Seek and You Shall Find

The Biblical phrase, "Seek and you shall find" usually refers to the Kingdom of God within (Christian phraseology). The practice of mindful awareness (Buddhist phraseology) has a tandem meaning.

If one wants to be struck down on the road to Damascus in a torrent of thunderous glory and light like the apostle Paul, it might take forever/never. Not everyone has the karma to found a world religion like the former convict turned proselytizer.

However, if the goal is to discover that kingdom of god or to achieve enlightenment, the small, ordinary things that cross your path in life can be the trigger. Everything around us is a metaphor, a mandala, just waiting to reveal its joyful secret. Even the most innocuous and mundane act can be a message.

For example. Most of us have electronic gadgets with screens that show every touch of the finger(s). From computers to smartphones to tablets, those greasy bodily oils cloud our illuminated windows to the world. For at least the past twenty years, I have struggled with this conundrum, ruining one screen with a detergent, using water ineffectively, and finally learning that these items require special treatment. And then just living with finger prints and smudges that cloud my vision - a picture of sloth and laziness.

Yesterday as I was perusing every item that Costco has to offer, a certain one crossed my path: Clean Screen, the perfect tool for every electronic gizmo's grunge. In Costcoesque fashion, the packet contained four bottles of this stuff, but nevermind. We have plenty of people in the family with dirty screens who can have their very own spray bottle of Clean Screen.

This morning, with a mere spritz and swipe of the supplied cloth, all of my windows to the world are sparkling like a diamond with almost no effort.

The moral of the story: what we need is hidden in plain view, simple, and no big deal. Solutions abound. And even a trip to Costco can provide a metaphysical lesson if one applies mindful awareness.

Never Give Up

I must confess - although Southern California has been my heavenly abode for the past 38 years, I am a closet New Yorker. But my inner NY persona has no desire to leave the balmy, green environs of LA for the stacked cubicles called apartments (all that New York can offer its humans) - not to speak of freezing winters and hot humid summers that make the softly lilting dirt stick to one's skin.

However, thanks to its internet publication, the New York Times arrives in my inbox every day with the regularity of a Swiss train. One would think it would actually get read since I pay $15 a month for the privilege, but more often than not, I simply glance at the headlines. Occasionally, an article will be so enticing that my brain simply must absorb the information, which is never really relevant to the basic question of my life, "To be or not to be," a phrase coined by Shakespeare that eerily resembles a classic Zen koan.

Haste invites mistakes and in a rush to absorb, the following headline, "The Escaped Inmates From Iraq Fuel Syrian Insurgency" was misread. My first thought was that the Times was reporting on some escapees from a state penitentiary, and that this illustrious newspaper should not make a headline out of an irrelevant story for the world stage.

Luckily, the real words sank in a few seconds later and provoked a desire to actually read the article. The historical twists and turns of Sunnis and Shiites, not to speak of Western meddling, has made a catastrophic, twisted, insane, unfathomable mess of that region of the world, although there exist other such hell holes on diverse continents as well.

Suffice it to say that it takes a scholar to understand the background and the current turbulence, and it is not the intention of this blogger to pontificate on something she knows little about. But what does concern my little head as I sit in my glorious and peaceful warm garden is the nature of the human mind that allows atrocity to exist. 

Never give up, she thinks. Repetition reaps deeper understanding - or brainwashing - depending on the content being repeated. So I repeat to myself, reconciliation is possible. Peace is possible. We just need to keep reminding each other so that one day it wills sink in at the level of global citizenry.

 

All We Need Is...

A wise friend posted a response to yesterday's blog entitled Cherish the Moment. In her super hip Brooklynese way, she quipped, "All we need is love ~ oh right ~ all we are is love." 

Ah!

Cherish the Moment

A life well lived requires a delicate balance of maneuvers that resemble a pair of Olympic skaters on ice doing their artful dance. The lucky humans of this earth have the privilege of working hard at a goal of their choice and witnessing the fruits of their labors of love.

But like those superb athletes who gather from the four corners of the earth to shine (or not) on the Olympic platform, even the most well-rehearsed and diligently prepared can fall. Hard. And lose their dream of gold.

Gold is a precious metal, a word, a commodity of trade, a coating for teeth and silver jewelry, among many other uses. For the mystics of the world, gold is a Light whose presence represents the supreme energies of love and transcendence from the suffering of the human ego.

What separates us from the athletes who fall on ice and lose their dream of the gold metal hanging around their neck? Although they can try again, there is no guarantee of winning the gold on the second time around, four years into the future.

Perhaps evolution of consciousness is what we mortals have going for us. We may fall hard, but never is there a time when we can affirm that all is lost and the chance might never come again. Sure, in the material world that might happen, but our lives are lived from the inside. And in that wonderful space of awareness, whether one wins, loses, or doesn't play at all, transformation is always an option.

While hope can be the enemy of the "what is," on another level it provides a vision of the inherent freedom that lies in wait deep inside the human heart.

When the Shit Hits the Fan, Duck!

"When the shit hits the fan, duck!" is not a saying I learned at the knee of my old grandpa from Wyoming or Missouri or some such place in the wild west. It is born from the resources of my humor-blackened subconscious, heard somewhere, sometime in my life. Sorry, whoever first originated that phrase. I don't mean to plagiarize but darsh gone cain't remember where it first entered my brain as a great philosophy to embrace.

Today, a plan long in the making and involving much preparation with hefty greenbacks fell apart. When expectation meets minus whatever you were expecting, there are numerous ways to react. Although panic was my first reaction, resolve was the second one; inventiveness was the third; and deciding that life is too short to worry about all the twists and turns along the way from birth to death was the fourth reaction.

So, sing along now if you so choose: "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream."

Blackout = Gold

The first gold medal of the Olympics went to an American snowboarder named Sage, who smoked the Slopestyle. A new event with hair-raising jumps, the racer defies serious bodily injury or death; one micromillimetre of clumsiness could mean a mid-air drop to the hard snowpack lying far beneath their aerial gymnastics.

Apart from the jaw dropping courage and athleticism of all the participants, the winner made a very interesting statement when being interviewed by the press after being golded. In his third and final massive launch off a jump, he not only did the 4 1/2 somersaults high in the sky. He added a special trick that put his twirling mid-air body into an unusual contortion - a trick he thought of 3 minutes before starting his run, that he had never even before attempted.

According to Sage, he doesn't remember that third jump or the perfect somersaults or effortlessly spinning into an extra added trick, which he had never even practised. In his state of "blackout," (his words) the mind-body took over and soared him to new heights of achievement.

He realized something that is the dream not only of athletes but all human beings - to enter into such a state of flow and oneness that an action is pure, spontaneous, effortless, and perfect. Only a mind that is free from fear, uninhibited, focused and relaxed can enter this sacred zone. 

As Sage put it, "If you think about it, you'll fall on your face."

Great Wisdom

Garchen Rinpoche, a revered Tibetan lama, spent twenty years in a Chinese prison. He relates what he learned there, aside from knowing what it is like to be hungry, cold, and tortured. The following is an excerpt from a talk he gave in Los Angeles in 2011. The teacher he mentions in the below text, Khenpo Münsel Rinpoche, was one of his mentors in Tibet who was also rounded up along with thousands of other monks. Fortunately, they were able to benefit from each other in jail.

"In prison Khenpo Münsel Rinpoche taught me that the extent of your realization will be known when you encounter difficult circumstances. You will not know the extent of your realization when things go well. When you find yourself in a troublesome situation, when you are in great pain, when an intense emotion arises, only then will you know where you are at with practice.

Adverse circumstances will reveal your hidden faults. If you are able to hold awareness unwaveringly during such a time, and thus if you are not carried away by the force of the emotion, it is a sign that you have gained experience in practice.

If you were to practice mindful awareness with great diligence for just a month, if you were to recognize even the slightest thought and not allow your mind to wander off into delusion for that time, even in such a short time you would witness great changes. Fierce afflictions would not faze you so much any more, because you would have gained personal experience in observing the illusory play. There is in fact just one remedy necessary--mindful awareness. It is the single sufficient remedy that transforms difficulties inside and out."