Tag: Awareness

Being content with what you have

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Reflecting on life in this human form: it is just like this, it’s being able to sit peacefully and get up peacefully and be content with what you have; it’s that which makes our life as a daily experience something that is joyful and not suffering. And this is how most of our life can be lived – you can’t live in ecstatic states of rapture and bliss and do the dishes, can you?    That’s why whenever we contemplate cessation, we’re not looking for the end of the universe but just the exhalation of the breath or the end of the day or the end of the thought or the end of the feeling. To notice that means that we have to pay attention to the flow of life – we have to really notice the way it is rather than wait for some kind of fantastic experience of marvelous light descending on us, zapping us or whatever.  Can you trust that? Can you trust in just letting everything go and cease and not being anybody and not having any mission, not having to become anything?

Ajahn Sumedho, Being Nobody

Becoming more awake

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We don’t sit in meditation to become good meditators:

We sit in meditation so that we’ll be more awake in our lives.

Pema Chodron

The key is paying attention

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The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change, until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.

R.D. Laing

Some things in life we just don’t know

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When we handle things with ease we are changing the way we usually relate. The mind wants to know everything. Even if it doesn’t understand, it will have some belief. It will form an opinion or view and hang on to that just to fill up the space of not knowing. It wants to be on top of things. But this whole method of investigation and inquiry depends upon not knowing. It depends upon us being open and ready to not know. It depends upon us allowing mystery and letting the knowing arise out of that. It depends on our not being threatened…. from the point of view of the heart, the unconditioned mind, the unknown is mysterious . . . but it is beautiful. You don’t have to fill up the unknown with a belief or a concept or idea. You can leave it as mysterious because 99% of it will be mysterious anyway. There is no way that we can understand it all. So the heart’s response to that mystery is faith – a trust in the fundamental orderliness of the universe.

Ajahn Amaro, Open to Any Possibility

The return of Spring

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I do not live happily or comfortably
with the cleverness of our times.
The talk is all about computers,
the news is all about bombs and blood.
This morning, in the fresh field,
I came upon a hidden nest.
It held four warm, speckled eggs.
I touched them.
Then went away softly,
having felt something more wonderful
than all the electricity of New York City.

Mary Oliver, With thanks to the Field Sparrow, whose voice is so delicate and humble


Changing our attitude towards ourselves

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Here – as always in his wise and clear way – Ajahn Sumedho gives us the practical way of working each day with this desire to fix ourselves. Not investing energy in our self-obsessive patterns is the best way of removing their hold on us:

We may not be the way we would like. There are many things about my personality that I can be very critical of. I don’t like myself that much or approve of myself on a personal level. I now see that as part of the path, not as an obstruction. So no matter what way you are right now – no matter how critical you might be, or how inadequate you might feel – change the attitude to one of learning from the way you are right now. Rather than trying to become something – rather than trying to get rid of the negativity, restlessness and confusion because you think these are flaws or defects that block you from enlightenment – just don’t believe any of that. Your conditioned mind will say anything, it is completely untrustworthy. That which we can really trust is the awareness.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Sound of Silence