Via Daily Dharma: Finding the Still Point

 

Do not cling to or demand pleasure, calm, bliss, silence, or peace, for they may come and go. Realizing such is true peace shining at the heart of all the world’s noise and calamity—the still point at the center of all coming and going.

—Jundo Cohen, “Four Steps You May Be Overlooking in Your Zazen Practice”

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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - December 19, 2021 💌

 

Water, when it flows downstream, doesn’t have a model of what it’s doing. It’s just being water, and water floats downstream, because that’s how water works. The thing that is extraordinarily hard for any of us to truly realize and to have sufficient faith to accept, is that if you stop having views, having models, planning, desiring, organizing, and structuring, it’s all right.

You don’t stop your desires as long as you stay in a human body. You break the identification with them. Thats all thats required.

It isn’t necessary to give up a thing. It’s necessary to give up attachment to the thing. That’s all that’s required.

- Ram Dass

Via Dhamma Wheel // Establishing Mindfulness of Mind

 Establishing Mindfulness of Mind

A person goes to the forest or to the root of a tree or to an empty place and sits down. Having crossed the legs, one sets the body erect. One establishes the presence of mindfulness. (MN 10) One is aware: "Ardent, fully aware, mindful, I am content." (SN 47.10)   When the mind is beset by desire, one is aware that "the mind is beset by desire." One is just aware, just mindful: "There is mind." And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)

Reflection

The third establishment of mindfulness is mindfulness of the quality of mind manifesting in any given moment. It is awareness of awareness itself, in particular of whether or not awareness is influenced by the influx of greed, hatred, or delusion. We start here with desire, a common state that can in many cases be quite subtle and hard to see. Here we are practicing becoming conscious of something that is normally unconscious.

Daily Practice

Sometimes the presence of desire can be detected in our experience. This is not bad or wrong—just something to be noticed. For example, seeing an object is one thing, while seeing it with a tinge of desire, of wanting it, is another. Notice that wanting is simply a quality of mind that is sometimes present and sometimes not. We are not trying to change anything here, just to learn to see what is really happening.

RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the Third Phase of Absorption (3rd Jhāna)

With the fading away of joy, one abides in equanimity; mindful and fully aware, still feeling pleasure with the body, one enters into and abides in the third phase of absorption, on account of which noble ones announce: "One has a pleasant abiding who has equanimity and is mindful." (MN 4)

Reflection

Some people move easily and naturally through the stages of absorption, but many people do not. This is not something to be forced if it does not come on its own, and we should never judge our progress against the schema of four jhānas. As we can see, mindfulness and concentration each involve the other, so at a certain point it becomes unnecessary and unhelpful to compare the two and distinguish two different practices.

Daily Practice

As you settle into the pleasant feeling tones of the second level of absorption, the pleasure gradually subsides and resolves into a state of equanimity or even-mindedness. The body still feels tranquil and at ease, but the mind becomes more balanced as it becomes more mindful and fully aware. Simply rest at ease, doing nothing and striving for nothing, and let the mind settle naturally.

Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and the Fourth Jhāna

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