Why Listen Deeply?

     The world's constant hustle & bustle and our never-ending self-talk (heavily influenced by "negativity bias") dominate our attention & lives. No wonder it's rare for anything new - especially the quiet voice of wisdom - to enliven us.

  
          “Because the volume of the world is so loud,
          it’s drowning out the whisper from the heart.

          That whisper in your heart
          may not have wings,
          but it has the power to fly.”               Muhammad Iqbal

 

     We can, however, learn to intentionally shift our attention away from noise, and increasingly towards what we deeply value: the more subtle, nuanced, far more meaningful, interesting, PLEASANT aspects of life. This shift is like switching from the clanging of metal garbage cans to quiet classical music. It takes a while for the ringing in our ears to subside, & develop the skill to actively listen with our whole self to all that is quiet, gentle, meaningful.

 

          ‘How can we claim the years have taught us anything,
          if we’ve not learned to sit and listen
          to the secret that whispers in the brooks?’           Carl Jung

     "So if I look at a fire, for example, with ego-consciousness, I see a fire. But if I gaze into the flames, in that contemplative gazing at the flames, I sense in the flames the intimations of the holiness and the mystery manifesting itself as this flame. That’s why I think when we try to talk about it, we’re trying to grab it in words. But if we sit in meditative silence infused with love, the state of wonder, we intimately taste directly for ourselves for which no words can be found. That’s why we long for the experience to which our words are alluding to, and how to stabilize in it, and how to share it with people.”
       James Finley PhD  https://batgap.com/james-finley/

 

     “No relationship can thrive without the sense of spaciousness that comes with stillness. Meditate or spend silent time in nature together. When going for a walk or sitting in the car or at home, become comfortable with being in stillness together. Stillness cannot and need not be created. Just be receptive to the stillness that is already there, but is usually obscured by mental noise.”  Eckhart Tolle

 

     “We are on a voyage of discovery with no endpoint ... an endless exploration of how to be in the world for the benefit of ourselves and all beings.” Adyashanti

 

      I highly recommend Bill Morgan's 10-minute talk "Why Practice Meditation?" - near the bottom of the page, "August 16": https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/resources/daily-sit/

Alexandrya Eaton  "Pink Apple Blossoms"  fogforestgallery.ca

Towards a Maturity that Surpasses Common Understanding

     Some of us are sufficiently motivated to work towards a state in which we are deeply happy, quite independent of the usual assumed prerequisites of happiness. This requires dedicated, wise meditation practice, patience & perseverance.

     The longish quote below is from Jim Finley PhD, an advanced, experienced, mature meditator in both Christian & Buddhist traditions. In this talk, he was addressing a Christian audience (hence some of the terminology), but his message resonates with universal, timeless wisdom - see: http://www.johnlovas.com/2020/07/two-levels-of-consciousness.html

     "One sign of spiritual maturity is that a person is in a stable habitual stance of non-violence. They are somebody who respects and even reverences the gift of being a human being. And therefore they do not intentionally do anything to violate that, compromise that, and betray that. They’re like a field with no stones in it. They’re not part of the problem. But they’re there as a non-violent presence in the world.

     Another characteristic is that the person is a nurturing person. They’re nurturing. Realizing how fragile life is, how delicate and mysterious it is, they’re always there, ‘How can I be present to this situation that will help the people feel nurtured, feel met to create an atmosphere of growth and security?’ And so they have this dual quality of being a nurturing person that respects, even reverences the gift of life. And they’re a non-violent person.

     Another characteristic, I think we can look for in ourself, is that the mature spiritual person has a heightened response to suffering. … They don’t live in some kind of ethereal realm above sensitivity to those around them. But a mark of a mature spiritual person is a heightened sensitivity to the preciousness of people, and in that preciousness, they have a heightened sensitivity to their suffering. 

     Another characteristic is that in being sensitive to suffering, they pay the price for that. You can’t have your valet carry your cross up the hill. You can’t be a genuinely caring person by proxy and go send someone on your behalf to be a kind person, while you stay home and grumble. You have to put yourself out there to let yourself be in the presence of the one who suffers. And when you’re in their presence, you feel something of the heat of their suffering. You see it in the look in their eyes, you see it in the world they live in, you see it in the situation they’re in – sometimes pretty overwhelming situations. And you feel that, you feel that. This is why we have to pace ourselves at our tolerance level for suffering. Because if we’re indifferent to it, nothing changes. But if we don’t humbly acknowledge our limits, we move in too close and we drown in it. So how do we pace ourself to be present to suffering – in our spouse, in our children, in our grandchildren, the people on the news? How do we stay open & grounded & present to the suffering of the world and keep a joyful, grounded, wakeful heart? How do we do that?

     And therefore, another characteristic is this. The mature spiritual person is a non-violent, nurturing person, who’s sensitive to suffering, responds and meets the suffering – ‘How can I be helpful?’ – but here’s the key: they live in an inner peace that’s not dependent on the outcome of the effort to help. For us in the ego, we’ve not yet come to mature spiritual awareness. It’s not like this for us, because our inner peace is dependent on the outcome of the effort. It kind of goes like this: ‘You want to talk about inner peace, I’ll tell you what, you tell me that my cancer diagnosis isn’t real, and it’ll go away - I’ll have inner peace. But don’t talk to me about inner peace. And I’m struggling with this.’ ‘You talk about inner peace. I’ll tell you about inner peace – my marriage is falling apart here. And the more I look at it, I don’t know if it’s going to make it. And I don’t even believe in divorce. And it’s crumbling.’ – or – ‘My son or daughter’s marriage is falling apart, or they’re with someone in a hurtful situation. You want inner peace? I’d like to restore things, and heal this situation, and deliver the people I care about because I’m afraid they’re going under here. If you can do that for me, I’ll be happy to talk about inner peace. But don’t talk to me about inner peace.’ ‘You know about inner peace? My home went into foreclosure. We have to move out. I don’t know what we’re going to do. You talk to me about inner peace? Get my home back.’ That’s how we talk. But the mature spiritual person, they feel that too, because they’re a human being. It doesn’t mean they’re not angry. It doesn’t mean that it’s not sad. It doesn’t mean any of that. But rather that their heart is established in the realm of the spirit that utterly transcends the circumstances of this world, even as it permeates through and through and through the intimate hurting edges of life in this world. The realm of the spirit is a realm that utterly transcends suffering. It’s a realm of oceanic abyss of eternal peace. ... This is the peace that’s utterly beyond time and space. But it’s not dualistically other, like we’re trying to look for it, look for it, look for it. This peace that utterly transcends the suffering of the world, mysteriously permeates the suffering of this world. It permeates your heart; it permeates my heart; it permeates the heart of everybody who lives. The mature spiritual person is established in that peace. 

     Elizabeth Kubler-Ross talks about the stages of dying, and the last stage of dying is acceptance. Not everyone comes to the stage of acceptance. They go through the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, & acceptance. And Elizabeth Kubler-Ross says that when you’re in the presence of someone who’s come to the stage of acceptance, and you go to visit them on their death-bed, it’s uncanny to be with them, because although they’re still here, they’ve already crossed over, and they’re established in the realm of peace that is not threatened by what’s happening to them. This is freedom from the tyranny of death in the midst of death. And so the one who comes to the acceptance of death is the mature spiritual person. So it’s nice not to wait till the nursing home to do this. Why not try it now? ‘I only have a few hours left, I hope I make it in time.’ 

     Imagine you have a friend who says, 'Might you come with me and visit my wife who’s in hospice?' And you gladly go because you’ve known them for years. Your children and their children played together. You remember when she got the diagnosis; you followed them together through the course of the treatment; there were moments of hope when she was in remission thinking she’d get better, then finding out that it wasn’t. It’s just been an incredibly sad, sad situation. And so you say you’d gladly go. And you go into the room and she’s in the bed. And there’s a chair in the corner – you sit over in the chair. And he approaches the bed. She’s having a hard time talking. And he says to her, ‘You don’t need to say anything, we’ll just sit here.’ And he pulls up a chair and he just holds her hand. You’re watching this. It is so, so, sad. This is sad. And yet it’s not just sad. You can feel it filling the room – the deathless gift of love. We know we’ve learned to love someone when we glimpse in them that which is too beautiful to die, (Gabriel Marcel) and love never dies, because God is love, and God’s love is incarnate in their love for each other. It doesn’t take the sadness away, as a matter of fact the person may have to go through a very bumpy road for a while. But if they let it, what comes bubbling up through, it kind of mellows the heart. And how fragile life is. And when you’re watching them together this way, you almost want to get down and kneel on the floor like you’re on holy ground – like there’s something here that’s incredibly important – to all of us, all the time. And my life would be so much better if I had this awareness every moment of my life. 

     These people I live with every day, soon we will not be living with each other, very soon. We’ll all be gone. Life’s a temporary arrangement. Meister Ekhart says, ‘What is the joy that death does not have the power to destroy, and how might I discover it?’ This is the great question for all of us. How not to let the conditions of our mind & heart be determined by the conditions that we’re going through. What if the only happiness we know is the happiness we can have because of conditions conducive to happiness – my health is good, family is good, my loved ones? I think I’m pretty good here. But if I don’t have conditions conducive to happiness, I do not have happiness. But what is the happiness that’s not dependent on conditions conducive to happiness? Like a deathless love that utterly transcends all of this even as it so mysteriously permeates our body, permeates our heart, permeates our life, and how can I learn to find my way to that happiness? This is a deep thing. … How can I learn to find inner peace that’s not dependent on conditions conducive to peace? 

     ... And how can I find this? When I hear it spoken of, it speaks to my heart. I know this is true. But it’s hard to find it. Why is it hard to find it? Because the gravitational field of circumstances is very strong. We spin and spin, and we spin out towards the edge. And we get caught up in the momentum of the day’s demands. In the momentum of the day’s demands, we’re skimming over the surface of the depth of the life we’re living. And it’s hard to find the off-switch. Thomas Merton once said, ‘If you wait for the world to cooperate, for it to politely step aside so you can become contemplative, you’ll never do it.’ You have to make the decision. Someone once said, ‘To be a contemplative in today’s society, is like trying to make a U-turn on the freeway at rush hour.’ It goes against the stream. But if I don’t do it … I’m disappearing here. And wouldn’t it be great to wake up to what really, really, really, really matters in every single moment of my life – to sink the taproot of my life in that and live by it every day? I think that’s worth something. 

     Rollo May, the existential psychotherapist, has a lovely little essay called ‘The Pause.’ He said if you look at an Olympic high-diver, when they stand on the platform, just before they dive, they pause. And he said the dive is eloquent, because they dive out of the pause. He said if their ego would stand there – all these people are watching me, cameras are rolling – their ego would dive, and it wouldn’t do it. It’s eloquent when you’re grounded in the pause, because then the taproot of the diver’s heart is sunk in a certain blessedness, and they somehow flow with that. Rollo May says also, when people are speaking, when they’re really speaking from their heart, that there are a lot of little pauses where the speaker doesn’t know exactly what they’re going to say next. Notice when you’re having a really intimate conversation with each other, and it’s really happening, you’re right there, notice it’s unrehearsed, it is unrehearsed. Notice when someone’s hurting, and you say something that helps, and you don’t know how you knew how to say that. And so if we can pause, and relax into the graciousness of ourselves, God can flow through that, and little by little, by little that can become a habit. And this is prayer and meditation." 

     "The Peace that Surpasses Understanding" with Dr. James Finley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q31dpWE7Nw4 

 

Suezan Aikins "Sound of Wings" Japanese Woodblock www.fogforestgallery.ca

Towards Awakening ...

     Life can, at least at times, feel an awful lot like a bad dream. So some of us start meditation practice with the aim of waking up from our personal nightmare. The changes we undergo always surprise - in a good way!

    “Awakening is not going to magically solve all of our problems, but it can become a foundation from which a more intimate, honest, loving, and open-minded participation in the human experience can flower.” Adyashanti

    "Most beginners start with the idea that meditation is supposed to be peaceful. If they feel peaceful, they conclude that they are doing things right. Soon enough a disturbing thought or emotion erupts, and this is identified as a problem. We do not like disturbances. We start off with this dualistic preference. We want smooth ocean waters with no waves. When the waves come, we say we cannot meditate; or we assume that the presence of the waves means we are not meditating correctly. But the waves keep coming anyway, always. It is how we perceive them that changes. We can relate to these waves as threatening monsters and try to push them away. We can apply certain mental techniques to subdue them; or we can pretend not to notice them or try to deny their presence. But there is no liberation in trying to get rid of the waves; and actually, if you examine the mind that is trying to get rid of the waves, you will discover that it’s stuck on the problem. It is making a mountain out of a molehill. We can also tell ourselves intellectually, These waves are essentially empty. We can play with the ideas and concepts of emptiness and use intellectual logic to convince ourselves that the wave is not really a monster. But our hearts still feel the threat, and react to protect ourselves from it. This describes the first stage of working with the mind.

     In the next stage, we are introduced to resting the mind in the spacious, nonconceptual aspect of mind that transcends the limited self. The waves might still be terrifying, but we begin to glimpse the boundless expanse of water beneath the surface, and this gives us more confidence to let them be. We do not yet see them as just waves, but our perspective has become so much bigger than the waves. Our personal stories of fear and loss, of rejection and self-recrimination are there – but they do not pervade every bit of space in our heads. Our fixed minds have loosened up a little; and once we recognize that our own version of reality exists within a vast impersonal experience of reality, these same stories do not disturb us as much. We might begin to think, Oh there’s a wave forming on the surface of my mind. Or, There’s a monster in my head. Okay, no problem. We can acknowledge the problem without reacting to it. We see it, but we do not feel it as much as we did earlier. The understanding of emptiness is dropping from the intellectual head to the experiential, feeling heart. The ratio is shifting: The more we rest in recognition of the spacious empty mind, and the more we embody the wisdom of emptiness, the less impact the disturbances have. The wave is there, but now it is just a tiny movement in the vastness of the ocean. But at this point, we still get stuck on the surface with the waves, and lose touch with the ocean beneath.

     In the third stage, the wave no longer appears as a problem. It’s still a wave – big or small – but we don’t get stuck in it. We have become comfortable resting within the ocean itself.

     The ocean does not become calm and still. That is not the nature of the ocean. But now we have become so familiar with the full expanse of the ocean that even the biggest waves no longer bother us. This is how we can now experience our thoughts and emotions – even those we have spent our lives trying to be free of. Every movement of the mind, and every emotional reaction, is still just a small wave on the vast surface of the awakened mind.

     But this is not freedom from distress and anxiety. It is freedom that can be experienced with stress and anxiety. We are liberated from suffering by correctly perceiving reality; this means that we have the insight and experience to know that our minds are so much vaster than we generally think they are. We are not the size and shape of our worries. To recognize reality as-it-is makes recognition and liberation simultaneous.”

     Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Helen Tworkov. “In Love with the World. A Monk’s Journey through the Bardos of Living and Dying.” Spiegel & Grau, 2019.

W. Jim Lee photograph

A Breath of Fresh Air

     Central to Zen meditation (zazen) is maintaining attention on the breath in the lower abdomen (hara). With patient, persistent practice, this cultivates both a stabilizing & energizing force - anchor, ballast & power plant - not just during meditation, but throughout life. This practice is central to all Chinese, Japanese, & other Eastern martial arts & is the basis of "core strength" in gymnastics, diving, dance, figure skating etc.

     A baby sleeping on her back will breathe slowly, regularly, the chest remaining still, the abdomen slowly rising & falling. This is normal, healthy abdominal (diaphragmatic) breathing. When a deep breath is taken, first the abdomen rises (due to the diaphragm bowing towards the stomach, thus displacing the abdominal organs outwards), then near the end of the inhalation, the (intercostal) muscles between the ribs become activated, expanding the chest. On exhalation, the intercostal muscles relax, the chest returns to normal, then the diaphragm relaxes, allowing the abdomen to return to normal.

     This is very efficient breathing and is naturally slower than the way many today breathe - chest breathing - which is intentionally (self-consciously) holding the abdomen in, and breathing primarily in the upper chest.

     James Nestor wrote a very interesting short article (based on his book: "Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art"): https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jul/26/every-breath-you-take-the-lost-art-of-breathing?utm_source=pocket-newtab  In it he writes about the benefits of abdominal breathing:

     "But lest we forget, nature is simple but subtle. For me, the perfect breath is this: inhale for about 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds. That’s 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 litres of air. You can practice this perfect breathing for a few minutes, or a few hours. When we breathe like this, breathing practitioners suggest that circulation in the brain and body will increase while the burden on the heart decreases. All the while the diaphragm – that umbrella-shaped muscle in our chests – will drop lower and rise higher, allowing more air to enter the lungs and assisting in pushing blood throughout the body. For this reason, the diaphragm is sometimes referred to as 'the second heart', because it not only beats to its own rhythm but also affects the rate and strength of the heartbeat."

     A key component needs to be added - the quality of our relationships. A surprising number of us relate to our own breath much like the new owner of a car who has absolutely no interest in or affection for their car other than to use it to go places. Disconnection / dissociation from not only our own breath, but also from the rest of our body, from our own deepest values, from our family, friends & co-workers, from our community, from the environment, from nature, from the present moment, from our very life - is more common than we realize AND is profoundly alienating, lonely & unhealthy.

     A small but important step towards re-establishing a healthy, normal relationship with life is through our breath. A normal healthy relationship is modeled by our hands. How do our left & right hands naturally relate to each other? That's a deep question to silently ponder - and then bring to ALL of our relationships.

     We can all use a breath of fresh air in our lives.

Freedom

Increasingly we restrict our life to the self-talk swirling in our own head. The more time we spend online, the more we're swept up in the global mind storm. It's as if humanity has unwittingly found itself immersed in one huge hot tub, filled not with healing salts, but neuroses. See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-highest-service.html

“A mystic sees beyond the illusion of separateness into the intricate web of life in which all things are expressions of a single Whole. You can call this web ‘God, the Tao, the Great Spirit, the Infinite Mystery, Mother or Father,’ but it can be known only as love.” Joan Z. Borysenko 

A seeker once asked a Sufi Master to teach him “What is Heaven?"

The Master replied, “Heaven is Love in your heart.”

The student then asked: “And what is Hell?”

to which the Master responded,

“Hell is the absence of that.”         Sufi story as told to us by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

"Imagine love wants to see
your true face

Imagine that nothing matters
except love

Imagine love as you

Imagine love as everything
you’ve ever given attention to

Imagine love abides in difference

Imagine love as a force
that gives us meaning

Imagine love abhors a vacuum

Imagine love wants to know love

Imagine everything matters
because love is real

Imagine love is a power
uncontainable & inconceivable

Imagine love as language, as selfless action,
as water, as purslane, as voles, as dragonflies, as wind

Try to imagine a love
able to rise whole into thin air,
invisible to our eyes
holding our entire awareness
on the thin new blade
of a brightness soon to come

Imagine the imperfections of love
that love adores

Imagine love imagining
your radical truth &
trusting your courage
your vision
your journey
to recognize
your self
in vastness"                                Poem by Qayyum Johnson


“Inside the chaos, build a temple of love.”           Rune Lazuli

Kind Awareness

    The more deeply we learn to live, the less we value & busy ourselves with material possessions, most experiences, achievements & social status (our own & others'); and the more we simply value & embody kind awareness - intimacy & unconditional love.
     The journey is often on "a long and winding road":

     “Painful self-doubt and self-criticism are epidemic in our culture, and can wield a power that is enormously destructive and paralysing. Although perhaps the seeds of such distortions of view are only completely eradicated through (deep meditative insight), in most cases it is vital to find various means to at least somewhat disempower their claims right at the beginning of the path. There are so many helpful possibilities and a great deal could be said in relation to these difficult inner constellations. Here though, we will just mention a few things very briefly.
     Perhaps the most important is to reiterate the wisdom of proceeding gradually (in our meditation practice)... By witnessing the freeing success of one’s efforts step by step, confidence develops naturally. Implicit in this statement, however, is that we each need to find what actually works for us in meditation. Very often a large part of what underlies the proliferation of self-doubt in relation to practice is that we have not yet discovered ways of working in meditation that we can really feel for ourselves are helpful. With experimentation we can find out; and once we do, self-doubt begins to melt as confidence slowly develops.
     We might emphasize too the importance of kindness in meditation in general. And in particular, the gradual transformative and inexorable healing power that comes through devotion to regular loving-kindness (metta) practice should not be underestimated. Here again, it is absolutely vital to find ways of cultivating metta that work for you. There is no ‘right’ way of doing that. Creativity, playfulness, and experimentation are indispensable.
     Often untapped, there is also an equally great power accessible in heartfully connecting with our own deepest aspirations. Self-criticism tends to squash these aspirations and obscure our connection with them. Conversely though, tuning into & sustaining a focus on the felt force of these aspirations within oneself – in ways that allow them to gather strength, and allow the being to open to that strength – can significantly undermine the dynamics of self-criticism.”
       Rob Burbea. “Seeing That Frees. Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising.” Hermes Amara Publications, 2014. - an excellent book for experienced meditators.

     I HIGHLY recommend Bill Morgan's wonderful 10-minute talk on being kinder to ourselves during meditation (followed by a 20-minute meditation), after clicking the link below, scroll to the bottom of the page & play the video immediately below "July 21": https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/resources/daily-sit/

In the Newness of Each Moment ...

     A chronic sense of discontent haunts most of us. "I can't get no satisfaction" as the song goes. We assume that 'if only this' or 'if only that' THEN I'd be happy. If not happiness, then at least a temporary dulling of this insatiable hunger in our belly should be attainable 'if only' I work hard enough, long enough, smart enough, etc, etc. Being trapped in & being driven by discontent leads to endless negative consequences: workaholism, other addictions & compulsive behaviors, burnout, nihilism etc.
     Meditation practice can bring much-needed clarity to our lives.

     “At the base of the conditioned mind is a wanting. This wanting takes many forms. It wants to be secure. It wants to be happy. It wants to survive. It wants to be loved. It also has specific wants: objects of desire, friendships, food, this color or that color, this kind of surrounding or some other kind. There’s wanting not to have pain. There’s wanting to be enlightened. There’s wanting to be as we wish they were.
     Our daydreams are imaginings of getting what we want; nightmares of being blocked from what we want. The planning mind tries to assure satisfaction. Most thought is based on the satisfaction of desires. Therefore, much thought has at its root a dissatisfaction with what is. Wanting is seeking elsewhere. Completeness is being right here.
     When we see the depth of wanting in the mind, we see the depth of dissatisfaction because wanting can’t be satisfied: when we get finished with one desire there’s always another. As long as we’re trying to satisfy desire, we’re increasing wanting.
     Ironically, when we experience the depth of dissatisfaction in the wanting mind there follows a great joy. Because when we see that no object of mind can in itself satisfy, then nothing that arises can draw us out and we begin to let go because there is nothing worth holding onto. The more we see how the mind wants, the more we see how wanting obscures the present. To realize that there is nothing to hold onto that can offer lasting satisfaction shows us there is nowhere to go and nothing to have and nothing to be – and that’s freedom.
     When I first heard the Buddhist ideas about suffering, I strongly resented and resisted them. I thought it was a pessimistic trip. I thought, ‘Oh this is Buddhist stuff from the East, where half of the children die before they’re five years old. Of course they think the world’s full of suffering, people are starving all around them and lying dead in the streets. But we’re not suffering here! I’m not suffering, damn it!” But seeing the scope of my wanting showed me how deeply and subtly dissatisfaction created my personal world, and that seeing freed me from much grasping, from thinking that all my wants had to be satisfied, that I had to compulsively respond to everything that arose in my mind. I saw that things can be a certain way without needing to be acted on or judged or even pushed aside. They can simply be observed.
     When I saw how vast, how potent desire is in the mind, I became frightened. I thought there was no way out, not realizing that the power by which I had recognized this condition of suffering was itself the way out. Gradually, seeing the dissatisfactory nature of much of the content of mind was opening a path to freedom. When we see that what we’re grasping is on fire, we stop reaching for it. Slowly, the mind is reconditioned to see what it’s doing.
     And we discover there are many ways that desires cause this dissatisfaction. There are, for instance, things we want that may never come our way, or things we only get once in a while, or which don’t stay for long. There are also things we get, and, after we get them, we don’t want – which is really disconcerting. Sometimes I see this with my children. They will want something so badly that we’ll go from store to store until we find it. Then, we get it and an hour later they’re saying, ‘I wish I hadn’t gotten this … I wanted the blue one.’ That’s really the heartbreaker. And, that’s in all of us. We want and we want and we want … and nothing can permanently satisfy us because not only does the thing we want change, but our wants change too. Everything is changing all the time.
     Can we think of any pain in our life that was not caused by change? But when we deeply experience this flux we don’t recoil in fear of what might be coming but rather begin to open to how things are. We don’t get lost in fatalistic imaginings or ‘noting matters’ nihilism, but instead recognize that everything matters equally.
     When the wanting becomes the object of observation, we watch with a clear attention that isn’t colored by judgment or choice; it is simply bare attention with nothing added: an openness to receive things as they are. We see that wanting is an automatic, conditioned urge in the mind. And we watch without judging ourselves for wanting. We don’t impatiently want to be rid of wanting. We simply observe it.
     Only that bare attention, that non-wantingness that can just be in the moment, has the power to decondition our compulsive reaction to wanting. It disconnects the intense pull of conditioning toward satisfying its wants. Each moment of non-wanting is a moment of freedom. Mindfulness allows that non-wanting. When there is just clear attention, when there is just watching, there’s not wanting. If you’re watching desire, wanting doesn’t continue to seek the object of satisfaction, wanting itself becomes the object of attention and the momentum that leads to action is absorbed.
     When we come to see what is freeing and what is not, we come to appreciate what will create more grasping, more painful wanting, and what will take us to wisdom and set us free.
     As this practice matures, we come to trust ourselves more. Buddha spoke about these teachings as being ‘open-handed.’ The nature of these teachings is ‘come taste for yourself; it’s for all to see.’ Experience it for yourself. We practice not because we like the teacher or the appealing way the teachings are offered or the people who are practicing the teachings, or even because we admire someone who seems to be working with the method. When we taste if for ourselves, that taste of freedom convinces us.” 
       Stephen Levine. “A Gradual Awakening.” Anchor Books, 1989.

     “Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do. It is also the most fruitful. To heal means to meet ourselves in a new way – in the newness of each moment where all is possible and nothing is limited to the old.” Stephen Levine

Rebecca Burke - Deer - oil on canvas 2019 fogforestgallery.ca