Everyday Mind's Blindness

     Most of us (sort of) realize that we don't "stop to smell the roses" enough. But who has time for such luxuries? After all, doesn't "everyday mind" insist that we're either a hunter or rabbit, and that it's always rabbit-hunting season?
     No wonder we miss out on so much - a huge chunk of life that doesn't involve survival / mating. Many people, events & things don't even enter our consciousness.

     “… organisms don’t pay much attention to … (things that are) not important in Darwinian terms (spreading genes). … 
     My older brother, after reaching the phase of middle age when women no longer paid much attention to him, said, ‘It isn’t that they think I’m bad looking. They just don’t realize I exist.’ Exactly! As a heterosexual woman walks down a city block, there are tons of things she could focus on, so the first job of her perceptual apparatus is to filter out things that, with the most cursory, even unconscious appraisal, are seen to not merit extended, conscious appraisal. Sadly, that category of things includes my brother …”
     Robert Wright. "Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment." Simon & Schuster, 2017.

Watershed Wood Designs   watershedwooddesigns.ca

Reading and Practice

     “… Buddhist practice … emphasizes the realization of  ‘nondwelling mind’: a mind that does not identify with any particular forms, including thought-forms such as ideologies, whether religious or secular.”
       David R. Loy. “A New Buddhist Path. Enlightenment, Evolution and Ethics in the Modern World.” Wisdom Publications, 2015.

      It's remarkable how easily the Buddha's (and other sages') wisdom teachings can be misinterpreted to fit the relatively early stage of consciousness of those who handed down the teachings orally & by transcription. Literal dogmatic interpretation of such writings is clearly problematic. In the Buddhist and other meditative traditions, meditation practice acts as a corrective to help us gain direct experiential knowledge.

     “Wisdom is what this practice is about. It is the elusive and hard-earned quality of mind we so desperately try to achieve. When found, it will become the compass that shows the way as we try to penetrate and understand the three mind-defiling elements of greed, aversion, and delusion. The antidote to delusion is wisdom, and the byproduct of wisdom is happiness, not the sensory happiness that we spend most of our lives chasing but genuine wisdom happiness that comes from the insight, information, and knowledge gained by continually being aware. The wisdom that must be present in the mind when meditating should at its most basic level be:
     1) the information you will receive from reading or listening to dhamma-related topics.
     2) The wisdom that comes from curiosity and interest must also be present. This investigative faculty of mind is necessary for developing further wisdom.
     3) Experiential wisdom arises out of a mindfulness practice that has both (1 & 2 above) firmly in place.” 

       Sayadaw U Tejaniya. “Where Awareness Becomes Natural. A Guide to Cultivating Mindfulness in Daily Life.” Shambhala, 2016.

Our True Nature?

     Many of us get impatient, frustrated & angry with the tiresome imperfections of daily living. We dearly want the "death-by-a-thousand-cuts" aspects of life to be over & done with, so we can finally be the way we're meant to be, enjoying an ideal, pleasant existence. 
     BUT we forget that such aversion to real life, and grasping for some theoretical ideal is the basic cause of suffering. 
     How does life change when we effortlessly shift from our "ordinary mind" - the stressed-out "hurt inner child" operating system, and into our wise, loving operating system? The answer can only be experienced directly for ourselves.
       Loch Kelly. “Shift into Freedom. The Science and Practice of Open-hearted Awareness.” Sounds True, 2015.


     "First things, first. Our coming together is first and foremost to recognize our fundamental nature and realize the ground of being. The only true freedom is to be That, fully in the world. The embodiment of this realization is an extraordinary ordinariness – an expression of seamless wisdom and love. Often there is still a thread that says the ‘me’ is going to get it; the ‘me’ is going to wake up. And it just isn’t true. It actually wakes up out of the ‘me’." 
       Sharon Landrith  https://www.sharon-landrith.com/about/

      “The teachings we need most are those that will actually strengthen and inspire our practice. It is all very well to receive teachings as high as the sky, but the sky is not that easy to grasp. Start with practices which you can truly assimilate – developing determination to be free of ordinary concerns, nurturing love and compassion – and as you gain stability in your practice you will eventually be able to master all the higher teachings.” 
       Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

“If I create from the heart, 
nearly everything works … 
if from the head, 
almost nothing.” 
       Marc Chagall

Silence, Stillness and Identity

     “Silence is the basis and the background of everything. We are an expression of this primordial silence and stillness. But the habits of our mind overlay this simple truth and keep us from experiencing ourselves as a full-spectrum human being. 
     … we awaken to our true nature and experience the deep nourishment that comes with this realization. As we recognize and embody our true nature, our conditioning naturally dissolves and we see that when we rest in silence we can move into anything in life, including chaos and sorrow, with a sense of ease and well-being. 
     … we learn that deep inquiry is not something the mind does, but the process of love perceiving its own nature through your physical form.” 

        Sharon Landrith      https://www.sharon-landrith.com/about/

Cheryl Braganza       "The Healing Cloak"     picturetrail.com/cherylbraganza

The Art of Savoring

     “The root of the word savor comes from the Latin word saporem which means to taste and is also the root of sapient which is the word for wisdom. Another definition I love is ‘to give oneself over to the enjoyment of something.’ When I give myself over to the experience of savoring, wisdom emerges. Savoring calls for a kind of surrender. We have all kinds of stories in our minds about why we perhaps shouldn’t give ourselves over to enjoyment, whether out of guilt or shame or a sense of fear out of what might happen. Yet we are called to yield to the goodness of life, to bask in it. It is an affirmation and celebration …

      Savoring calls me to slowness: I can't savor quickly.

      Savoring calls me to spaciousness: I can't savor everything at once.

      Savoring calls me to mindfulness: I can't savor without being fully present.

      It also calls for a fierce and wise discernment about how I spend my time and energy. Now that I know deep in my bones the limits of my life breaths, how do I choose to spend those dazzling hours? What are the experiences ripening within me that long for exploration? Do I want to waste my time skating on the surface of things, in a breathless rush to get everything done when all I need is here in this moment?

      There is also a seasonal quality to savoring – this season, what is right before me, right now, is to be savored. It will rise and fall, come into fullness and then slip away. When I savor I pay attention to all the moments of that experience without trying to change it.

      And finally, there is a tremendous sweetness to this open-hearted way of being in the world. Everything becomes grace because I recognize it could all be different, it could all be gone. Rather than grasp at how I think this moment should be, I savor the way things are.”

      excerpted & adapted by the author, from: 
     Christine Valters Painter. “The Wisdom of the Body: A Contemplative Journey to Wholeness for Women.” Sorin Books, 2017.

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.’ ”

Minding the Mind

     WHILE feeling safe & loved, WE ENGAGE in exploration, play, & cooperation.
     WHILE feeling frightened & unwanted, managing feelings of fear & abandonment TAKES OVER. 
       Underlined words from: Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015.

       How rarely we feel completely safe & loved! Perhaps even more sad is being so used to feeling frightened & unwanted, that we assume this to be "normal".

     Safe & loved feels like: 
• while hugging someone you love & who loves you; 
• while looking after a 2-year-old grandchild; 
• while holding a puppy's face in your hands & staring into each other's eyes; 
• while doing work that you find very meaningful & rewarding eg preparing a delicious, healthy meal for loved ones; 
• while "struck speechless" by the beauty of nature;  
• while quietly reading a book that you love; etc.

      Frightened & unwanted feels like: 
• "craving" - lacking, unloved, lonely, alone, small, vulnerable, afraid, anxious, longing, empty, hungry, thirsty, impotent, needy, wishing "if only I could have / do / be X, THEN I would be happy"; 
• "aversion" - angry, bitter, hating, intolerant, judgmental, disgusted, cynical, rigid, violent, wishing "if only I could avoid / prevent / eliminate X, THEN I would be happy"; 
• "delusion & confusion" - not being able to see things as they are, but only from the heavily biased perspective of our own troubled mind-heart. We feel disoriented, confused, troubled, bored, forgetful, hopeless, nihilistic, sick-and-tired of our repetitive thoughts / self-talk, moods & how our mind works, wishing for clarity, to wake up from what feels like a nightmare. 

     It's critically important for our own & others' quality of life, and even safety & survival, that we detect as early as possible, when we feel frightened & unwanted or any of it's many manifestations. 
     If this "life-or-death" alarm bell is a false alarm or gross exaggeration - and in modern times it almost always is - then we can, and I humbly suggest that we must, intentionally train ourselves to quickly shift back into feeling safe & loved with its associated wise, kind, conscious behavior.

     Of course we all tend to think that most others certainly behave from this primitive survival-based (frightened & unwanted) level of consciousness, we ourselves are, if not consistently, then mostly reside in the evolved wisdom-based (safe & loved) level of consciousness & behavior. 
     So how do these statements sound?: “No one to be, nothing to do, nowhere to go” and: "Whatever appears in the mind, just say ‘This isn’t my business. It’s impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-self.’" 
     If these sound strange, if not irritatingly "against the grain" of all that we know, then we are usually in survival mode, and WHILE we are, survival mode is at least distorting if not completely controlling all our thoughts, emotions & behavior. We've all had varying amounts of trauma in our lives, but few of us think we've had enough to cause PTSD. But what if ALL of us suffer from some degree of PTSD?

    Mindfulness training involves learning practices with which we intentionally, consciously, continuously, notice as soon as we're in this primitive survival-based (frightened & unwanted) level of consciousness, accept it as our natural biological heritage, then effortlessly shift back into our natural evolved wisdom-based (safe & loved) level.

Katie Hoffman      "TU"      www.katiehoffman.com