I wrote this in response to a question you raised on Thursday evening.
We have some time associated with this human body and life, but we do not know how long. What so what will we do with it?
The call to awakening is the call to the ending of suffering…to the arising of wisdom and compassion; it is the blackbirds song and the song of every apparent thing which shows and goes…but who hears what it is indicating?
Over thousands of years many have… but the majority are deafened by cacophony – thoughts ‘about’ every apparent ‘thing’…
This kind of thinking – thinking ‘about’ – is limited in value because it occurs in an abstracted state…remote from the lived, actual situation… it takes you out of the flow of life and creates further cloudiness.
Sometimes this kind of thinking, spun by the energy of our attention, goes round and round, chewing up the time of our lives with no conclusion because there is no satisfaction, no completion – no end to thoughts
But often we feel we can come to a conclusion ( more thoughts) about whatever thoughts it is that we were thinking about
and this satisfies the ego’s desire for a personal certainty and stability: ‘I know!’ ‘ I know how it is’ ‘It is how I think it is!’
So few of our activities move us in the direction of wisdom. Usually, because of prior energetic investment flowing with our interest, we move towards towards greater enmeshment with whatever seem to be our ‘own’ current priorities, beliefs, and desires …
But these interests arise from many connections through family, cultural, and social connections and transiently we attach to them, but with bias and a karmic drivenness, to give clothing to our limited and transient egoic sense-of-self.
At the end of this public talk
The Healing Power of Emptiness which James gave in 2013, he hopes that the talk, although maybe surprising, is helpful.
It is such an extraordinary move in the direction of wisdom that i’m sure the public was indeed surprised!
(This is the talk James just recommended at the weekend people have a look at.)
You’ll see that it gives an outline of how we get lost and what is hidden by our agitation in our pseudo-separation and our false fixed notions of identification…
The ultimate truth is very different from how we ordinarily see things
and the kind of ‘happiness’ that goes with that is worlds apart from what arises when ‘I get what I want’ – which, strangely, is itself a cause of suffering.
So if you’d like to, take your time with this, and let me know if I can help unpack any aspect that is not clear…
In my experience seeing how it makes sense is one thing –
making that ‘non-journey’ from here as we are not… to here as we are…is another.
But however many slips and slides along the way
it is the journey most worth making!
love
Wendy
Today sees the rising of the new moon…
S