Desire, Noisy Ego, & Mental Torment - Merely Visitors Passing Through

      “ ‘The kilesā are not at home in our hearts; they’re merely visitors.’
         ( kilesa - defilement; a torment of mind )

     Somebody once asked a well-known Indian spiritual teacher, “What is renunciation?’ He replied, ‘Renunciation is the giving up of any sense of self’. ‘And for that do you have to give up all your possessions, give up all that you own?’ The teacher answered, ‘Above all, you have to give up the owner. 
     The act of renunciation is, of course, an important principle in Buddhism too. It is often associated with people who are in a very obvious way practicing a way of renunciation, such as monks and nuns and holy men walking the streets of India. But this is only the outward form: giving up worldly possessions as an act of renunciation. More important is the inner sense of renunciation, giving up any impulses, thoughts, feelings or emotions which are coming from a sense of ‘self’, from egoic identity.”                Ajahn Khemasiri 

        “Seeing The Way Volume 2, 2011” Aruna Publications, iBooks.


     "With the development of wisdom, you will understand that sensual desire is not pleasure; it is suffering; it is a force that inhibits the deep peace and rest you seek."


        Shaila Catherine. “Wisdom Wide and Deep. A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana.” Wisdom Publications, Boston, 2011.

Keeping Doors Open, without Serving Tea, to Energies Passing Through

     “Courage is the mastery of fear, not the absence of fear.”                   Mark Twain

     Can searing fear & terror be welcomed, & allowed to pass through, an open heart? Can I become that seamlessly porous? Can I surf the funky waves of dukkha itself? Yes, yes, yes!!

     See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2012/03/65-embracing-full-catastrophe.html

 

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 - 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