Tag: Present moment

Let go…move on…have no preferences

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This week some things occured which were unexpected and which disrupted some directions which have seemed right for some time. However, they were out of my capacity to influence. In cases like this I have found that the practice of “no preferences” really helps. Even though I can feel that there is a much easier way to do things, I  try to work with having no preferences as to how things have turned out. This has given a perspective with regard to some news I received which I feel was unfair. In mindfulness, we try to see that difficultes and happiness are of of equal value.  I find this very hard but I try to work with what is.

It strikes me how much can change in a week. Last Saturday I was at an inspiring conference in Lerab Ling,  bringing together some of the finest researchers on meditation in the world.  I listened to a incredible talk on meditation by Sogyal Rinpoche as well as a moving reports on mindfulness by Jon Kabat Zinn and a beautiful talk on emotions by Erika Rosenberg. At the end of the day I felt that there was very little distance between experience and reflection: it just was and I felt whole.

This week I was made more aware of our capacity as humans to create distance between ourselves and our experience. We make life complicated by our continual reflecting on it and an excessive evaluation of it. We are never content to let things just be. I  find myself wishing for the simpler times of last week. But it is not to be. So I try to make  my practice to accept, let go and move on. Mindfulness is based on the belief that deep down things are naturally one and good. And even though others or circumstances make them complicated,  I find that I can drop into that natural calm in meditation.  However, moving on is still hard. Happiness is related to peace of mind. In difficult times  I work with that sense of peace and natural goodness. Therefore, on one level nothing can disturb me. However, on another level I struggle.

Pleasant conditions change into unpleasant ones, and unpleasant conditions eventually become pleasant. We should just keep this awareness of impermanence and be at peace with the way things are, not demanding that they be otherwise. The people we live with, the places we live in, the society we are a part of – we should just be at peace with everything. But most of all we should be at peace with ourselves-that is the big lesson to learn in life. It is really hard to be at peace with oneself. I find that most people have a lot of self-aversion. It is much better to be at peace with our own bodies and minds than anything else, and not demand that they be perfect, that we be perfect, or that everything be good. We can be at peace with the good and the bad.

Ajahn Sumedho

Fragmented

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We are fragmented into so many different aspects. We don’t know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in. So many contradictory voices, dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner lives that we find ourselves scattered everywhere, in all directions, leaving nobody at home.

Sogyal Rinpoche

Exaggerating or denying

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A similar quote on meditation to yesterday morning’s one, noticing the tendency of the mind to use different strategies for avoiding simple, direct contact with life as it actually is. We prefer exaggerating our stories about life, often, to how things actually are. The mind likes to produce simulations of future or current events in our life, often making the anticipated difficulty seem bigger than it actually is:

Meditation practice provides  provides the perfect context for observing our beliefs and recognizing the tug-of-war we have with our experience. Just sit quietly for five minutes and watch what happens. Unless we have some accomplishment in meditation, we won’t know what to do with all the activity. We become overwhelmed by the energetic play of the mind, pummeled by our own thoughts and emotions, bewildered by our inability to sit in peace. We will want to do something. And we really only have two means of escape from all this mayhem: we can either spin out into thought, which is an exaggeration of reality, or we can suppress or deny it.

Exaggeration and denial describe the dilemma we have with mind, and not just in meditation. Exaggeration and denial operate in conjunction with all our fantasies, hopes, and fears. When we exaggerate experience, we see what isn’t there. And when we deny it, we don’t see what is. Both exaggeration and denial are extraneous to the true nature of things, the nature we experience when we can just stay present.

Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, The Power of an Open Question

As close to real as we can be

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Things that are real pose no danger to the mind. The real dangers in the mind are our delusions, the things we make up, the things we use to cover up reality, the stories, the preconceived notions we impose on things. When we’re trying to live in those stories and notions, reality is threatening. It’s always exposing the cracks in our ideas, the cracks in our ignorance, the cracks in our desires. As long as we identify with those make-believe desires, we find that threatening. But if we learn to become real people ourselves, then reality poses no dangers.

This is what the meditation is for, teaching yourself how to be real, to get in touch with what’s really going on, to look at your sense of who you are and take it apart in terms of what it really is, to look at the things that you find threatening in your life and see what they really are. When you really look, you see the truth. If you’re true in your looking, the truth appears.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Sunday Quote: Things are never 100% clear

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The point is to live everything.


Live the questions now.

Perhaps then, someday far into the future, you will gradually,without even noticing it,
live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Being aware, a way of knowing without words

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“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best,” and then he had to stop and think.

Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.

A. A. Milne, The House on Pooh Corner