#654 Even More Craving & Avoidance Won't Get You There, Sorry ...

      “Obsessing about getting what you want, and avoiding what you don’t want, does not result in happiness.” 
                              Pema Chodron
 
     “The ‘secret’ of life that we are all looking for is just this: to develop through sitting and daily life practice the power and courage to return to that which we have spent a lifetime hiding from, to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment – even if it is a feeling of being humiliated, of failing, of abandonment, of unfairness.”
                              Charlotte Joko Beck

     “Your true home is wakefulness. Go home!”
                              Ashin Tejaniya

 

bitstream   www.dpreview.com

#533 How to Keep from Becoming Frustrated? - Part 2

     As we continue to practice mindfulness, we become able to see our thought patterns more & more clearly and objectively. We start monitoring our thoughts, emotions, speech & behavior AND the consequences of each of these.
     What precisely does my prolonged feeling of these (below) accomplish?: 
          • down, angry, hopeless, revengeful, righteous, etc about "my world's situation"
          • guilt for not saving "my world"
          • revengeful over the injustices suffered by "my ancestors"
          • anger & hatred towards "the enemies of my people"
          • anger & hatred towards "my enemies"
          • judgmental & hatred towards those who don't live up to "my standards"

     What proportion of our FINITE energy & lifetime do the above dysfunctional habits of mind bleed out of us? Being "frustrated" is a massive waste of time & energy. For some, it's a huge part of their cultural identity to wallow in such emotional swamps. Some of these unfortunates inevitably act out, causing wide-scale suffering - and what good comes of these?
     Being frustrated, indignant, angry, revengeful, etc is useless dysfunctional posturing. Life's short & precious - HELP REDUCE SUFFERING & INCREASE JOY - for yourself & others. Positive change must & CAN start within each one of us.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, May 3, 2014

#497 Ethics & True Well-being

     "Ethical value ... is built into the very fabric of consciousness. ... true well-being can only come from expressions of generosity, kindness, & wisdom, while greed, hatred, & delusion will always result in harm."           Andrew Olendzki PhD

     The above statement is not to be confused with a "should", be it societal or religious. People over the ages have come to understand this as a natural law - simply the way things work - much like gravity. Nevertheless, each person seems to need to discover or relearn this for themselves. "Shoulds" tend to automatically generate resistance in us at some level. A less confrontational way of learning wise advice (that seldom sinks in immediately), is by holding it in the back of our minds as a riddle, a koan, or open question - to be pondered over a long time, even a lifetime. Life presents innumerable opportunities to learn experientially how things work. 

Les Lovas watercolor - Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia

#477 Freedom from Slavery

     "12 Years A Slave" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2024544/  is a powerful movie - a must see. The soul-crushing power of hatred & fear is masterfully illustrated.

     It's very useful to deeply reflect on how each one of us might be involved in very similar power dynamics. Are we slaves to our past history - personal, racial, religious? If so, we could be equally enslaved as oppressors or oppressed. The bullied and those who do the bullying, as the film suggested, are equally imprisoned by this toxic mindset.

     It takes some time in sitting meditation before we realize how much of our time & energy is spent running - from or after. It matters not what, the issue is that we're compulsively running and we do so out of fear. And most of us avoid going deep enough to investigate, and face directly what we're afraid of. Yet it's only by looking at our fear face-to-face, accepting it, & embracing it, that it is tamed, and we are able to stand up straight as noble adult human beings and be able to see things clearly, rather than as obstacles, threats or must-haves.

Flower Clouds by Odilon Redon

#456 Awakening to Things as They Are

     We progressively awaken to the moment-to-moment reactions we have to life by noticing how each reaction is preceded by a felt physical sensation. Two amazingly frequent sensations:
     1) closing off, tightening / hardening of the body - particularly the heart-mind - towards stimuli that we negatively judge. This is aversion or hatred - a rigid, adversarial reaction.
     2) aching hunger - particularly in the gut - towards stimuli we judge to be enticing, desirable. This is craving or clinging - a wanting, wishing, pining away for, desperately desiring to keep reaction.
     In aversion / hatred we're running from / fighting off stuff, in craving / clinging we're running after / desperately hanging-on to stuff, based on the fundamental misunderstanding: that things as they are, are unacceptable. 
     And how actually are things as they are? Fluidly changing, ephemeral - far more like inner transient energies than solid external chunks of matter, that can either be accumulated in our bedrooms, or hauled far away to be buried.
     These are not dogma, simply observations at a given stage of mindfulness meditation practice. From a Western psychological perspective, it represents a normal, healthy shift from rigidity towards psychological flexibility & accepting reality.

St. Andrews by John England   http://www.fogforestgallery.ca/bios/bio_england.html