influential people have told us — is actually not who we are. Life emerges out of the silence of our inner being.
Reginald Ray, Busyness is laziness
Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By “they” I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.
Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain.
As long as it talks I am going to listen.
Thomas Merton, Rain and the Rhinoceros
We all have well-established habits of thought, emotion, reaction and judgement, and without the keen awareness of practice, we’re just acting out these patterns.
When they arise, we’re not aware they’ve arisen.
We get lost in them, identify with them, act on them — so much of our life is just acting out patterns.
Joseph Goldstein
As I was washing my hands the other evening before the meal I turned on the tap marked “C” and started to wash. After a moment something registered, and I thought “this water is cold, it should be getting warm by now”. And then I realized that “C” in an anglophone country like Ireland refers to “cold” whereas “C” in a francophone bathroom would indicate hot water. I noticed that my behaviour had been automatic, done without conscious awareness, based on procedural, formed, memories. I had turned the “C” tap without thinking and gradually my brain caught up with the fact that this was not France and that the patterned behaviour would not get the desired result.
Frequently we operate on procedural memories or knowledge. This is fine for something like driving, which is fairly automatic regardless of whether one is driving on the right or the left. However, doing things in an automatic way can mean that we fit things into familiar boxes, or do not see things as new but presume that they will be the same as before. We do not give the moment a chance to reveal any new riches, because we have it figured out even before it happens. We can reduce others and, even more frequently, ourselves, to limited pre-defined expectations and not believe in any possibility for change.
Most of life only lasts a moment. Then our life becomes a memory, a dream. We are only alive a millisecond at a time. This moment! Or as one teacher put it, holding his thumb and forefinger about a quarter-inch apart, “All of life is only just this much –just a moment in time.” When we open to this very instant in which awareness produces consciousness, we are fully alive. Completely present. Big-minded. To the degree we are present for “just this much”, this living moment, we are alive.
Stephen and Ondrea Levine, Embracing the Beloved
Ajahn Chah would then explain that the mind’s nature is still, yet it’s flowing. It’s flowing, yet it is still. He would use the word “citta” for the knowing mind, the mind of awareness. The citta itself is totally still. It has no movement; it is not related to all that arises and ceases. It is silent and spacious. Mind objects — sights, sounds, smell, taste, touch, thoughts, and emotions — flow through it. Problems arise because the clarity of the mind gets entangled with sense impressions. By contemplating our own experience, we can make a clear distinction between the mind that knows (citta) and the sense impressions that flow through it. By refusing to get entangled with any sense impressions, we find refuge in that quality of stillness, silence, and spaciousness. This policy of non-interference allows everything and is disturbed by nothing.
Ajahn Amaro, Small Boat
photo Miguel Virkkunen Carvalho
The greatest trap in life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection, doubting who we truly are. Success, popularity and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions.
Henri Nouwen
