Tag: Nature

Why we should take ourselves lightly

Karl Duffy1 Comment

We often think that the way forward lies in us putting a lot of work  into our life, hoping to improve and fix what we do not like. And we can bring that attitude to meditation also, seeing it as something I am doing, and something I have got to do. However, just as one of the big problems in meditation is that we can take ourselves too seriously, we also need to realize that a big step towards contentment lies in letting some things go or not holding on too tightly to the succession of energies that appear in the mind, both positive “improving” ones as well as the ones that are arise from difficult events or people.  Now to say this sounds quite simple. But the tendency of the mind is to hold onto most things and make them into problems. We don’t have the faith or the trust or the willingness to just totally let go in the moment, to allow things pass through lightly, rather than amplifying them and making them into a story about our value or our life. Where meditation helps is in coming to see that the mind is continually generating stories and fears, and that holding one to every one can become quite tiring. Letting go our our inflated sense of the importance of our dramas can be liberating.  The image in this poem may help  –  as a way of dealing with thoughts in meditation, as a way of dealing with our preoccupation with “me” and “I”, as a way of dealing with our tendency to improve and fix and fret.

For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then
the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
“don’t love your life
too much,” it said,
and vanished into the world.

Mary Oliver, One or Two Things

Wait and let things settle

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While thinking about our difficulties is useful to a point, we tend to take it too far and become obsessive…. Creating some spaciousness and tranquility in our minds can be a large step towards solving a problem. Consider the “forest pool” metaphor so popular in Buddhism. After inclement weather, the pool is muddy, full of sediment and debris. We cannot clear it by trying to control the contents – that would make the pool worse. We can only wait for all the sediment to settle to the bottom, leaving the pool clear again. So in meditation, by concentrating on the breath or our body or on sounds we can hear in the present moment, we create a space for clarity. We often find that in this spaciousness, an answer to a problem will simply “pop up” to the surface. Sometimes it won’t, but our bodies will thank us for a break from all the worrying.

Sarah Napthali, Stewing

Not getting too fixed today

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We usually take ourselves to be the sum of these thoughts, ideas, emotions and body sensations, but there is nothing solid to them. How can we claim to be our thoughts or opinions or emotions or body when they never stay the same?

Jack Kornfield

Sunday Quote: Mystery

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Never forget:

We are alive within mysteries.

Wendell Berry, Life Is A Miracle : An Essay Against Modern Superstition

All things arise and pass away

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To what can our life on earth be likened?
To a flock of geese,
alighting on the snow.
Sometimes leaving a trace of their passage.

Su Shi (1037 – 1101), Remembrance

Sometimes we have to hold open the questions

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Heavy snow here in France and very cold weather is forecast for the next few days. Here is a poem from Mary Oliver in similar conditions as she walks in a landscape covered in its white blanket. The beauty of nature changes the way we hold the questions which are always present in our lives.

The snow began here this morning and all day
continued, its white rhetoric everywhere calling us back to why, how, whence such beauty and what the meaning; such an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now, deep into night, it has finally ended.
The silence is immense, and the heavens still hold
a million candles, nowhere the familiar things: stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect and nightly turn from.

Trees glitter like castles of ribbons, the broad fields smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions that have assailed us all day
remain — not a single
answer has been found –
walking out now into the silence and the light
under the trees, and through the fields,
feels like one.

Mary Oliver, First Snow