𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝘂𝗴𝗲

(It has been quite a while since I posted a blog entry and I apologize for that. I know those of you who follow me somewhat closely are aware that I have been quite ill for the last couple of years and have not been all that consistent. I am now feeling a bit better and hope to resume my messages to you somewhat more regularly. I hope you check back and see if we can share a bit more of our human inheritance, the sentient-silence within. Thank you very much to those of you who have conveyed your heartfelt support. It has been most appreciated.)

*******

There is nothing that can be done to fix what is not even broken.

It is most helpful to have a place of refuge wherein you may experience tranquility and peace of mind. There is far too much emphasis on so-called "world events" that many are being overwhelmed and depressed by their conveyance through the news, social media, journalism, etc. One difficulty that may result from the ingestion of these conveyances is something that must be examined very carefully. 

It is the notion that when "world events" are spoken of, we have a responsibility to determine precisely just what "world" events are. It may silly at first but once one realizes the nature of world events and the obstacles that conceal the actual nature of these events the door to peace opens just enough to demonstrate its presence. 

Believe it or not, such a refuge may be found within our direct experience without the necessity of a religion, philosophy, or New Age spirituality, etc. The implementation of a structurally consistent, sustained, and regular meditation practice may reveal such a refuge. There are also many adjuvant practices that will help bring quiet to the mind, especially compassion- and wisdom-centered virtue practices espoused by Buddhism, Yoga, Samkhya, and several others. A mature & dedicated investigation of and commitment to one or more of these practices may open the door to this refuge. "The world," as some put it, can wait while you gain the strength of our sentient-silence.

For some, a suggestion that meditation play a role in their lives may be viewed as foreign or irrelevant. With all that is going on we need the tranquility and composure that meditation may elicit. It does not have to be tied to any form of religion or spirituality. However, some of those perspectives may serve to provide a structure that enhances the practice. You may begin by simply assuming a comfortable seat, sitting up straight but not stiff and placing your attention on your breathing. It's that simple. If thoughts arise and distract you, simply take note and resume the attention to breathing. No need to bother with the thoughts while meditating. Every couple of days add a minute or two to the practice.

Many think it rather strange that at the heart of all experience lies an unfathomable well of tranquility. It may sound utterly fantastic, well out of the ordinary, and otherworldly. However, many can testify to its benevolent and even efficacious presence. At once it yields the subtle forms of strength and solace. Most of us have been taught to rely on the strength of egocentricity instead of the power of the sentient silence which infuses the entirety of our global experience with peace. The real world is the ephemeral movement of the totality of experience in its simplicity of the simultaneous appearing-disappearing within the purview of an anonymous, embodied, pure awareness. The sentient silence, the heart-source of all phenomena, is generous & self-effacing.

 

Looking up at the night's sky, its spaciousness and opennes is pervaded by a sentience that is anonymous and is rooted in each of our hearts. This blessed one opens and animates all of my night's sky. The sacred silence redeems us from the errors of attachment and aversion that the mind gives rise to throughout our days and nights. To be relieved of the suffering that attends clinging our hearts offer the silence that forgives even the most grievous of actions. The movement of time attends all and is the all. There is no time without our past, present, and future. The present, always as the present, is a necessary condition for redemption. The attendance of quiet and peace are themselves forgiveness. Tranquility and peace are possible only in the living present. When else could they be? Watch for them to breathe and bring redemption.

  

If...

If you are not hanging by a thread,

Perhaps meditation will help.

 

The tenderness of the heart is extremely vulnerable. How far are you willing to go into vulnerability? Any defense will gradually become a fortress and hide you from you, the innermost, impersonal you that feels some of the deepest human suffering. Our suffering is so important. When one accepts that the vulnerable is truly what unites us as human beings we can cry for the other as much, if not more, than we cry for ourselves. How deeply does your suffering go? Does it connect you to others? It can, but only if you are willing to allow it to flourish. What do I mean by that? Why do we cry? What is at its root? Will you take a good look? If you do, then you must be willing to change who you are. 

I have returned...happily so!

 (I)

      Awareness is Time, Time is Awareness*

Absolute time is both timeless and aware. This is something to look at carefully. There is time as the movement of the hands on a clock, the movement of the days and nights, the movement of birth and death, the movement of....

However, in lived time, i.e., the absolute present, time is pure awareness. Awareness, in this sense of the word, is time itself. Awareness lives in and as present time, living time. Anticipation is not a product of awareness. Consequently, it is not a product of time. Regret is not a product of time. Time is the watcher, the witness to it all. Awareness is the watcher. All else moves into and out of awareness and time. If we live in time we live in awareness. 

Time is the home of tranquility, peace, silence, and the absolute condition for all appearances, for all of life as living. Awareness is alive as time itself.

It is found in the silence of sound, the dark of light and the formless in form, the touchless in touch, the scentless in smell, the tasteless in taste. Find it there and you have found that which makes all possible and actual. It is also the deathless and that which truly lives. One may become aware of and in this. You may find it in the heart, the source itself.

 

This is my offering and a prayer for all of us who wish to end confusion and a great deal of turbulence that living brings our way.

Perhaps more should be said and maybe you will add it here as a comment or your offering. We would certainly appreciate it. 

(Thank you for reading. As always, more to come...)

                 (II)

Timelessness is now, present time. Conventional time is thought time; words are required; a linear concept of time is generated wherein the past, present, and future are not simply distinguished but separated along an implicit conceptual linearity. 

 

 

* This is not philosophy despite appearances, i.e., using philosophical language. Like most other entries, it is more of a set of instructions that aim to guide one from thought back to direct experience. Use a gentle intention to direct you to awareness and then rest in that awareness which abides in the present. In empty awareness you will find rest, peace, and tranquility. 

 

   

Just a thought to keep us busy...

 

There is not one iota of difference between being and becoming. 

           --Yogi Ananda Viraj

The Heart's Palpability

Within the most subtle dimension of the human heart, great kindness, peace, and tranquility abide. Yes, all three of these qualities apply to an extraordinary palpability residing at our center of attention. The phrase "center of attention" may be taken in two distinct senses. First, it is that center from which all nascent phenomena are adorned with awareness or consciousness. It is here wherein phenomena gain that most subtle caress by awareness rendering what may be into sheer becoming, i.e., the ephemeral dynamic of experience. Second, it is the focal point for a practice of opening to the heartfelt dimension of what may be termed love, sincerity, kindness, authenticity, and all of those virtues that have yet to become cognitive and sought after by the noblest among us.

When you have a moment or two throughout your day place your attention to your heart center and allow breathing to move in, around, and through it in both the exhalation and the inhalation--and, yes, even in the gentle grip of holding breath letting it rest there for a few.... With time and attention, the heart will respond to your entreaties and will recognize you who have sought peace for far too long.  

Equinoxes as Special Invitations

        Please add this to your daily itinerary. 

Take notice of sunrises and sunsets. In a very poignant manner, they are daily equinoxes. I hope this helps.

A few words about meditation

First, your intuition that “you can’t think your way to awakening” is correct. There is no way that trying to figure it all out is going to yield awakening. Conceptual knowledge, and it is a form of knowing, is not the same kind of knowing that awakening will bring about.

You see, there is already an aspect of our ordinary, everyday experience that is the awake or enlightened mind. Yogis call it “the seer,” “purusha,” “cit,” and more. Buddhists may call it “the awakened mind,” “rigpa,” “consciousness free of clinging,” and many more terms, even “the Buddha nature,” or just plain “Buddha.” Buddha means “awake.” We will call it either “the seer,” “the witness,” “awareness,” or “consciousness.” Why I say that it is already awakened is because consciousness is the only aspect of our experience which is conscious or sentient. You see consciousness grants sentience to the mind, to the dreams, thoughts, images that occur and move through mind. The contents of the mind are not themselves conscious. They are granted consciousness by consciousness itself. Consciousness does nothing but provide awareness to all the appearances or phenomena that move through mind. Those phenomena cannot see or give awareness to themselves. Some say that the mind has these two natures, one that is pure awareness and one that presents all the phenomena or appearances to that pure awareness. That awareness is never tainted by anything that mind presents to it. It is simply a witness, kind of like the surface of a mirror that is never made impure by the images it reflects. The surface of a mirror could care less what appears in it. It is totally indifferent to all appearances. This is like our own awareness. This is simply the way we human beings are structured, all of us sentient or conscious beings—even a worm or an ant—are put together like this.

If what I am saying so far is true to you, it is for many of us, then we have to admit that we do not need to accumulate anything to become awakened. We are built with all of the necessary equipment to realize our awakening. Awakening adds nothing to our nature as human beings. So, what is awakening? Awakening is awaking to what is. It is awakening to what is already the case. It’s like looking for your glasses—which your earlier placed on top of your head—when you already have them. It’s like, “Having never left the house you are looking for the way home,” –Nisargadatta Maharaj. “Looking for peace is like looking for a turtle with a mustache: You won't be able to find it. But when your heart is ready, peace will come looking for you,” –Ajahn Chah. This last quotation, and I’ll provide a few more, says something very important. It tells us to stop searching, stop applying effort. There is nothing we can do to bring about our awakening; we are already awake but if we don’t surrender our search, our need, our inclination to grasp at phenomena—mental, forms, images, feelings, etc., then we will not experience the peace and tranquility at the very heart of our everyday living—already. It is always already the case. There is no need for the search, the acquisition, the accumulation. So, relax!!! “I contemplated my greed for peace. And I did not seek tranquility anymore,” --Ajahn Sumedho.

So, what do we do? Well, very little. We can lay the groundwork for surrendering our effort. That includes all of the practices that many of us do. We have looked at a few of them already throughout the blog. However, in the end, all they represent is preparation not attainment. We do not attain anything, through this meditation, but experience what already is. We actually suspend effort and realize that awareness or consciousness is at our very roots. When we hear sound, we abide in silence. When we taste ice cream, we abide in the tasteless. When we feel pain, we abide in the painless. When we smell odors, we abide in the odorless. When we see forms, we abide in the formless. There is only one word that I might add to those last sentences, and that is the word already. Pure consciousness is at the root of all of experience. Without the hole, there is no doughnut. Without the hub, there is no wheel. Without the space, there is no cup. Without the silence, there is no sound. Silence and the rest of the phenomenal opposites we just mentioned are an integral part of all human experience. While the opposite of day is night, the third opposite, one might say, is neither day nor night but the presence of a witnessing and sentience-granting awareness. This opposite, however, is paired with phenomena like form is to color. They are distinguishable but never separable.

I could go on forever. However, only you can decide if this is truly helpful. By my lights, I think it may be. But only you will know for sure. As for specific things one should do, I would impress upon you the need for meditation and some form of exercise, such as walking or yoga postures. I would also recommend some breathing exercises, especially if you were a smoker. Your meditation should take a formless, quiet witnessing. Whatever phenomena that arise in the mind are simultaneously dissolving.

Feelings accompany all phenomena, i.e., thoughts and images, etc., that arise in the mind and dissolve into the reservoir of past actions from which they arose (past acts residing as latent tendencies—another topic). Witnessing the movement of mind-narratives and their accompanying feelings, without attachment or aversion, just watching, is meditation in the way I mean it here. “When sitting in meditation say, ‘That’s not my business!’ with every thought that comes by,” –Ajahn Chah. Remember, thoughts may arise with seeming knowledge, but it’s not that type of knowledge we already have. We have to simply witness, act like that which we already are.

Important note: What we have here is one example of meditation. It certainly does not say all there is to say about the topic. There are so many different types of meditation and one should follow one's heart in the direction it takes one in the practice of meditation. This is but one example of an approach that many have found helpful. Perhaps you will too. Thank you for reading. 

Being Happy all of the time would not make me happy: What are we looking for?

Is there room inside for all of the suffering we encounter in a day? What do we do with it? It's damn difficult to ignore. So, where does it reside? Simply gaze at her face and ask, "What am I feeling"? Why would we wish to do such a thing? What are we perceiving? Is she holding the boy tight enough? Is he comfortable? Will his suffering stop someday? How many causes and conditions that were unavoidable generated this moment in life? How many causes and conditions that were avoidable generated in this moment? Should she hold him tighter? Looser? Or, perhaps, not at all? 

One could go on indefinitely with questions about or in response to this picture. Are all of us seeing the same picture?

I have no idea why I wrote this. Nor do I know why I am telling you this. However, I hope it makes a difference today or tomorrow or whenever. So, are we happy yet?

 

Okay, here's the deal. When we say things like, "I want to be happy,' or I am not happy," or "I need something but I don't know what would make me happy." All of this talk about being happy. What is being happy? First of all, we probably don't know what being means in this context. What do we mean when we say, "I wish to be happy." What does this actually mean to us when we say it? And, we say, "I wish to be happy," what is being happy? Do we really know what we are looking for? Happiness? What is it? And yet, there are many, many people coming close to promising that we can be happy. Does this mean happy all the time? Let's consider this until our return with some further clarifications.