Tag: Buddhism

Being ordinary

Karl Duffy3 Comments

What is known as “realizing the mystery” is nothing but breaking through to grasp an ordinary persons life.

Deshan

For most people, just the thought of being ordinary is like a cross to a vampire; it’s the thing we fear most. We want to be unique and special, not ordinary, and we turn to books on meditation, perhaps, to help turn us into the kind of special person we want to be.  None of us want to accept the mind that we have got. We come to practice because there are aspects of the mind that we don’t know how to come to terms with.

This dread of being ordinary has many roots deep in our psychological makeup. We dread being lost in the crowd, feeling that we have never gotten the attention or acknowledgement that we deserve. So much of our life is spent running away from the ordinary, and towards what we think of as some kind of a spiritual alternative.

Barry Magid,  Ending the Pursuit of Happiness

The dysfunctional myths that drive our lives

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People [have always] faced the same kinds of  issues we face now, but with different window dressing. In the time of the Buddha men and women were arguing, gossiping, judging others, losing their perspective, overreacting, sexualizing their experiences, chasing after greener pastures, obsessing about nonessentials, feeling lonely and creating too many pipe dreams. Nothing has fundamentally altered.

How many of us, for example, are still convinced, mature as we may be, that if our partner would only change, or if we could meet the perfect person, everything would be fine?  These are the dysfunctional myths and illusions that drive our lives in very dissatisfying directions.  How many people remember the song from the musical Fiddler on the Roof – “If I were a Rich Man…”  What is your “big if”?  The big “if” that leads you away from wisdom and reality?

Lama Surya Das,  Awakening the Buddha within

What matters

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Each morning we are born again.

What we do today

is what matters most


Buddha

Keep it simple

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Here Ajahn Chah, one of the most influential teachers of the last Century, gives beautiful, simple instructions for mindfulness of the breath, the foundational practice for all meditation. We can see that it is normal for the mind to wander and how we should accept this gently. This simple exercise can be done formally today, or informally between meetings, waiting in a queue, while taking a break:

Keep your attention on the breath. Perhaps other thoughts will enter the mind. It will take up other themes and distract you. Don’t be concerned. Just take up the breathing again as the object of attention

Ajahn Chah, Bodhinyana

Bring a steady attention to all

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The foundation practice for mindfulness is the development of a steady concentration which is able to then hold all things in awareness, both pleasant and unpleasant, without necessarily identifying with them:

The practice of concentration (samadhi) trains the mind’s capacity for being present in the moment,

thus augmenting our ability to bring wise attention to bear as much as possible on the experience.

Andrew Olendzki.

Here I am

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“Hineyni”  for me is the most powerful word in the Book of Genesis. Abraham says it to God. It means “Here I am”, but it is not a geographical answer.  It is the response to the challenge to acknowledge the truth of the present moment, to recognize what needs to be done and to be prepared to do it. Abraham says “Hineyni” three times in the most terrible of circumstances.

Mindfulness is also “Here I am, not hiding” and it is also an expression of freedom. Even when experience is painful, especially when it is dire, mindfulness is freedom from extra anguish, from the extra pain of futile struggle. “This is what is true. These are the possibilities. I understand the necessary response”.  And sometimes “There are no possibilities other than surrender.  I surrender”

Sylvia Boorstein, That’s Funny, you don’t look Buddhist.