Simplicity
From Ken Mcleod.
Verse 36 from The 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva
In short, in everything you do,
Know what is happening in your mind.
By being constantly present and aware
You bring about what helps others -- this is the practice of a bodhisattva.
It's really pretty simple. Know what is happening in your mind.
When you read the words "your mind", what do they mean to you? Do you have a picture of something inside you that does your thinking, feeling, sensing, a kind of homunculus? Do you think of your mind as being in some way different from you, something that behaves on its own. It's very easy to think this way, particularly if you practice meditation. For example, "Oh, my mind was very clear today" or "My mind wouldn't settle down", etc. Or, as my teacher used to say, "You place it, and it doesn't stay. You direct it, and it doesn't go. Very difficult!"
Is your mind your intellect? The word "mind" is generally associated with the intellect, with intelligence, but it's more than that, too. Where do emotions come in? How does anger connect with your mind? How does love? Perhaps you think your mind is your brain? But that doesn't seem quite right, does it? The brain is an organ and your mind is...., well, it's something else.
In Buddhism, the phrase "your mind" means experience -- your experience of life and how you experience it. Mind is experience. Experience is mind. Thoughts and feelings and sensations are the stuff of experience and are different kinds of movements of and in mind. We even speak of them that way. Thoughts wander or float through. A wave of anger takes me over. I was swept away by love. Sensations are movements, too, but we tend to think of them differently because they are so closely associated with the senses. When you see a flower, you think the flower is "out there" in some way, though it's not at all clear where the "seeing the flower" is located. Is it inside you? Outside you? In between? But the seeing comes and goes, just like a thought, no? It's all mind. It's all experience.
Most of the time you are lost in a cloud of thinking or feeling or both, a flood of a associations triggered by the fragrance of a perfume, the melody of a song, a beep on your cell phone, or a thought about the dinner you had with your girlfriend last night. When we are in a cloud of thinking, we aren't aware of our body, we often aren't aware of our surroundings, and we may even forget who we are talking with and relate to them as if they were someone else. To know what you are experiencing moment by moment isn't so easy and it requires quite a bit of training and practice.
Know what you are experiencing, moment by moment. Is that enough? Strangely, yes. This is one of the wonderful mysteries of life. When we completely engage our experience, inside and outside, "present and aware" as the verse says, then the "I" isn't what dominates our decisions or our actions. The "I" isn't there. There is just experience, and we are responsive to it, not reactive. By way of contrast, when we are lost in a world of thinking and reaction, then the "I" does dominate. "I" is the hero (or the victim, which is just a different kind of hero) of our stories and the stories are all about survival, emotional needs or being someone. In other words, we are reactive, not responsive.
It's right in front of us, but we can't see it. It's so simple that we don't believe it. It's so deep that we can't fathom it. It's so wonderful that we can't accept it. Know what is happening in your mind, in your experience, and you will never react. You will, instead, sense and know the direction of the present, and, without doing anything in particular, everything you do will enrich and help others.
Quotation
When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good fire, leaving no trace of yourself.
-- Suzuki Roshi
Verse 36 from The 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva
In short, in everything you do,
Know what is happening in your mind.
By being constantly present and aware
You bring about what helps others -- this is the practice of a bodhisattva.
It's really pretty simple. Know what is happening in your mind.
When you read the words "your mind", what do they mean to you? Do you have a picture of something inside you that does your thinking, feeling, sensing, a kind of homunculus? Do you think of your mind as being in some way different from you, something that behaves on its own. It's very easy to think this way, particularly if you practice meditation. For example, "Oh, my mind was very clear today" or "My mind wouldn't settle down", etc. Or, as my teacher used to say, "You place it, and it doesn't stay. You direct it, and it doesn't go. Very difficult!"
Is your mind your intellect? The word "mind" is generally associated with the intellect, with intelligence, but it's more than that, too. Where do emotions come in? How does anger connect with your mind? How does love? Perhaps you think your mind is your brain? But that doesn't seem quite right, does it? The brain is an organ and your mind is...., well, it's something else.
In Buddhism, the phrase "your mind" means experience -- your experience of life and how you experience it. Mind is experience. Experience is mind. Thoughts and feelings and sensations are the stuff of experience and are different kinds of movements of and in mind. We even speak of them that way. Thoughts wander or float through. A wave of anger takes me over. I was swept away by love. Sensations are movements, too, but we tend to think of them differently because they are so closely associated with the senses. When you see a flower, you think the flower is "out there" in some way, though it's not at all clear where the "seeing the flower" is located. Is it inside you? Outside you? In between? But the seeing comes and goes, just like a thought, no? It's all mind. It's all experience.
Most of the time you are lost in a cloud of thinking or feeling or both, a flood of a associations triggered by the fragrance of a perfume, the melody of a song, a beep on your cell phone, or a thought about the dinner you had with your girlfriend last night. When we are in a cloud of thinking, we aren't aware of our body, we often aren't aware of our surroundings, and we may even forget who we are talking with and relate to them as if they were someone else. To know what you are experiencing moment by moment isn't so easy and it requires quite a bit of training and practice.
Know what you are experiencing, moment by moment. Is that enough? Strangely, yes. This is one of the wonderful mysteries of life. When we completely engage our experience, inside and outside, "present and aware" as the verse says, then the "I" isn't what dominates our decisions or our actions. The "I" isn't there. There is just experience, and we are responsive to it, not reactive. By way of contrast, when we are lost in a world of thinking and reaction, then the "I" does dominate. "I" is the hero (or the victim, which is just a different kind of hero) of our stories and the stories are all about survival, emotional needs or being someone. In other words, we are reactive, not responsive.
It's right in front of us, but we can't see it. It's so simple that we don't believe it. It's so deep that we can't fathom it. It's so wonderful that we can't accept it. Know what is happening in your mind, in your experience, and you will never react. You will, instead, sense and know the direction of the present, and, without doing anything in particular, everything you do will enrich and help others.
Quotation
When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good fire, leaving no trace of yourself.
-- Suzuki Roshi
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