Meditation acknowledges basic bewilderment and the space in which basic bewilderment forgets to create its tantrum. Then there’s some gap, some room somewhere. However, it seems a long, long way from there to everyday simplicity. When we discover this space in meditation, it’s as though we have gone to the peak, to Mount Everest. Then what? It seems to be a long way down to the ground. There are actually many opportunities for relating with bewilderment. There’s the opportunity to finally stop everything. We decide not to rush, not to run anymore. We stop for a moment, just to be quietly with the meditation technique, whatever it may be. Then there are just teeny-weeny stars shining through the darkness—an occasional glimpse.

From ‘Karma’ in Chogyam Trungpa’s book Work,Sex,Money

I couldn’t resist these words by Chogyam Trungpa –

“The key point of the mahayana approach is the commitment to dedicate yourself to helping other sentient beings. Building yourself up or perpetuating your own existence is regarded as neurosis. Instead of building yourself up, you should continue with your pursuit of helping others. Instead of being selfish, you should empty yourself. The basic definition of ego is holding on to one’s existence—and paramita practices are techniques that allow you not to grasp onto or propagate the notion of me-ness, or “I am.” Experiencing egolessness is a process of letting go. But you do not regard the ego as an enemy or obstacle, you regard it as a brussels sprout that you cook and eat.”

From The Profound Treasury of the Ocean of Dharma. Volume Two: The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion by Chögyam Trungpa, pages 196–197

If his suggestion sounds indigestible (or you can’t stand the taste of sprouts) then maybe the following recipe would suit you —

Sprout soup

It made me laugh to think about

my ego as a Brussels sprout, as

looking clearly i can find what’s going on within the mind—

and ego shows itself to be a locus of identity,

one aspect of the truth of me.

As wisdom puts this ‘self’ in doubt

the dharma gently cooks this sprout

to make an ego-slimming soup

– an infinite compassion loop.

 

wendy’s  ‘About the sprout’ soup.

(Surprisingly… sprout soup doesn’t taste of sprouts!)

 

 

 

October 3, 2014

EXPECTATION VS. ASPIRATION

Being driven by expectations will almost always lead to disappointment. Why? Because it is not based on what life is, but on what we want life to be. For example, expectation, which is based in the mind, is often rooted in the ego-driven ambition to get something, such as enlightenment, or, at very least, to feel differently, namely calm, free from fear, or to appear wise. Sometimes practice may, in part, meet our expectations and thereby reinforce them. But when practice doesn’t meet our expectations—that is, when we don’t get what we want—we experience disappointment.

While expectation is based in the mind, we can say that aspiration is based in the heart, or in our essential nature. Aspiration has been described as our true nature striving to reveal itself. In other words, it can be seen as an inherent movement toward who we truly are, like an acorn becoming an oak tree. Conversely, the efforts of expectation are often characterised by ambition, neediness, and fear. The effort of aspiration is softer, not as driven by results as by the inner impulse to live more genuinely.

Excerpt from The Authentic Life: Zen Wisdom for Living Free from Complacency and Fear by Ezra Bayda

From Simplybeing.co.uk ‘Awakening in Buddhism and Psychotherapy’. James Low, Milan 2012

…Thoughts, feelings and sensations have no energy of their own. They are like balloons. They arrive inflated with the unpredictable creativity of the winds of the open infinite hospitality of the ground of being. These arisings are already on the point of deflation, the point of vanishing, when we become conscious of them. If we don’t blow more air into these balloons they won’t float and fly, but generally when a thought comes we breathe our life-force into it, inflating it with our sense of its meaning, value and function…