Major Transitions

     After achieving enough of the goals we hoped would make us permanently happy, and being disappointed; deeply experiencing constant change, sickness, aging & death of loved ones; experiencing various forms of trauma from life's all-you-can-bear buffet of suffering; so after having our fill of every form of needless suffering, more & more of us are waking up from the collective dreamlike illusion of humanity. Inevitably we all awaken to our authentic Self, our True Nature.

    One of those who's awakened and is sharing her experience is Lisa Cairns. Here's her overview of awakening from dualism - the almost universal illusion of being a separate adversarial entity, and returning home to nonduality (Oneness, Self, True Nature, Divinity, Love, Silence, Stillness, Emptiness, Universal Consciousness, Brahman, Tao, YHWH, God, Source, etc):

    “Nonduality, you could say, is an energetic movement from being separated, from being a limitation, to being unlimited. Most people in this society believe that they are a separate entity that is walking through a separate world. And what that means is that they believe that they are the thoughts about themselves and the feelings they feel about themselves, rather than their actual experience. And the actual experience is nondual. 
    What we’re speaking about here isn’t theoretical. It’s actually something that can be experienced and is experienced when you’re not veiled by the illusion of thoughts.

    But most people walk around believing that they are their story. So their story might be that they’re 21 years old, they’re from Berlin, they have a nice car, they grew up in a family with 5 children, their name is Enid, they dislike bumblebees, love going to the beach, and they love music. So they believe all these things about themselves. And most people are trying to inflate that story. They’re trying to grow their sense of self and create a bigger sense of self. 
    In psychology they talk about getting a 'healthy ego.' It's actually a really good thing to have a healthy ego. But most people in our society are just trying to grow what they believe themselves to be, and make it better & better & better. That’s (a 'noisy ego) certainly not a healthy ego. And they believe they are their feelings and they’ve got no separation from it. So if they feel angry, they see that as reality. So if they feel angry with someone, they don’t notice that they’re feeling angry with someone, what they think is that the other person has done something to make them angry ('defensive projection'). They don’t have any separation from it. 
    So this is how most people walk around in our society that they are their body-mind mechanism and they’re the story that they tell themselves and then throughout the day, they’re mostly lost in what they’re thinking about. So they’re thinking about themselves or others, and most of what they’re thinking about is actually problems and how to solve problems, because that is actually the mechanism of the mind, but it just gets overworked like over-flexing a muscle, so it just becomes too big and it’s kind of finding problems everywhere. So most people believe they are their story. 

    But if you can sort of fall out of that story, some people name it in a way which I find very poetic and beautiful. It’s like ‘fall through the gaps, the silence in between your thoughts.’ There can be a whole new reality discovered, where you discover that you’re not that person that you think yourself to be, but you’re actually this vast, unnamable, unlimited consciousness – not personal consciousness, but a big consciousness, as well as this being, this alive presence, this consciousness and this presence. And this consciousness and presence isn’t limited to anything. It’s not limited by a name that you give anything, or a thought, or an idea, or a feeling you have about anything."
    Lisa Cairns “Most people don’t see this one thing and REMAIN STUCK for years!!!!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rrEtrU8OQk

    Here's a partial transcript (first 20 minutes) from one of her Lisa's valuable videos, addressing the question, “What happens when (after awakening) the 'old you' has died, but the 'new you' has not (yet) arrived?”:

    “That’s such a bizarre concept: 'What happens when the old you dies?' So who is this old you that died? This is something that people often feel, that the old you has died. But who is that? Who is this you that’s died? You may think, ‘well me, this person I thought I was, and this person has died and then this new person hasn’t taken place. The story might go, ‘I got into spirituality, and then through getting into spirituality, this character changed and it changed in ways which aren’t recognizable and I don’t really know who I am anymore.’

    So let’s break down, first of all, what people think themselves to be. Most people think themselves to be a name, a body, past events and future events, what they’ve done, their choices, their decisions in this life, their behaviors, their wants & not wants, their relationships ie being a mother, father, daughter, sister, grandparent. And they believe that all of that is who they are. So that’s maybe something that we can describe, in time, about the supposed character, but it’s not who you are, not nearly who you are. 
    So most humans believe, that that person I’ve just described, is looking through the eyes now, and experiencing other people. But how can that person be looking through the eyes now, when everything you say about yourself is an imagination? So if you fell off your bike, bumped your head, had memory loss, and you forgot all these things, would you still be you? If you took drugs and forgot who you were when you were on drugs, would you still be you? And I feel that most people would unanimously say, 'Yes, I would still be me.' But yet they believe that who they are is a story looking through their eyes. That’s not true. 
    So right now, you’re dreaming a character. You’re dreaming a life, and you believe that character is the experiencer. This is where suffering arises, from the mis-identification that who you are is a story in time, rather than the radical presence which is experiencing now, and is prior to the story in time.

    And what you might notice about the story about you, the story of you, of this character in time, is that it’s a lot of who you think yourself to be is about what you want or don’t want. It’s about wants and seeking. So you’ve got two different forms of wants: natural wants and seeking wants. And the seeking wants are what make identity. And the seeking wants are wants where there is attachment to them. And attachment is the belief that these wants will free me in time. ('promissory materialism')
    So it could be, ‘If I get enough money, I will be able to be free. I will relax.’ So, we’re always waiting for that moment of relaxation. But the relaxation is your nature. It is what’s watching the dream. It’s that which is prior to the character. But the character is looking for that relaxation in its story of itself, which it can never complete. 
    And what actually makes the illusory you is this attachment (desire, clinging) to the wants. It’s a really funky phenomenon that happens, where the consciousness, the wants, and the ‘I am’ all get squished together, so it feels like somebody is inside the body. 
    And that happens through seeking – through the belief that your freedom, that what you’re looking for, that your home, that deep rest, that peace comes from a future event, or is taken away from you in a future or past event. And that forms this illusory ‘you.’ It sort of makes consciousness and the feeling of ‘I am,’ which are impersonal and prior to the illusory story of you, feel like they belong to the illusory story of you. And then this illusion manifests, and if feels like there is illusory you that owns consciousness and owns beingness and is walking around separate in this world.

    But when that story begins to be challenged, and waking up begins, all your desires and seeking patterns begin to change. So everything about you begins to change. What you held as important, becomes less important. What you spent your time doing to try and achieve something, you maybe have less interest in. You maybe have less interest in socializing and presenting to everyone a particular story about yourself. 
    And so everything in which you thought was you, and navigated your life by, begins to dissolve. And this can often be like and called ‘walking through the dessert.’ You no longer have these seeking desires, and yet there’s nothing which replaces that, and you’re still not feeling the bliss or freedom. So there’s this discontent and nothing in the life seems to make you feel contented. Whatever you look for doesn’t feel like it’s it. So it’s described like Jesus walking through the dessert for 40 days. It’s described as a dessert where everything’s dry, and you don’t have a direction, because in the past your direction was seeking and yet you don’t fully hear what could be called God’s will or natural intuition, your natural wants or desires. (You're experiencing a spiritual 'dry spell.')
    So isn’t this like a deeper movement happening? ... a good thing to do is to evoke bhakti – evoke the loving, compassionate side of nonduality, and know that this is part of the process, the apparent process, and happens to many, and that it will, like everything, pass. And there won’t be a new you that arises or arrives. ... that seeking you will dissolve more and more, and the character will become more authentically itself, and then you could call that being more authentically yourself, like God’s will appearing. God is speaking through you, rather than you as a separate person doing something. 
    So there’s this flow that takes over. And ironically, that flow feels naturally, organically yourself. It doesn’t feel like some alien has taken over your body and moving you as if you were a marionette. It feels like yourself acting because you are God (unitive mystical experience). So it feels like the most intimate sense of you moving everything, not some bizarre foreign entity, but it’s without the second. It’s without that separation. It’s spontaneous. It’s natural. There’s not that second which is controlling or owning or trying to get something for itself.”
    Lisa Cairns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMX5X3HFIzY

 

Lisa Cairns “What happens when the 'old you' has died, but the 'new you' has not arrived?”

Curiosity, Acceptance & Nurturing

"May I develop complete acceptance and openness
to all situations, and emotions, and to all people.
May I experience everything nakedly, completely
without mental reservations and blockages.
May I never withdraw from life or centralize onto myself.
May my heart be laid bare & open to the fire of all that is."
Reginald A. Ray

 

    Our acceptance & openness needs to INCLUDE the MANY daily random accidents, screw-ups & irritants like stubbing our toe, dropping, spilling & breaking things, losing keys / wallets / phones, burning & ruining meals, crazy random digital errors, loooong 'holds' on the phone, near impossibility contacting health-care providers, trades people & most companies ... We REGULARLY encounter a LOT of situations that very easily annoy, frustrate, irritate & anger us, even if / after we feel we've successfully 'dealt with' (fully processed) the real biggies in our life ie past major traumas.

    But our acceptance & openness ALSO needs to INCLUDE ongoing inescapable major traumas like chronic pain, prolonged disability, incurable illness & death of loved ones, friends and our self! These can & do cause "shipwrecks" - at least one of which is pretty much guaranteed if you live beyond 60. Do see : https://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.com/2013/07/361-beyond-stress-management-resilience.html

    Aversion to all that we fear / dislike / can't control is common & understandable, but is at best only a short-term band-aid. Clinging & chasing after things we like, think we need or must have is also common & understandable, but easily becomes obsessive eg addictions, and there are many "entrepreneurs" to feed our hunger to escape (see the 2023 miniseries "Painkiller" on Netflix). But it's a meaningless delusion to see our identity just a meat-machine that avoids undesirables & chases after desirables. "The one who dies with the most toys wins" is desperately simple-minded.

     Our ONLY WORTHWHILE OPTION is repeatedly remembering our true nature and repeatedly embodying it by BEING a NURTURING PRESENCE to others & the environment no matter how annoying, great or persistent the challenge. This is simply being natural, true to whom / what we are - like birds flying in the air and fish swimming in water. 

    We see great nurturing when parents really know their children and spend quality time with them by providing all that they require to optimally express their natural talents and mature into healthy, balanced, self-sufficient, caring, intelligent, pro-social adults. 

    Nurturing has NOTHING TO DO WITH stuffing them full of candies & fast food; indulging them with as much screen time as they want; throwing money at them to blow shopping online or at the mall; buying them all sorts of toys & clothes - there is no quality time here - just spoiling and creating helpless, hopeless, miserable perpetual infants. The worst fear of wealthy parents is their kids "growing up to be assholes." This fear easily becomes a reality if parents don't have the wisdom & energy to spend quality time with their kids.

    EVERY stage of life has its own challenges. During our youth, we try so hard to learn and become competent & competitive to get by in this fast-moving world. During our middle years, we try so hard to establish a career, a home life, have & raise kids, pay our bills, maybe even live a little, put a bit of money away for retirement ... During our later years, we're dumbfounded that life went by so fast; if we're fortunate enough, we can help raise grandchildren; again, if we're fortunate enough, we have the inclination to devote our time & energies on NURTURING our own & loved ones' spiritual maturation / evolution of consciousness, rather than wasting our time wallowing about our progressively declining physical & mental health.

    “… for each & every one of us, we have circumstances in our lives that are chaotic, out of our control, outside of the box of what we think of as practice. And that is actually your deepest practice.
    The Buddha talked about this precious human birth. It’s precious for all of us, it has the most exquisite balance of dukkha (challenging situations) & easefulness. We’re not so overwhelmed by suffering that we’re lost and drowning, or we’re not so lost in the pleasure, either. It’s got this balance that keeps us needing to find a deeper happiness and having the resources to look.
    This birth the Buddha talked about as the precious human birth is rare and it’s precious. And it’s precious for all of us, even those of us who don’t have the conditions in our lives to go on many or any retreats.
    There’s something about practicing with the chaos of life, & the realities of our difficult, complicated relationships & situations that we’re faced with in day-to-day life that can move us very deeply and force us to feel things we might not otherwise feel. It also helps us see that it’s good to be alive and in the world and feel it and really land in this human experience fully and recognize it as a shared thing.” Cara Lai https://www.dharma.org/cara-lai-dharma-talk/

     Four wise teachers & authors immediately come to mind when I think of inspiring survivors of major trauma. I've quoted them all in my quickly searchable blogs:

    Amoda Maa : “Embodied Enlightenment. Living Your Awakening in Every Moment.” Reveal Press, 2017.

    Isira : "Buddha on the Dance Floor." ‎ Living Awareness, 2014.

    Gabor Matte : “The Myth of Normal. Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture.” Alfred A. Knopf, 2022.

    James Finley : “The Healing Path. A Memoir and an Invitation.” Orbis, 2023.

 

    James Finley on the alchemy of transforming the lead of trauma into spiritual gold:
    “(After graduating from high school, I escaped from a lifetime of psychological & physical abuse by my alcoholic father by entering a monastery. But there) I was sexually abused by one of the monks – a priest, my confessor, who Merton thought very highly of - everyone thought very highly of this person. And I had a breakdown. I became extremely dissociative, paranoid.
    I worked (looking after the pigs at the monastery). … The boar walked out on the ice, and it fell through the ice of this little lake in the woods, and drowned. I felt as I was walking around, I felt I was unraveling, and that sanity was like thin ice over icy-cold black water, and it was cracking, and if I fell through, because of my trauma history, I might never find my way back again. So I left (the monastery). I didn’t tell the abbot what happened. I didn’t tell Thomas Merton what happened. I didn’t tell John Hughes, who was a psychiatrist. I just left.
    So here’s a lesson. How can we learn to be healed from all that hinders us from experiencing the steady strong currents of divinity that flow on & on in the bitter-sweet alchemy of our lives? The alchemy is just not how phases of happiness can unexpectedly become precipitously sad – it was frightening. Nor is it something so sad that can suddenly break wide open with liberation, like an unexpected gift, or love, or presence, or a child. It isn’t just the rhythm of darkness and light, or birth and death, or the rhythms of your life, the rhythms of my life. Rather, the alchemist of old were trying to turn lead into gold. And lead into gold is how do we turn the unrelenting, unforeseeableness of life, how can we learn to experience the steady strong currents of divinity that flow on and on and on so unexplainably, that brought me and brought all of you up to this very moment that I’m talking right now? How has this come to pass? And how can I learn to find my way to this groundedness that’s always there? And finding my way to it, how can I abide in it? And how can I learn to share it with others?

 
    So I’d like to end with a story. … This hermit heard a knock at his door, and when he opened it, it was a mother and a father with their little girl. And the parents apologized for intruding on his solitude, but said to the hermit, ‘As you can plainly see, an evil wizard has turned our daughter into a donkey. And we would like you to pray over her, so we can have our daughter back.’
    The hermit said, ‘I see. Come in, come in, come in.’ And he had them sit off to the side, and he asked the little girl if she was hungry and would like something to eat. She said she would like that. And so he was talking to her while he prepared a meal for both of them, and they sat down. And he asked her about herself – about things about her life and so on. 

    And as the parents were watching how lovingly he spoke to the little girl, and how attentive he was to her, they suddenly realized the evil wizard did not cast a spell on their daughter, turning their daughter into a donkey, the evil wizard cast a spell on them to believe that their daughter was a donkey. 

    And so when they left, they were so relieved and grateful, having their daughter back, and the little girl was so relieved because it’s very hard to be a little girl when your parents think you’re a donkey, especially if because you’re a child, and to avoid the confusion, you start believing it yourself. There’s like a shame-based, traumatized place within yourself, that you don’t know what to do about it. 

    The deep healing that that little girl and her parents experienced in this story bears witness to the deep healing that I hope we are exploring together here today.”
    James Finley "Becoming a Healing Presence in a Traumatized World" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu97TxU7mW4&t=6s

 

 

Another glorious morning shines down on us ...

Intimacy with Reality

     Artists, perhaps especially poets, are thought to be more sensitive to & thus more critically aware of present-moment reality. The average person may have 'thicker skin' than artists, is less affected by, less keenly interested in, less able or willing to deeply feel what's going on, and therefore floats along with the momentum of the times 'comfortably numb.' 
     Though most of us are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with how the world is becoming, we're so addicted to comfort and so averse to unpleasantness, that we allow life's harsh realities to fester & grow increasingly out of control.
     Artists, like prophets of old, are supposed to wake us up out of our sleep, mass hypnosis, autopilot, ... Artists, by way of poems, paintings, movies, etc bypass our superficial self-centered mind's filters, and communicate directly with our hearts & bodies. 

"With That Moon Language"

Hafiz

Admit something: 

Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me." 

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise 

someone would call the cops. 

Still, though, think about this, this great pull 

in us to connect. 

Why not become the one who lives with a 

full moon in each eye that is 

 always saying, 

with that sweet moon language, 

what every other eye in 

this world is 

dying to 

hear? 

"Love Poems from God."
Daniel Ladinsky ed., Penguin Compass. 2002

“Before loss there was love.
After loss, love.

Before grief there was love.
After grief, love.

Our essence is never in danger.

When all else falls away,
Our essence can shine.

So, what does love invite of us now?”

Jem Bendell

from his video “Grieve Play Love”

Control, Chaos and our Hemispheres

     Clinicians love to cure - definitively fix - the sick, the broken. And many of us, at least when we feel broken, want to be fixed-up once & for all! We all dearly love 'agency,' the sense of control, the ability to reach out, grab & hold onto what we want, and push away what we don't want.
     At some level, we realize that this idea of perfect control over our life & environment is wishful thinking, based on an a childishly unrealistic, simplistic, mechanistic, reductionist model. Life's complexity extends well beyond our comprehension, never mind control.
    However, we dread the idea of being overwhelmed by chaos - being helplessly out of control as our world crumbles around us. So to create some sense of agency, we tend to restrict our attention to manipulating whatever we can. But with this narrowed focus, many of us forget about or even become averse to the big picture that includes the most meaningful dimensions of life that cannot be controlled or even be put into words!
    Our current Western society tends to overuse the perspective of our left hemispheres, and at best ignores, at worse ridicules & actively suppresses the perspective of our right hemispheres.
    This lack of balance causes serious conflicts: rigid partisanship (political, religious, ecological, ethnic, racial, gender, economic, and even academic / educational: 'hard' sciences vs 'soft' sciences & arts) instead of harmonious tolerance, balance & collaboration. It seriously impacts the education of even our health-care professionals: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.com/2012/02/control-and-liminality.html
     Extreme positions eg towards control, often produce unintended, undesired results eg chaos.

     Iain McGilchrist spent 20 years researching & documenting the neurological basis & Western cultural rationale for a healthy balance between the two hemispheres, perhaps summarized in Reinhold Niebuhr's 'serenity prayer':
          Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
          courage to change the things I can;
          and wisdom to know the difference.

     “Attention is not just receptive, but actively creative of the world we inhabit. How we attend makes all the difference to the world we experience. And nowadays in the West we generally attend in a rather unusual way: governed by the narrowly focused, target-driven left hemisphere of the brain.

     Forget everything you thought you knew about the difference between the hemispheres, because it will be largely wrong. It is not what each hemisphere does – they are both involved in everything – but how it does it, that matters. And the prime difference between the brain hemispheres is the manner in which they attend. For reasons of survival we need one hemisphere (in humans & many animals, the left) to pay narrow attention to detail, to grab hold of things we need, while the other, the right, keeps an eye out for everything else. The result is that one hemisphere is good at utilizing the world, the other better at understanding it.
     Absent, present, detached, engaged, alienated, empathic, broad or narrow, sustained or piecemeal, attention has the power to alter whatever it meets. The play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged. How you attend to something – or don’t attend to it – matters a very great deal.
     Because of the way we prioritise the left hemisphere’s take on the world, we have ceased to appreciate the meaning of continuity & flow, instead prioritising discrete chunks of experience we call things. This has serious consequences for how we see our selves as human beings and our relationship with the wider world. … the world in which we live in the West is shaped by a set of beliefs about reality which we know from experience, and feel intuitively, to be almost certainly false. Though the consequences of this are widely deplored, we seem strangely powerless to resist it. We are as if in a trance, whistling a happy tune as we sleepwalk towards the abyss."
     Iain McGilchrist. “The Master and his Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.” Yale University Press, 2019. (An exceptionally worthwhile read IMHO)

     “It’s just not compatible with the left hemisphere’s view that there could be anything wrong with itself. It has a polished, perfectionist view of what it’s doing. It’s therefore very unwilling to accept the contrary argument. As a society I would say, I believe we exemplify this mentality in our world. 
     In a nice piece of research ... they sent questionnaires to over two thousand executives to see how much they knew about their own industries. Managers in the advertising industry were 90% confident they were correct, but were actually wrong 61% of the time; people in IT 95% confident they were correct, only 20% were right; 99% of them overestimated their success. This is the world we’re now living in. 
     Now how did we get trapped in this worldview of the left hemisphere, which is that of the static, the fixed, the certain, the isolated, in competition with others, a detached, unempathic, unflowing world, which has only one value – that of utility? As opposed to a world in which things are seen as seamlessly interconnected, flowing, never certain, constantly changing, but with which we have a relationship of care. 
     How did we get into this trap? I think there are briefly a few reasons: one is that it gives us power, it makes us powerful, and that is hugely seductive. This is the hemisphere about getting. The left hemisphere controls the right hand with which we grasp; it controls the bits of language (not all of language) the bits with which we define things and pin them down, and say we’ve grasped them – so it’s the grasping part us. That makes us powerful but it’s version of the world is also extremely simple. It’s that it’s made out of bits which can be understood, and then we’ve got there. And all the bits that don’t fit with that are sheared off from the model. And so it’s possible at the end of the day to go, ‘I’ve explained everything,’ because actually you’ve only explained the things you’ve allowed into your model. Another thing is that it’s what I call ‘the Berlusconi of the brain,’ because it’s the one that controls the media. It’s the one that actually does the talking and constructs the arguments, so it’s a piece of cake for it to make its points, whereas it’s quite difficult for the right hemisphere to express things that are subtle, often contradictory and implicit. And I think the fourth reason, at the moment, why we are trapped in this is because we’ve evolved a world out there which reflects the left hemisphere’s world inside. So all around us we have the rigid, lifeless, fixed, represented world which is that of the left hemisphere.”
       Iain McGilchrist @ Schumacher College: Things Are Not What They Seem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXiHStLfjP0
 
      “… we know intuitively that there is a dimension of ourselves and of nature which eludes us because it is too close, too general, and too all-embracing to be singled out as a particular object. This dimension is the ground of all the astonishing forms and experiences of which we are aware. Because we are aware, it cannot be unconscious, although we are not conscious of it – as an external thing. Thus we can give it a name but cannot make any definitive statement about it … 
     Our only way of apprehending it is by watching the processes and patterns of nature, and by the meditative discipline of allowing our minds to become quiet, so as to have vivid awareness of ‘what is’ without verbal comment.

     … seen as a whole, the universe is a harmony or symbiosis of patterns which cannot exist without each other. However, when it is looked at section by section we find conflict.
                       ‘for the world is a shen vessel 
                        and cannot be forced.’
     ‘Shen’ presents problems for the translator... I take it to mean that innate intelligence (or li) of each organism in particular, and of the universe as a whole, which is beyond the reach of calculation."
       Alan Watts. “Tao. The Watercourse Way.” Pantheon Books, 1975.

'Shen'

Why Cling to Bubbles in a Stream?

     It's very common, especially in our youth, not to acknowledge our limited & uncertain lifespan, and instead pretend we all live forever. Then, as acquaintances, friends & loved ones become ill & die, each one is a shock - as if death were a huge, tragic mistake, a grossly unnatural surprise. But the Buddha advised:

Thus shall you think of this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.          Buddha, Diamond Sutra

     The Buddha also advised regularly reciting and contemplating "The Five Recollections":

I am of the nature to age.
Aging is unavoidable.

I am of the nature to get ill.
Illness is unavoidable.

I am of the nature to die.
Death is unavoidable.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love
are of the nature to change.
There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings.
I cannot avoid the consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground on which I stand.

     "Contemplating these recollections encourages us to awaken from denial and avoidance. The recollections offer a pathway of nonattachment and equanimity and a deeper, more sustained appreciation of this moment, now. A lightness of being emerges when we face what is undeniably so. If we take these recollections up as a practice, we are deliberately calling these realities forth instead of simply being at their mercy, overwhelmed by the thoughts and emotions they activate. 
     ... it is not a fault to get sick and to age. We are not separate from nature.
     All sentient beings, without exception, are subject to these natural laws. This body is not ultimately in our control. This body belongs to nature. Even this mind isn't in our control. We cannot choose what arises. This mind belongs to nature. What happens when a deeper understanding of how little control we really do have leads to a diminishing or dropping out of the sense of self? Old age, sickness, and death are not dukkha {stressful / unsatisfactory / suffering} if they are not clung to as I or me or mine. When we see clearly that illness and death are not I, me, or mine, the dukkha that they ordinarily cause may lessen a great deal or even cease altogether."

       Narayan Helen Liebenson. “The Magnanimous Heart. Compassion and Love, Loss and Grief, Joy and Liberation.” Wisdom Publications, 2018.

 

Jetty - photo by P. Michael Lovas

Simple Profound Advice

     Ajahn Chah's simple, profound advice to an aging student approaching her death:

     "The Buddha told us to see the way things are and then let go of our clinging to them. Take this feeling of letting go as your refuge.
 
     The world is the way it is. If you allow it to arise in the mind and dominate consciousness, then the mind becomes obscured and can’t see itself. So whatever appears in the mind, just say ‘This isn’t my business. It’s impermanent, unsatisfactory, & not-self.’ ”

On the Path towards Wisdom

     Tejaniya encourages us to “keep practicing continuously ... Eventually wisdom will outweigh the defilements***, and you will begin to gather momentum. The practice will then become interesting; new avenues will open to you. Then you will begin to see and be part of a simpler and less complicated reality …”

      *** Defilements: “ ‘unwholesome qualities that can defile or taint the mind’ – negative qualities of mind that have the potential to make us suffer and cause trouble in our lives. Defilements in meditation practice (refer to) greed, hatred or aversion, and delusion. There are many subcategories of these three defilements …”

     We're "hard-wired" for our minds to slip into defilements: we have a fully functional brain stem that reacts automatically to even the mildest dislikes; the mildest preferences; and the many, many in-between "neutrals"; with immediate visceral feelings of, respectively: hatred, aversion, anger; or  greed, clinging, attachment; or boredom, delusion or confusion. In cave-dwelling times, this crude survival-mating focused level of consciousness helped us survive. But now, in our closely-interconnected, interdependent, collaborative world, this primitive level of consciousness causes a great deal of harm, and little if any benefit. See: https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/why-buddhism-is-true/
     

     It's also very helpful to understand how trauma ramps up the power & persistence of this fear-based level of consciousness. “If you feel safe and loved, your brain (is) specialized in exploration, play, and cooperation; if you are frightened and unwanted, it (is) specialized in managing feelings of fear and abandonment.” Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015. Fortunately, we have neuroplasticity & the ability to learn healthier ways of thinking and behaving.

     Secular philosophical & psychological wisdom studies, and all of the world's wisdom traditions advise us to intentionally mature from primitive egocentricity, towards the much more appropriate & evolved allo- & ecocentricity. 

     "Four central features of wisdom (are recognized) in both European & Asian philosophy: self-knowledge, detachment, integration, and self-transcendence. …
     (These) four features can be conceptualized as developmental stages:
     Self-knowledge is awareness of what constitutes one’s sense of self in the context of roles, relationships, and beliefs.
     Detachment refers to awareness of the transience of external aspects of one’s sense of self.
     Integration means overcoming the separation among different ‘inner selves,’ that is, accepting and integrating all facets of one’s self.
     Finally, self-transcendence refers to independence of the self of external definitions and dissolution of mental boundaries between self and others. … ‘self-transcendence is equivalent to wisdom and implies the dissolution of (self-based) obstacles to empathy, understanding, and integrity’.”
       Staudinger UM, Gluck J. "Psychological wisdom research: commonalities and differences in a growing field." Annu Rev Psychol 2011; 62: 215-41. 

Courtesy of Buddha Doodles  www.buddhadoodles.com