“The unawakened mind tends to make war on the things are.”I feel like this describes most of my life. From elementary school to high school, college, much of life has been spent doing just that – making war on the way things are. Rejection, aversion, rebellion, avoidance, but not a lot of acceptance much less wisdom. It’s the same plot with predictably unsatisfactory ending but with different characters, lines and locations.
“The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically through gradual training.”
Along with the war, this process of gradual training has been there too. Reading, looking to Taoism, Henry David Thoreau, MLK, Malcolm X, Gandhi and alternative education in high school seemed to be part of an innate process which has all been part of the path. But this was in the mind and part of the ongoing war was the contradiction between what the mind knew to be good and right and what manifested through the body and actions. This contradiction has often been very painful.
“When we let go of our battles and open our hearts to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice.”
Meditation can be a microcosm of this war. The physical pain of sitting, boredom, wanting to do something else, be something or somewhere else, conflicting emotions, memories, and thoughts all do war with the way things are.
“To stop the war and come into the present is to discover a greatness of our own heart that can include the happiness of all beings as inseparable from our own. When we let ourselves feel the fear, the discontent, the difficulties we have always avoided, our heart softens”
Goenkaji often says “Accept things as they are, not as you want them to be.”
It’s a saying that comes back over and over usually when I am not accepting things as they are but rather hoping they’ll be as I want them…
Listening to this, realizing what is going on but without reproach, brings about some softening, melting in the body, in the heart and at times even in action.
“As we allow the world to touch us deeply, we recognize that just as there is pain in our own lives, so there is pain in everyone else’s life.”
Yes, how true. Can we use our own pain as a gate to understanding and offering compassion to others? Perhaps at the start this is silent and from afar but with time, aspiration and more melting, this becomes action however modest.
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