Saying “like this” is just a way of reminding oneself to see this moment as it is.
Ajahn Sumedho
Tag: Be fully present
Stillness through non-interference.
Ajahn Chah would 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, which is the mind’s own nature. This policy of non-interference allows everything and is disturbed by nothing.
Ajahn Amaro, Small Boat
Holding things and oneself lightly
The practice of mindfulness has as its overall goal the reduction of suffering and an increase in fullness in the totality of our lives. But in order for us to see the actual benefits now, whether here in Ireland or wherever you are reading this, we need to practice it with the big and small moments of each day. This profound text indicates one way we do this. Mindfulness has a quality of not wobbling in the face of the different winds that blow us, the difficulties and changes which we face in our day-to-day living. Persistent practice allows us to hold ourselves more lightly, and not be as strongly fused with the story we maintain about how our lives should be or how certain moments in the day should go. One way of saying this is that we are not as attached, or not clinging, to outcomes, or to some fixed aspects of our identity. In this way changes and unexpected turnings do not bring the same dismay as once they did:
How do we arrive at non-agitation through non-clinging?
When the instructed person does not regard form with these words: “This is mine, this I am, this is my self.”
The form of his changes and alters,
but with the change and alteration of form,
sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure and despair do not arise.
The Buddha, S 22.8
photo dmitry rozhkov
If you are attentive
The present moment is filled with joy and happiness.
If you are attentive, you will see it.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step
…or failing to notice
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
Just being fully present
Here it is – right now.
Start thinking about it and you miss it.
Huang Po, Chinese Zen Master, died 850
