Suffering - WHEN Fully Processed ...

     “Suffering led the Buddha to enlightenment, and it may cause us, against our will, to grow in compassion, awareness, and possibly eventually peace. In Buddhism monks recite daily the Five Remembrances, which are: I will lose my youth, my health, my dear ones and everything I hold dear, and finally lose life itself, by the very nature of my being human. These are bitter reminders that the only thing that continues is the consequences of our action. The fact that all the things we hold dear and love are transient does not mean that we should love them less but … love them even more. Suffering, the Buddha said, if it does not diminish love, will transport you to the farther shore.”

        Huston Smith, Jeffery Paine. “Tales of Wonder. Adventures Chasing the Divine. An Autobiography.” HarperOne, NY, 2009.

Physically Processing Bad Things

     “When you're born a light is switched on, a light which shines up through your life. As you get older the light still reaches you, sparkling as it comes up through your memories. And if you're lucky as you travel forward through time, you'll bring the whole of yourself along with you, gathering your skirts and leaving nothing behind, nothing to obscure the light. But if a Bad Thing happens part of you is seared into place, and trapped for ever at that time. The rest of you moves onward, dealing with all the todays and tomorrows, but something, some part of you, is left behind. That part blocks the light, colours the rest of your life, but worse than that, it's alive. Trapped forever at that moment, and alone in the dark, that part of you is still alive.”
       Michael Marshall Smith, from: "Only Forward" http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/12339.Michael_Marshall_Smith

     Mindfulness practice involves physically processing "Bad Things", as they surface. We do so by meeting all the various challenging physical feelings (that naturally arise, stay a bit, then dissipate), with curiosity, acceptance, patience, and if need be, perseverance. It's important not to weave stories about these physical sensations. Physical discomfort is much, much easier to accept & manage than mental/emotional suffering.
     Mental/emotional suffering is created when we decide to create a long, painful story (self-talk) about the physical sensations. This unskillful, yet extremely common addition can maintain both physical and mental/emotional suffering for as long as we "keep picking at the scab".
     So instead, we intentionally let go of words & images, and directly experience with curiosity, and kind acceptance, all phenomena - which then behave naturally - ie are transient.
 

Mindfulness Research - Footprints in Melting Snow

     "What is so special about Wittgenstein’s methods is that they do not work in terms of abstract concepts. They work by focusing our attention on certain kinds of events occurring in the situation surrounding us. Indeed, they work by sensitizing us to the fleeting & momentary events that we are ‘struck’ by in some way, events which are novel and unrepeatable, events ... only ‘once-occurrent’ ... occurring for yet ‘another first time’. And what is important about such events, is that instead of a representational–referential understanding which can be formulated in terms of laws, principles, or rules supposedly governing repetitive events, they provoke a wholly different kind of understanding: a relational–responsive kind of understanding, not to do with what something ‘is’ in itself, but with a practical grasp of the changing, moment-by-moment links & relations between such events and their surroundings as they unfold.

     A footprint may be a very fragile & minor indentation – yet they are the imprint of & so capture something of, the living creature that has already passed by. Unlike analysis that, as it were, lays open the animal on the dissecting table, the footprint is the passing trace of something live, a trace of a moment that has already passed, beyond grasping, intangible."

        Moss D, Barnes R. Birdsong and footprints: tangibility and intangibility in a mindfulness research project. Reflective Practice 2008; 9(1): 11-22.

 

 

Poem

life


inbreath
outbreath

The Flash, the Shimmer, the Nervous Quiver - Anicca

     This cup that I hold in my hand - regardless of how I feel about it - "is already broken."

     In the movie Apocalypse Now, the meat-grinder reality of jungle war suddenly transforms into a stage full of Playboy Playmates suggestively gyrating to "Suzie Q". Just as suddenly - mass chaos erupts as love-starved soldiers storm the stage to grab hold - clinging, clinging, clinging. Helicopters whisk away the Playmates & music ... dukkha, dukkha, dukkha. Gone as if it never happened ... yet another rainbow, vapor, ephemeral moment-in-time ... anicca, anicca, anicca.

     But WHO is suffering? Anatta, anatta, anatta ...
     

movies.livemall.co

 

Anicca, Anatta, Dukkha

Transient joys
Transient neutral times
Transient sorrows
Ever-changing energies flowing through porousness
Flowing through
Flowing through

EMP building & Space Needle, Seattle, WA

Anicca - Everything is Transient

     Corporality is transient, feeling is transient, perception is transient, mental formations are transient, consciousness is transient.       Buddha 

Prayer Wheel, Samish Island, WA