With persistent practice, consciousness may eventually be perceived or felt as an entity of mere luminosity and knowing, to which anything is capable of appearing and which, when appropriate conditions arise, can be generated in the image of whatsoever object. As long as the mind does not encounter the external circumstance of conceptuality, it will abide empty without anything appearing in it, like clear water. Its very entity is that of mere experience. Let the mind flow of its own accord without conceptual overlay. Let the mind rest in its natural state, and observe it. In the beginning, when you are not used to this practice, it is quite difficult, but in time the mind appears like clear water.
–The Dalai Lama, in The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness
Let the mind rest in its natural state, and observe it. In the beginning, when you are not used to this practice, it is quite difficult.
Always practice - and more practice.
The only way you can ‘cruise’ is (a) if you have no more lessons to learn, or (b) you take a cruisy attitude to the lessons as they present themselves. Remember we all suffer, every one of us, all the time. So there is no end to suffering. Do not wish that to cease, such wishing is pointless and ultimately debilitating.
Rather the trick (and the lesson, every lesson) is to change the way we respond to suffering. By being less torn and upset by it we feel like we are cruising more (obviously), life becomes ‘easier’.
Others perceive us as suffering less. They are right and wrong. Do not confuse the exterior conditions of suffering (those that were once causes) with interior ’sufferance’. The external conditions of suffering are still there, what we learn is to suffer less (and laugh more? be more irreverent? take it less seriously?). What we learn is that these external conditions need not cause us to be unhappy.
To reach the point that the DL describes we must first accept all that ‘appears’ in our consciousness as ‘ok’. That is as neither good nor bad, neither having the characteristic of invoking pleasure or suffering. Things that appear ’simply are’. When this is the case we have (and must accept) total responsibility for how we will feel in regard to this things. Sufferance becomes a choice.
x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x
