To practice,
we must start exactly where we are. Of course, we can always imagine perfect
conditions, how it should be ideally, how everyone else should behave. But it’s
not our task to create an ideal. It’s our task to see how it is and to learn
from the world as it is. For the awakening of the heart, conditions are always
good enough. –Ajahn Sumedho, The Way It Is
9:00 PM Saturday night: A few days ago I read the above Ajahn Sumedho quote. Liked it. Something
popped out to me. I made a note to use it as part of our lectio for the Mindfulness Group that meets 7:30 Monday morning. Now
it’s Sunday night and I’m tired. Read the quote again six or seven times, typed it, but I just can’t remember what it was I was going to build on. And
the soup needs to be put up.
I wish my
mind worked better, more consistently. When I stop to breathe in and out I
notice a certain pressure in my chest. The thought that goes with the pressure
is ‘breathing won’t write the lectio.’ I think I’ll walk the dog, put up the
soup, wash up, try to get out of my head.
9:30 PM: Still fretting around in my brain. No insights. Just frustrated mush-mind.
9:45 PM: In
bed; reading the following two paragraphs from Sylvia Boorstein (That's Funny, You Don't Look Jewish)--
Silence is a
tool, a context for direct, personal, intuitive understanding of how things
are.... Being silent for me doesn’t require being in a quiet place, and it
doesn’t mean not saying words. It means, “receiving in a balanced, noncombative
way what is happening.” With or without words, the hope of my heart is that it
will be able to relax and acknowledge the truth of my situation with
compassion.
I’ve
discovered there are only two modes of the heart. We can struggle, or we can
surrender. Surrender is a frightening word for some people,
because it might be interpreted as passivity, or timidity. Surrender means
wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control.
10:00 PM:
Experienced these words like medicine then eased, gratefully, into a 'noncombative' state and drifted off to sleep.
