Yesterday I was resistant to everything.
Irritable. I did not want to hear the noise of life and the goings on around me.
I was mad at myself for sleeping in and not getting to sit before the world woke up and started doing all of those things that distract me.
Today I slept in as well. But I just accepted the wife’s clackity clack on the keyboard, the kids running about playing and fighting. The noise from outside. The TV turned up too loud.
Experiencing resistance, I often find that I want to run away from it all. Go off to some mountain retreat and shut out the world.
Experiencing acceptance I find I am deeply in love with every little thing. Even the airplane flying overhead and the neighbor practicing the drums as I sit., a crying child rushing to my lap as I type.
14 comments:
And that is the beauty of life! May there be much of acceptance and little of resistance in your life and mine too!!
Hi Jordan.. You said it better than I could, but I relate.. Some mornings city traffic will sound like bird song. Other mornings, song birds will sound like earth moving equipment. It depends on other factors. For the longest time, I had some trouble sitting down in the evening. Harry recently helped me with that. With just a simple comment. You can never underestimate what effect even throw-away comments will have on people..
Can acceptance be given too far? I've lost an old bike that my father (still with us) had been riding to work, when I was born, due to my accepting a friend as trustworthy who was not. Was I too accepting? or is it that just a matter of acceptance on a grounds of deluded mind?
I'll present my question, there, though I wonder if it's answered now. Perhaps that is not all there is to the answer, though I think it is enough for me resolve my concern by, about it.
Gassho
MyoChi,
Thanks!
Jeff,
Thanks, I am always grateful for the comments I get here.
Sean,
The way I read what you wrote there, it looks like there is some non-acceptance there to me.
Accepting things as they are doesn't mean not responding.
It also does not negate accountability.
Just my $0.02.
Yeah, practicing Buddhism and Zazen can really makes us stupids; Stupid Way indeed!
Thank you, Jordan! Honest and refreshing post. Peace.
Hi Jordan,
Thank you for this post.
Difficult. Easy. Not Difficult. Not Easy.
Peace,
Ted
Uku, Ted,
Thanks for dropping in!
Have not felt irritation for many months whatever disturbances. The problem of disturbance comes only at the start of meditation. Then I either try to remove the source of it, or ignore it, or postpone it. But I remain unperturbed. This started after once I reached deep concentration. If some disturbance happens after I reach calm and clarity, I can choose not to focus on it, or react to it if necessary (say, when my wife asks me smth, and she knows it's OK to interrupt my meditation). The thing is that as soon as I am through with interruption, I am immediately back in calm and clear state of mind. The same change in attitude has happened in ordinary life situations. Not boasting, but trying to assure you that such change is possible and is truly wonderful.
Yuri,
Yes indeed, it is sometimes like that. But always changing. how wonderful!
Hi Jordan,
At least when you were resistant to everything and irritable, you knew you were resistant to everything and irritable.
But this state of finding oneself to be "deeply in love with every little thing"....
Well, I can only speak for myself, but if I found myself like that I hope that I would at once look for the fault in that state -- checking for a start that I hadn't drifted momentarily into cloud-cuckoo land.
Don't you find that after a spell of finding yourself deeply in love with every little thing, life has a habit of kicking you squarely up the backside?
I wonder: was this acceptance you experienced a bit of enlightenment about delusion? Or a bit of delusion about enlightenment?
All the best,
Mike
Hey Mike,
Thanks for your comments.
In the state of being deeply in love withe very little thing I am very happily Enjoying cloud-cuckoo land.
But that passes too.
As far as being enlightened about delusion and deluded about enlightenment goes, it is still hard not to cycle through both.
But then it is all enlightenment and all delusion as I see it anyway.
Keeping on,
Jordan
My own experience: deep calm and clarity is no place or state to feel anything else, or think - even about enlightenment or delusion, or about universal love. But when back in wordly life you start noticing changes in your attitudes. Yes, more compassion and kindness. It is not an overwhelming change, rather gradual process, but quite noticeable.
Suddenly I notice a welling up of extreme irritation. Is it a case of the mirror principle? It must be. Tbe mirror principle never fails.
So the self-deluding fraud who has been sitting with the expectation that sitting practice can cause a leopard to change its spots, whereupon pearls of wisdom might be cast before swine... that pompous twerp... must be nobody other than me!
Ah well. Nothing for it but to keep on keeping on.
All the best,
Mike
Yuri, sounds wonderful.
Mike, aye. Keeping on.
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