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This
month has been outwardly like most months in my life, riding crests and
troughs, moments of unquestioned ease and complicated tightness.
The WH,
and specifically the demands of this group to maintain daily notes,
have
altered the inner perception of this month. The WH offers a space
to just
observe the workings of the mind and pay attention - and ironically,
through
that distance, enables a more intimate relationship with self and the
world.
The mind spends less time commenting and more time perceiving.
The WH
allows this observational quality of mind to be more easily grasped in
my daily
life, with awareness extending from the formal practice to worldly
activity
with less effort.
How to
work with a very distracted mind has continues to challenge me;
thoughts of
"I can't really do this until I am more calm" are far too easily
mistaken for being accurate, and giving up seems a reasonable
option. The
following comes from notes a week or so ago:
But what
is it like to just experience distracted mind totally naked, by
itself?
No comment or thought of it being "wrong" to have the mind flying
about and worried. What is right and wrong? What is
true? How
is the mind any more calm one moment than another?
Fiddlesticks!!!
The practice is to just be with the mind each day, to watch it – watch
it be
calm and collected, watch it be tired and irritated, watch it run off
on
tangents. But for God's sake, watch! Open your eyes and
look!
That is why this group is so amazing – we are taking the time to pay
attention. Calm or distracted, fresh or boring, sad or happy,
pretty or
ugly, we pay attention.
Perhaps the power of
the WH lies
in its ability to keep bringing us back, continuously offering new
fresh views
on seemingly stuck situations. Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan
master, was
famous for using unusual adjectives to describe his mind states.
"Cool, refreshing boredom" is one that always struck me, what if
boredom is just a fresh new experience of non-freshness?