A peaceful place for practice…. and placing of a tsa-tsa …
These images of the photos I took there may evoke the peace of stillness … yet they are dynamic, continuously reproduced every moment on the screen in front of you…
And the place itself was full of movement… … the shiffling leaves…the watching heads of the sheep…the clouds changing form…all, as the mind’s movements, arising and… dissolving
…..but the basis for all movement, the heart of all manifestations, is not another movement of the mind.
No words can put a handle on this because it isn’t encompassable by our vocabulary…yet it is that from which, for us, these movements arise.
And responsivity from openness arises feely as the dynamic aspect of non-duality with this…
It’s available whatever the location or situation … as James and others with this realisation have through time displayed…
Some of us are lucky enough to go on retreat this summer, and we may experience a bit of a shift out of our habitual fascination with whatever arises in the mind.
As we relax and open we can have a clearer sense of how we are… as the energy involved in that fusion releases a little bit.
However there can be a sense discombobulation after a retreat as we re-engage with the increasing turbulence of worldly affairs…Sometimes one of the five poisons pops up its head…you know the one… ‘aversion’….
If we get into that, rather than letting it move through, it brings rigidity and an increasing sense of solidity and separation, defined by opposition, as we react to dualistic ego-driven behaviour…in a dualistic ego-driven judgmental way…
With this we loose touch with the inclusive hospitality of openness to how others are showing… and act from a defensively limited position.
We are always in truth bigger than the event which catches us…or rather we get caught in as we catch…and however we respond has an impact on others ourselves and our world.
In samsara, karmic activity drives behaviour, choices are not free…
but the dharma invites us to the realisation of the the unchanging, uncompounded absolute at the heart of our being… and with that, comes freedom from suffering and…
if we can be as we truly are… seeing clearly both how it seems, relatively speaking… and how it is in truth, which brings equanimity… our momentary impact will be beneficial …and ungraspable.
If it were easy the world would not be as is it…but we can following the scent of openness from the retreat …with practicing and studying…there’s two new books just published (check the simplybeing website)… along with so much else…there to encourage our journey of dharma discovery and relating in the middle way…
Not nothing at all empty, empty – nihilisn… not strongly real – eternalism
Many of us have planted Earth pots and placed tsa-tsas, around the world …spreading out in a web of connectivity… invoking the compassionate aspect of wisdom to shine forth for the benefit of all sentient beings, illuminating the way out of delusion.
I came across this lovely spot by chance, and placed a tsa-tsa at the foot of this tree with the prayers James gave us… and reciting the last prayer in his book Aspiration for Happinesss in the World. (No.32 in the audio series of the book Longing for Limitless light under Audio/Video on this website)….and, as an echo of the profound wishes of so many prayers, prayed …
‘May we all realise our true nature….so that the tensions which distort views and close hearts are resolved in openness…as presence, free from free of dualistic judgment’