Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that.
We don’t know anything. We call something bad; we call it good.
But really we just don’t know.
Pema Chodron
No matter how dark
The hand always knows the way to the mouth
Nigerian Proverb
I did a retreat last weekend with Ajahn Amaro who emphasized gaining insight into the ever-present dynamic of “I, me and mine”, and developing a mind which is capable of observing these labels
Enlightenment, liberation, depends on the recognition of the radical separateness of awareness – “the one who knows” – and the world of the five khandhas (Sanskrit: skandhas)…The key is training the heart to rest in the various dimensions of knowing, and not becoming entangled in the khandhas.
Here are some words from Ajahn Chah that encompass [these] themes:
“This mind of ours is already unmoving and peaceful… really peaceful! Just like a leaf which is still as long as no wind blows. If a wind comes up the leaf flutters. The fluttering is due to the wind – the “fluttering” is due to those sense impressions; the mind follows them. If it doesn’t follow them, it doesn’t “flutter.” If we know fully the true nature of sense impressions we will be unmoved.
Our practice is simply to see the Original Mind. We must train the mind to know those sense impressions, and not get lost in them; to make it peaceful.
Ajahn Amaro, Like Oil and Water
[The 5 khandhas, or in Sanskrit, skandhas, are form, feeling-tone, perception, thoughts and emotions, and consciousness.]
For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day
Evelyn Underhill, 1875 – 1941, English writer on mysticism
To live in the present moment requires a change in our inner posture. Instead of expanding or shoring up our fortress of “I” – the ego – which culture and often therapy try to help us do, contemplation waits to discover what this “I” consists of. What is this “I” that I take so seriously?…
Thomas Keating teaches a beautifully simple exercise to use in contemplation. Imagine yourself sitting on the bank of a river. Observe each of your thoughts coming along as if they’re saying, “Think me, think me.” Watch your feelings come by saying, “Feel me, feel me.” Acknowledge that you’re having the feeling; acknowledge that you’re having the thought. Don’t hate it, don’t judge it, don’t critique it, don’t, in any way, move against it. Simply name it: “resentment toward so and so,” “a thought about such and such.” Admit that you’re having it, then place it on a boat and let it go down the river. The river is your stream of consciousness.
Richard Rohr Watching the River, Centre for Action and Contemplation, May 10, 2016
How can you follow the course of your life
if you do not let it flow
Lao Tzu quoted in Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
