Tag: Mindfulness

Developing a constancy in awareness

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It is true there is an ebb and flow

but the sea remains the sea.

Vincent van Gogh

Where you are, and not judging it

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The path is something we cultivate. We have to know where we are and not try to become something that we think we would like to be; we have to practise with the way it is now, without making a judgement about it. If you’re feeling tense, nervous, disillusioned, disappointed about yourself or whatever, then try to recognise that what is in the moment is enough. Be willing to just admit, to acknowledge the way it is,  rather than to indulge in believing that what you’re feeling is somehow an accurate description of reality, or to feel that what you are feeling is wrong and you shouldn’t be feeling like that. Those are two extremes. But the cultivation of the way is to recognise that whatever is subject to arising is subject to ceasing. And this isn’t a put-down or cold-hearted way of cultivating the path, even though it might sound like it.

Ajahn Sumedho

Letting go of the things that change

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Things change so quickly. On Friday the news was dominated by weddings and dresses, by pomp and circumstance. Yesterday we awoke to news of  death and differences,  and to the insecurity it provokes.  Such changes can make the ground we stand on feel quite uncertain. However,  it is not just change on a world level but how we deal with the smaller changes in our lives that determines our ongoing  sense of inner peace and calm. We expend quite a lot of energy each day in trying to hold on to what is familiar and in attempting to make the world conform to how we would like it to be. The problem with this – other than the futile waste of energy – is that  we limit our ability to experience joy in the present moment as it actually is. If we approach moments with fear,  rather than opening to how they are, we cannot see the richness in them.

A contrary strategy works best: Stop trying to grasp, to control the world around you or the day ahead of you. In doing so you loosen the grip of fear and  give each experience the possibility to bring its richness.   Letting go of control lets go of suffering.

It is not because of impermanence that we suffer

But because of our ideas about permanence.

Thich Nhat Hahn

The world is complex – deal with it

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It is through the messiness of our own individual histories –  and the complexity of the world  with all its divisions and differences of opinion – that we come to a full contentment in our lives, not by running away or denying parts of ourselves or what has happened in the past:

The way through the world

is more difficult to find

than the way beyond it

Wallace Stevens

What is, is good enough.

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In both Western and Eastern traditions, happiness is less about feeling good than about an attitude of acceptance of life the way it is. Happiness comes from accepting what is , in contrast to pursuing what is not yet. To penetrate life means to get into it with a focused power and precision, like a laser beam. As Thoreau indicated, it means “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life”. If we truly practice his favorite principle –  less is more, simpler is better – we sooner or later come upon the subtler principle it reveals: what is,  is good enough.

 Less is more, simpler is better, works precisely because whatever exists without our inflating and overcomplicating it, is good enough. Zen alludes to this principle when it says  “The beauty of a mountain is that it is so much like a mountain, and of water, that it is so much like water”.  Simply stated, life is simply good.

Michael Gellert, The Way of the Small

Keeping our work in perspective

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One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown

is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

Bertrand Russell, British Philosopher.