Awareness: Knowledge or understanding that something is happening or exists.
"Vipassana is the practice of awareness. Awareness of whatever is there, be it supreme truth or crummy trash. What is there, is there. Of course, lofty aesthetic throughts may arise during your practice. They are certainly not to be avoided. Neither are they to be sought. They are just pleasant side effects. Vipassana is a simple practice. It consists of experiencing your own life events directly, without preference and without mental images pasted to them. What comes up, comes up. Meditation is tough in some respects. It requires a long discipline and sometimes a painful process of practice. At each sitting you gain some results, but those results are often very subtle. They occur deep within the mind, only ot manifest much later."
I'm so impressed with the phrase "what comes up, comes up." It helps me avoiding straining when I meditate, trying to get a specific result. The Seaweed family mantra: "It is what it is." I also find it comforting when a meditation teacher reminds me that the end game is going to come very, very slowly so I shouldn't get frustrated when I don't feel like I'm making progress. I am, in fact, making progress but it's just progress that I can't feel in the moment. Whenever anyone comments on my meditation practice I usually remind them that I still suck at it. I find it compelling to analyze the thoughts that pop into my head instead of glancing at them and letting them float on by. They're just thoughts. They aren't good or bad and they're not going to kill me or control me. I can see the headlights as they approach and the red tailights moving away
The cars hiss by my window, Like the waves down on the beach.
I have three tools in my tool box; a hammer, a big hammer, and a sledgehammer. If I can't fix it with one of those then I'm in a world of hurt.
The Doors
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