The World comes to us

Jacques Lusseyran was a French writer and member of the Resistance, who continued to organize groups against the Nazi authorities even after he was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. His work was all the more courageous because he had become totally blind at the age of 8, following an accident at school. He wrote about his early life in the book And There was Light: Autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, Blind Hero of the French Resistance. This extract compliments the quote from Mark Twain this morning. Our discovery of the world begins with our active steps, which sometimes need courage and involve risk. However, we also need to know when to receive, and allow things to happen. The world is an  accomplice in this work of growth and continually presents moments when we can grow. Ironically, we frequently resist what happens to us each day, thinking that life is to be found elsewhere.

If I put my hand on the table without pressing it, I knew the table was there but knew nothing about it. To find out, my fingers had to bear down, and the amazing thing is that the pressure was answered by the table at once. Being blind I thought I should have to go out to meet things, but I found that they came to meet me instead. I have never had to go more than halfway, and the universe became the accomplice of all my wishes.

Elephants and fleas

Sometimes when our thoughts are like little fleas that jump off our noses, we just see the little flickers of thought, like ripples, which might have a very liberating quality. For the first time you might feel ” My goodness! There’s so much space, and it’s always been here.”   Another time it might feel like that elephant is sitting on you. It’s important to realize that meditation doesn’t prefer the flea to the elephant, or vice versa. It is simply a process of seeing what is, noticing that, accepting that, and then going on with life, which, in terms of the technique, is coming back to the simplicity of nowness, the simplicity of the out-breath. Whether you are completely caught up in discursive thought for the entire sitting period, or whether you feel that enormous sense of space, you can regard either one with gentleness and a sense of being awake and alive to who you are. Either way, you can respect that. So taming teaches that meditation is developing a nonaggressive attitude to whatever occurs in your mind. It teaches that meditation is not considering yourself an obstacle to yourself; in fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Pema Chodron

Some instructions for working with inner fears

Our lives are not just on the surface; their greater part is concealed from casual observation. If we would like our obscure fears come into the open and dissolve, the conscious mind must be somewhat still, not everlastingly occupied; then, as the fears come to the surface, they must be observed without let or hindrance, for any form of condemnation or justification only strengthens fear. To be free from all fear, we must be awake to its darkening influence,a and only constant watchfulness can reveal its many causes.

Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life

Sunday quote: Creating space

What I most want
is to spring out of this personality,
then to sit apart from that leaping.

I’ve lived too long where I can be reached

Rumi

Allowing things be as they are

Letting go of what arises in the mind leads to witnessing the cessation of that which has arisen. Then there is the true peace of allowing things be as they are. No longer are we someone who has to get somewhere, do something, get rid of something or change something. When we’re caught in distracting ourselves with pleasures, then we’re somebody, and somebody who has to find happiness, or have success or become something. No matter how much excitement or pleasure I might experience, I have to have more than that. We are never content with the excitement and adventures of life. They just cause us to be caught up in that movement of having to have more and more – until you get burnt out. Then you go to the opposite extreme where because you are tired and worn out from all the excitement, and stimulation you just break down, fall asleep, get drugged or drunk…. You can only have so much excitement and then you can’t bear it any more.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Way it is.

Do not prepare your joys

The passion in this quote is striking. Each moment is there to be seized, to be discovered in all its depths. We can miss out if we spend our time anticipating moments of happiness elsewhere, or in the future. Indeed, too much focus on our aspirations for our future, our self-development and career paths, can create pressure and lead us into a habit of leaning away from this moment. Often all it succeeds in doing is making us unhappy with who we are.

Seize from each moment

its unique novelty

and do not prepare your joys.

André Gide