These clouds are ever flowing, changing movements inside and outside our human experience. We cannot control them or cling to them. The more we try, the less we live free. The analyzing won’t do us any good either, for how many more clouds are there and for how long can one be analyzed? Let’s be quiet, ripple-less, and see what reflections show up in the water. There it is, the moon, a symbol of floating, effortless harmony.
Clouds are the continuous thoughts. In Vipassana, the aim is not to quiet thought, it is to relinquish suffering, or to see suffering as it is and through direct understanding we can cultivate eloquence, serenity and adequate action in ourselves and in the world we gracefully and reliably inhabit. With a discipline of two daily sittings, I devote discerned time to be aware of the fact that my mind and body are impermanent. This is through observation of the physical sensations that I experience directly. Without reading, observing nature outside myself, or hearing from another, I can still feel the change as it happens without it becoming second hand knowledge. The directness of truth cannot be dissected in a manuscript. Though words at their best inspire intuition and wisdom beyond their descriptions, there is always time to analyze, judge, divide and doubt. The freedom of true listening is doubtless, because no boundaries are known in a complete act of attention. Instead, the sky is empty and the whole of mankind wanders in and out of view. To observe objectively the sensations, we find ourselves touching at the very root of the communion of mind and body, self and other, and the many measurements that we distinct.
Without the calculated mind that thinks in steps, procedure, and movements dictated by the past knowledge it records, we can begin living each moment with perspective and service. There is no turmoil in impermanence. There is only change. When the plan is the action itself, there is never time to think we have made a mistake in how we proceeded. It is respect for ourselves to water the garden of free, unperturbed innocence. Change takes place and we either have the perspective of equanimity or reactivity. The change itself is neutral, like the weather. It is our projections that can cause problems to the contrast of our expectations, false to the unknown, paradoxical nature of existence and the universal laws of nature which can be felt and experienced directly within oneself. The breath is always there, at the beginning of someone living their life instead of solely thinking it. There is no division here. We can renew life and incarnate now, fresh and lively, with no despair. All it takes is ourselves. The garden of goodness within grows with the light we give unto it. Each is responsible for this necessary cultivation of peace in the frontier of a new life, beginning each moment. Meditation brings this absolute truth and these qualities of reverence into action, which I am choicelessly practicing each day due to the credence shared with me by the teachers and community of this practice, a fellowship practicing to live in responsible harmony with every living thing.
To write in plain words is difficult when speaking of the untouchable, the real, the truth of direct, objective perspective of my own life and the lives of all living things connected to this that I am. It is deeply transparent in all I do. The practice has integrated into my life over the last five years with tremendous force, energy and immunity. It is a well I fill each morning and night that spills out jewels as bright as the full moon and as ineffable as the sky. I am like a budding flower and to those who listen, you are the bees who spread my wonderful seeds of Dhamma. It is our garden. Together we are the world that makes the difference. Together we walk anew with every breath, as every sensation compels us to feel the subtleties of how life is so perfect, no matter what we think. Don’t waste your time, sweet bees. Touch the realness that you are, the perfection that you are. Now, or in a hundred years, our abilities of perception will be just as readily available to discover a truth unbound, unhurried, unplanned and unified. Don’t search for galaxies outside. Look within every day and live as you are. It’s so simple, but we tend to complicate things. Don’t give up. Don’t be idle. Rest and be in (y)our freedom.
(All photos by When Anthony Was)
All the best,
Anthony R.
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