Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.
John O’Donoghue, Anam Chara
I have been travelling and on holidays in the past few weeks. Outside travel and movement is a good time to observe ongoing inner movement. Even when relaxed, the ever-present restless mind was working away, wanting that things fit into a pre-decided idea of how moments, such as those spent on holidays, “should” be. Days should be relaxing, places should be better or give the exact same sense as before, the weather should consider me and be warmer or cooler, my mood calmer or more enthusiastic. This characteristic of the mind is described in one ancient text as giving rise to the “shackles of constant becomings” – always moving, always wanting something else and seeking fulfilment. Thus, as happens frequently, things were often seen as too much – “It was too hot to do anything” – while others not enough – “There were too many people there and it was not quiet enough to allow me enjoy the place”.
The following, profound, text describes both this problem and indicates the way towards its resolution, through a certain type of journey. The end of our restless, wanting-more, wanting-other, mind cannot be calmed by “travelling”, it tells us. The word “travelling” here seems to suggest, looking outside for solutions, such as ideas about our life or intellectual concepts, or in the latest technique – doing more, fixing more, trying harder – all of which are rooted in the unending quest to get our life under control by figuring it out or getting something. On the contrary, the radical solution proposed – that gets to the heart of our restlessness – is to be found in a type of travel, but one that goes inside, getting to know the body and heart, in an experiential way. In becoming familiar with the sensations of the body and how they give rise to energies in the heart that leave us restless, and seeing these body and heart formations as passing through and not identifying with them, we take the journey that leads to the end of our restless travel. The whole world is to be found there.
That end of the world wherein one is not born, does not grow old or die, pass away or reappear, that I declare, is impossible to be known, seen or reached by travelling. But, friend, I do not declare that one can make an end of suffering without reaching the end of the world. Friend, I do proclaim that in this very body, with its perceptions and consciousness, is the world, the world’s arising, the world’s cessation and the path leading to the world’s cessation.
The Buddha, Rohitassa Sutta.
All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. However, a path without a heart is never enjoyable. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy – it makes for a joyful journey; as long as a man follows it, he is one with it.
Carlos Castaneda
How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we humans know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within if only we would listen to it, that tells us certainly when to go forth into the unknown.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross
We’re not certain about our own goodness. We begin to stray from it as soon as we wake up in the morning, because our mind is unstable and bewildered. Our thoughts drag us around by a ring in our nose, as if we were cows in the Indian market. This is how we lose control of our lives. We don’t understand that the origin of happiness is right here in our mind. We might experience happiness at times, but we’re not sure how we got it, how to get it again, or how long it’s going to last when it comes. We live life in an anxious, haphazard state, always looking for happiness to arrive. When we are confused about the source of happiness, we start to blame the world for our dissatisfaction, expecting it to make us happy. Then we act in ways that bring more confusion and chaos into our life. When our mind is busy and discursive, thinking uncontrollably, we are engaging in a bad habit. We are stirring up the mud of jealousy, anger, and pride. Then the mind has no choice but to become familiar with the language of negativity and develop it further.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Seeing beginnings and endings — the arising and passing away of all conditioned forms — is a vital step in developing the understanding that nothing exists apart from interdependent, cause-and-effect relationships. To see the beginnings and endings is also, in my experience, a great support in difficult times. Early on, as I began to trust in the fiber of my being that nothing lasts, I became less afraid of pain. The fact that everything has an end comforted me. “One way or another,” I would say to myself, “this too will pass.” I was glad I saw that. I didn’t think much, in those initial moments of insight, about how the pleasant things change as well as the difficult ones. I know that when I struggle with the pain of any loss, the struggle preoccupies my mind and leaves no room for hope. When I recognize the pain I feel as the legitimate result of loss, I am respectful of its presence and kind to myself. My mind always relaxes when it is kind, and around the edges of the truth of whatever has ended, I see displays of what might be beginning.
Sylvia Boorstein, How Endings Make Room for Beginnings
