Life is a constant creation.
It is a moment by moment, instant by instant creation. I don’t mean by this that it is a set of discrete creations, it is not like that. But nevertheless, this spontaneity is constantly arising.
And it is within this that is our freedom.
Albert Low, Zen Teacher, Montreal Zen Centre.
In Tibet they have a saying, “The joy of a king is no greater than the joy of a beggar”. It isn’t what we possess — it’s what we enjoy. This means the experience of genuine cheerfulness cannot be bought or sold. What makes it genuinely cheerful is that we are free from fixation and attachment. We are free of having to depend on something else to make us happy. We can bask freely in the natural radiance of our mind. This is the equanimity of true cheerfulness — nothing more, nothing less.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, The Power of Being Cheerful
Each time you stay present with fear and uncertainty, you’re letting go of an habitual way of finding security and comfort. All those brain studies about meditation – where they place people in MRI machines or put electrodes on their heads – show us that each time you dare to remain where you are and do something completely fresh, unconventional and non-habitual, you open up new pathways in the brain. You experience that as strength, and it builds your capacity to be open the next time round. [However] it’s not like if you get it right once, if you overcome your jealousy or your anger once, then it’s smooth sailing for the rest of your life. There will be reruns. That means you will have lots and lots of chances to rouse yourself and let go. No need to exaggerate an emotional pattern, fixate on it, fuel it with more thoughts, or go into a tailspin. When you feel the shakiness, when the thoughts start to arise, when the tailspin is beginning, another rerun is in progress. You simply rouse yourself and let yourself be there.
Pema Chodron
At some point, our life can become machine like. We find ourselves running on automatic pilot, without any clear sense of purpose – our momentum fuelled by a chronic sense of need, a vague feeling that something is missing on our life. Nothing is enough to relieve the pressure that we feel. So we keep on with our superhuman efforts to design a life that looks like the happiness we imagine. But when it depends on material things or external valuations, happiness has a history of being short-lived.
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Erring and Erring, we walk the Unerring Path
Just as a snake sheds its skin, so we should shed our past, over and over again. The BuddhaToday is Ash Wednesday, traditionally the start of Lent – the season of preparation for Easter The word “Lent” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “lencten”, referring to the lengthening of days in the Spring, thus placing the period in the context of growth and life. Lent became a time of reflection on freedom, seeing what the priorities in our life are and what needs to be let go of. As in other wisdom traditions, it offers us a moment to enlarge our sense of things and go against the ways in which an unreflected life actually shrinks our heart. It reminds us to examine what is not essential, including the stories and habits which we have adopted over the years and which we come to see as fundamental to who we are. It is an intensification of an insight that we see in our daily practice, namely, that all things arise and pass away, all things are impermanent. So today, just as we begin to see Nature changing in the signs of Spring and new life, we try to internalize the understanding that we too are continually changing. This may mean that we need to let go of some elements of the past – which anyway is not happening any more except in the mind – in order for us to engage more fully with life in the present, in this moment. It could be that we shed some aspects of what we hold as our solid self, and rather see that we are more like a succession of selves. Happiness in life comes not from holding onto the past but by living in the present with appreciation.
Detachment resembles the shedding of a number of coats of skin, until our senses are sharpened, or until “our inner vision becomes keen”. When we learn what to let go of, we also learn what is worth holding on to. Think of it in this way: it is simply not possible to share something precious or even to hold a lover’s hand, when we keep our fists clenched, holding tightly onto something. Detachment is not the inability to focus on things, material or other. It is the capacity to focus on all things, material and other, without attachment. It is primarily something spiritual; it is an attitude of life. And in this respect, detachment is ongoing, requiring continual refinement.
John Chryssavgis, In the Heart of the Desert
Every time I reacted negatively, pushing things away, that action implied that there was something to fear. That this feeling or this thought was dangerous; that it was going to really hurt me, or invade me; that it was something that was really me and mine. As I began to welcome it all I realised that when you accept everything, only then can you sense that, after all, there is nothing to fear. None of it really belongs to a self or comes from a self. It cannot touch the mind which knows, cannot affect its nature. Whatever shape of vessel you pour the water into, with this same total accommodation, the water changes to the shape of the bottle. It doesn’t say: ‘I will not be poured into a square bottle, square bottles are not my scene. Round bottles only, please!’ When there is complete acceptance, there is just the sense of being the knowing, being that which is aware of all that comes through the mind.
Ajahn Amaro
