The Mindfulness Corner

 

This is a space we use to muse. Here are some simple offerings that we hope are helpful to encourage your practice. (These writings are for reflection and are written as aids to our practice, they do not represent the views of the Sangha at large or Pebble Hill Church, where we practice) The gift of refuge       Serves us to be             Truly human   In Buddhist practice we may use three candles to support our mindfulness, our practice of sitting walking, our practice of spiritual refreshment. These three candles are lit to represent the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. These three candles are lit to remind us of the importance and presence of refuge.   For the sake of brevity, the Buddha is one who successfully traveled the entire distance to the other shore of understanding and liberation from confusion, the Dharma is the body of wisdom and the way of life that supports the journey, the Sangha is the fellowship of practitioners that walk the path together.   These three candles serve to remind us of the active presence of freedom and support for our practice, they are referred to as the Three Refuges. As we cultivate a deeper appreciation for them (and that appreciation doesn’t have to do anything at all with Buddhism or becoming a Buddhist) we develop an affinity for taking refuge inside ourselves.   As we become more intimate with the practice of stillness and silence, the gift of refuge increases within us. We derive an inner strength to witness and relate to the joys and complications of our fast changing outer landscape. By taking refuge in the real we become more capable of navigating the vicissitudes of the unreal, and this capacity to discern the difference also naturally matures within us.   Through no particular effort to accomplish anything, these gifts blossom within us. The gift of refuge is truly remarkable; it is like the mighty oak growing out of a tiny seed.   J.P.    August 14, 2008        Meditation is simple      Do nothing            And less than that   We practice effortlessness. Of course, you can’t assert effortlessness; you have to tolerate everything inside yourself that objects to effortlessness, and that is the heart and soul of the practice.   We learn to understand and relate to restlessness, impulse, discomfort, avoidance, and all the other subtle voices that criticize our practice of effortlessness. We are conditioned from an early age to perform, and name things, to show our capacity for learning and identifying objects. Our parents love this game!   We are products of a society driven by imagery and consumerism that celebrates frenzy, noise, chronic lack, and insecurity – all of which promotes a depth of emotional and psychological dissatisfaction and confusion leading naturally to anger, depression, and often profound loneliness.   Our addictions and life long apprehension are symptoms of a life run by hallucination.   So, we practice effortlessness in an attempt to counter the deep and profound fractures in our consciousness and we become willing to encounter our sorrow, our grief, our fear. We practice effortlessness to reveal all of the compensation strategies we have carefully (and often unconsciously) crafted to survive the barrage of insults we have had to endure as human beings.   You can say that meditation practice happens when you make the decision to become intimate with yourself and discover the strength to face all the things you think you can’t bear within the private landscape of your own mind.   We practice effortlessness to grow up, to wake up – to reclaim our native intelligence and esteem. Magically, we find ourselves on two parallel tracks. One track is the practical aspect of slowly becoming more available to ourselves, bringing a greater degree of emotional and psychological order to our self view and relationship with living. The other track is the sacred, it cannot be measured – it is the voice of God whispering “welcome home.”   J.P.  August 1, 2008   Here I sit     Noticing I am waiting             But I cannot fathom what for    The Buddha was a diligently self observant human being. The potency of his observation had such a force of clarity that he was able to drill down to the core of, and then beyond, the core of his being to observe nothing at all.   And what presented itself at the periphery and at the center, what reflected itself unabashedly everywhere he could see, and not see, was perfect freedom of mind. This freedom, as taught by the Buddha, is completely unfettered and refreshingly present; it is the flow of observation from a place of total and effortless inner silence.   To call it freedom is already a misapprehension, if it could be understood clearly we might refer to it as freedom for whom, and from what. The Buddha’s eyes did not deceive him into thinking of himself as a separate being, existing apart from the field and contents and functioning of consciousness. To name this understanding is simply not possible.   The question we may ask, if our capacity for curiosity is awake, is how could that freedom be enjoyed by me? There’s a small mystery here though, and it is one of the special wonders of being drawn to the spiritual quest, the adventure of discovering one’s self. And that mystery is that there already has to be a kernel of awake inside us that alerts us to yearn for true resolution and effortless peace.   We have to be triggered in our imagination, and in our heart, we have to be reminded of the possibility of God consciousness in order to seek it out. And realizing this is a potent aid in the practice of meditation, because somewhere inside we know that we have been invited to take this journey. We can sense that awake has already occurred and now we must listen more carefully. We become compelled to make the inner discovery, even without any comprehension of what it might be.   J.P. July 30, 2008