Patient Endurance

My father had surgery yet again today. Last few weeks leading up to it has been tough for me. Partly because of all the turbulence among family members around the whole illness and the other from the awful state of mind of my mother. It been like that for many months in some form or the other. I feel hurt, wounded, let down, disappointed and even down right angry over the incidents. I don't have answers to my questions and the restlessness I feel at times. I wish I could talk to someone who can help me guide my thoughts or shine some clarity on them. 

So a few days ago I was browsing my book collection from Dhamma teachers and I felt like reading a book by Ajahn Anan. It was a small book so I knew I was going to be diligent about reading it. Anything was good. As I read through the first few pages, I felt a sense of relief. If nothing else it has made my incessant thoughts stop in their tracks from time to time and that is a tremendous relief. Sometimes I feel such gratitude for these teachers who have left their teachings published so that people like me from time to time can find some mental comfort and clarity.

The phrase "patient endurance" was in one of the early chapters. Apparently according to the Buddha the only incinerator of defilements is patient endurance. The moment I saw it I knew it. I even recalled hearing about it. I also noted that Ajahn Brahm says the same thing all the time using different words. Defilements are unwholesome thoughts, which if not taken care of, lead to unwholesome words and actions. Patient endurance is staying through with these defilements until such time they leave you. One might wonder why patiently wait through something that's negative. Why not get rid of it? or find a distraction or even try to forget? I mean if they are not good it should be easy to do, right? Well wrong!

It's not that easy. This is my practice and personally for me getting rid of unwholesome thoughts are not easy. In fact I know through experience, it's like putting fuel into fire. Most of my negative thoughts are based in anger. So "getting rid of" is done with dislike, resentment, with aggression. So it plays right into the hands of my anger. The more I try to rid of it the worse it gets. Forgetting is impossible. It like having a scratch on your bum and you sit hoping it will go away. A joke! Finding a distraction is possible but only for a while. It buys time but then it comes back again. 

So to me patient endurance makes sense. In fact it's something I do and succeed at times. When that happens, and I actually see through something come and go in my head, it brings about tremendous, lasting relief. But it's not easy. It's not something that comes to me naturally. I have had to train myself even to get to this point and even then I find myself at a loss. It was like that during the last week or so. 

But I get what the Buddha said. But doing it and putting it into actual practice when your mind is having a hurricane is hard. 

I feels it like a storm. When a storm starts, you cannot stop it. Last year the Caribbean islands has this massive hurricane. I remember watching it's path/trajectory. It was unstoppable. Except land of course which reduced it's strength but the moment it hit warm waters it gathered speed again. So it churned like that for about a week I think creating tremendous havoc. These angry, negative thoughts are like that at times. It just comes, gathers momentum and boy does it leave a disaster or what. Luckily I am someone who very diligently observe my precepts and watches my moods. So the harm it does with actions and words is much less but inside my heart I feel torn apart.  

Fortunately when a hurricane hits, you get warnings and one can move away or move to a better shelter if you are not on high grounds or in solid buildings. But when the hurricanes of the mind hit, you have no where to run. Cause the storm is happening inside you. It's so frustrating. The only shelter I find in my heart during these times are the teachings. That's why I was hoping I could talk to a spiritual guide. But you cannot find a suitable person to talk to at your wish. So then I turn to talks and books. I don't look for other things outside of the teachings because I know and trust these teachings and they have brought me great comfort and relief over the years through some of my most difficult times. It's works the best for me, even better than talking to a friend. Talking to my husband helps cause he understands where I'm coming from and he too gets the teachings. 

So patient endurance it like having a solid building on high ground to take shelter when hurricanes of the mind hits you. But my patient endurance isn't that strong and not yet on high enough grounds. So I get wet, water seeps in, it gets cold and dark in my heart. Fear creeps in. Doubts about if I am going to make it through alive with my sanity intact come in. I am drenched, exhausted and frightened. Just because my heart doesn't have a strong, elevated space to take shelter in.

But that doesn't mean that I cannot build that space in my heart. If there is anything worth trying for and investing in, it is the time and effort building that space in my heart. Even though wobbly at times and not on high enough grounds it still shelter me somewhat. I know it could be worse if I had nothing. I know it, I truly trust the words of the Buddha somewhere deep within. But that trust alone isn't going to create that space. I have to put in the work day in day out. So I have resolved to practicing patient endurance when there is nothing for me to do. Don't me wrong, patient endurance is an active state not a passive one. It's not one for a victim. It's for someone who wants rise through the debris by digging with their own hands. But there are times we cannot do. There are times when all you can do is wait for the storm to pass without losing your mind. That time and space is patient endurance. 

Being "Open"

A few years ago I went on a month long meditation retreat to a monastery in Canada. It was the longest time I had been on a retreat. It was also a place where I learnt a lot not purely about mediation but about myself and others and our interactions and motivation. It was one of the best things I'd ever done. I am going to write about some of the people I encountered, about what they did, my responses and what I learnt from it.

 

Towards the end of the retreat, the monastery had a group visiting from Seattle. It was a tradition that this group would have an annual retreat at the monastery. Along with the group also came the teachers. It was a lovely time. We went from being a community of 5 to about 25. But because we observe our time silently for the most part, so even though there were so many people. it was a quiet pleasant place.

 

On the last day of the retreat we are able to chat a little to one another because the retreat is officially over. There was this guy. I remember him well. During the last 2-3 of the retreat I developed a knee problem that I had to allow another member of the group to do my afternoon chores. He volunteered. He was an American and kind and gentle man. Must have been in his late 30s or early 40s. He seemed committed to his practice.

 

On the last day when I was talking with a group that he was part of, he said something about his life that caught my immediate attention. He said how difficult it was to keep his practice when he's at home. From the description he gave, it seemed that he behaves at home similar to the way we conduct ourselves during a mediation retreat. He also said that it had created much friction between him and his wife. I cannot recall if he mentioned children. But it seemed to have become an issue. He also couldn't understand why it has to be an issue because he was doing something good. Dedicating himself to a noble practice.

 

At the time I remember understanding where it was not going right for him. When I started my practice, it was purely to figure out a way from the miserable life I was having. It was a very difficult period in my life. I was at odds with myself, my husband and probably I felt the whole world was against me and no one understood me. But I was lucky to have had the support of incredibly wise monastics that I got out of it pretty soon. But it wasn't the path I thought I would take that brought me to where I am now, or even at the time I was listening to this man.

 

When I started my practice, I wanted to become a nun. I felt married life was a waste of time and that it held within it's walls a lot of unnecessary but inherent conflicts and miseries. So I was exploring. I was exploring places and ways to leave this miserable place behind. But as I learnt and grew in my practice, I realized conflicts and miseries are not inherent in a married life but was inherent in 'all of life'. When that realization came upon me, I stopped trying to run away. Instead I stood where I was and began to change myself and the ways I looked at things and approached things and people. With time my life transformed and so did most of my relationships. If a relationship didn't work out the way I envisioned then I made peace with it and moved on. But it took much time. By the time I heard this man I had been in my practice for nearly 6 years and most of the married life problems I had at the time were overcome. Any frictions I had were smoothened out.

 

So I realized his problem, immediately. It wasn't the practice that was the problem. It was how he viewed it and everything about himself and others. He was in some ways stuck in those. So he couldn't fully open himself to the practice and the changes that it required of him before anyone or anything else.

 

I think some of us get into mediation/spiritual path because we want to find some peace of mind from our problems. It could be in our physical self, or with others but meditation is not a path that allows us to figure everyone and everything out. It is also not an isolating path. It is solitary but not isolating. It is a path that gradually allows us to become open to ourselves and in that open to everything else. Solitary but not isolating.

 

The key word is "open". I still struggle with this on many aspects of life and thought. But since I have also had many successes of having opened up myself, I know intuitively that I simply have to wait until I am able to fully open myself up. It requires time and patience towards your own self more than anything else. In that we also learn to bear up the forces within and around us that are not really conducive to the process. But instead of fighting and trying to always change them you learn to put your head down do the work day in day out. Then one day you feel that release, which is a beautiful thing.

 

I don't know where this man is now. But I hope he found the answers and as a result found peace, I hope he had enough guidance that allowed him to see himself. I felt a great deal of empathy as I listened to him but he wasn't asking for my opinion and he had a teacher. So I couldn't tell him what I thought I should/could have told him. But that is perfectly fine because now I know there are things that you may tell and others may not be prepared to listen. We each have our timing. If we are fortunate, as I feel I have been, the right person comes along and tells you something, and you listen and hear and you understand and that's transformational. If not you carry on and one day it's right in front of your eyes and everything feels peaceful.

 

 

Seeds of Evil and Goodness

About 3 weeks ago a gunman shot into a crowd of 22,000 concert goers in Vegas and killed 58 and injured over 500 others. The gunman killed himself. They still don't know the motive and it was the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the US. I see people call the shooter, evil and mentally ill and all sorts of names. It made me contemplate on what makes us evil and what makes us good. Are some born bad? Are others born good? Or are we creatures of circumstances and environment and upbringing? Or a bit of everything?

I consider myself to be a good person. Not just because I think so. But because of the principles and values I have based my life on. I am a practicing Buddhist. I keep my precepts, I do charity work, I try to make my thoughts wholesome and good as much as possible, I meditate. So I think I am a good human being, cause I am actively trying to align myself with what is good. But even with all that, I know I get angry, I have grudges, I get jealous, afraid, miserable, sad, mad and all the negative emotions I can think of or feel. I think we all feel these emotions good and bad from time to time. Some of them are habitual and some are aroused through external and internal events. But if anyone of us were to say we don't feel these emotions, I think we might be lying to ourselves.

So what differentiates us from someone who goes crazy and kill and harm others? There are plenty of examples in this world today; from suicide bombers to random shooters to name its all there. But I wanted to find out whether we are so very different from one another in terms of capacity and thought, from those do harm and those who don't. So I meditated and contemplated on this.

Part of me see it being different and part of me doesn't. Let me first explain the part of me that does not see a difference.

Well I see myself get angry, sometimes to the point of wanting to punch someone in the face, or wish ill fate on them....now that doesn't mean I carry it out. My precepts and my understanding of Kamma makes sure that I don't actually verbally or physically carry these thoughts out. The worst might be that I shout at someone but even that is very rare for me. But I have these negative, insane thoughts of wanting to cause harm and pain. Now for those who are reading me right now and judging me, I ask that you honestly look at yourself and tell me that you haven't felt the need to punch someone in the face or yell dirty words, because they cut you off in traffic, or called you names, betrayed you, cheated you, stole from you or hurt you or/and your loved ones. Maybe you even wished they were dead. Well this is where I see no difference. Our thoughts could have similar traces of anger, hatred and resentment and a need for revenge. Indulge me here. I am only saying that the thought could be similar. Perhaps the intensity might be less but the thought is there.

Then there is the difference.

I see the difference in terms of our push to actually want to carry out the thought. As I said before, I think nasty things but I don't do them. In fact some of the nastiest things I have thought in my head have stayed only as thoughts. Thank goodness! But it is not the same for some of us. We carry out what we think. Our thoughts become our actions and words. We get cut off in traffic and we get angry and we want to get back at them, perhaps we might show the finger, or roll the window and curse or we might speed up and cut them in the traffic as a way to show them. Some might want to say denigrating words to another and actually say it out loud causing hurt and embarrassment. So what make one simply not carry out their thoughts and another carry them out fully?

I think evil and goodness lie in each one of us. The fact that we might want to deny it would not be in our best interest. We ought to accept it and not hide it, especially in ourselves. It's easier to look at the guy next door and call him a bully when not see your own need to dominate others. It may not be as evident as that of the guy next door but it is there nevertheless. It's easier to call someone whole killed a human as evil when in our mind we wish our enemies dead. Yes, we haven't actually done the killing but there is that impetus. I think it would be best if we were less judgmental on one another. Perhaps that would lead to better understanding and healing.

So when I look at the difference between someone doing something bad and someone only thinking about it, I feel it's our own intuitive feel and empathy for others. If we truly can empathize then it's not possible to do harmful things to begin with and with deepening that understanding can lead to creating a path to letting the thoughts go as well.

Anyway, I want you to think and feel for yourselves about these issues. I do. So much negativity is happening in the world. So much negativity is fuelled by what's happening in the world. It's easier for us to get angry, resentful or even find a just cause to fight against. But I am not sure of any of these things. I am believer of standing for what is right and wrong but it cannot and should not be done out of dislike for the other or the group or the action. It cannot make us so judgmental as to think we are the ones better and for some reasons others have to be made to understand and educate. Perhaps there is that element but we cannot be motivated by that. In many ways we become like party we are trying to condemn when our intentions are to teach, make understand, punish, win etc.

There has to be a place in our hearts to inquire into why we do what we do. The biggest fight we fight is within ourselves. The good and the bad in ourselves. So we must be kind. Not just within but outside. So through inquiry we must continuously allow our intentions to soften until they only represent love and kindness and compassion, generosity. Then I believe our actions and words will transform itself to reflect that goodness. I firmly feel this is how we can help the world we live in. Within the families we live. We have to create that harmonious space within us and around us. That is what will create happiness and peace. Just intending to change, because that's what we feel, itself isn't good enough. All change has to come through kindness and gentleness which I feel is the essence of healing and harmony and peace.  

Seasons of Life

I love the seasons and the changes they bring. Where I grew up it was a tropical island and we had only the rainy season and the dry season. So when I first moved to London, I used to love it and now living in North America I still do. But now changes in the seasons mean something to me other than its beauty. Perhaps aging has brought that about. I entered my forties two years ago but even before that my body almost felt like it was starting to loose it's vitality and strength that I once possessed. Each passing year my body made it more and more clear to me that perhaps it's entered into a new season.

So when I see the seasonal changes, I see my body and it's changes in it. I feel the spring and the summer for my body is gone and its entered fall. Fall is my favorite season, followed by winter. If I follow the seasons, then my body will deteriorate over the next couple of decades before it enters it's last season of winter, where it will weaken and age that it will die. The irony is that even though I used to love fall and winter, I am not sure that I like the changes that my body is going through. I used to love the seasonal changes in color, falling leaves, cooling of the warm summer air and the cold and the snow and the emptiness it used to bring. But I am almost saddened and frightened by it when it comes to my body.

Is it the not knowing what would happen? Or is it the anticipation of the inevitable that is making me nervous? I've been pondering on this the last few weeks. I think to some degree it is a bit of both. I am not sure as to what would happen. Life is not predictable that way.


Yes we see our parents getting old and dying; that happened with grandparents. But each time we moved on. Somehow those experiences and emotions we felt (or rather I felt) didn't seem to take a hold on me. But now I look back and think and feel. Perhaps it's not something I ought to do. But I find myself self drifting off these memories and in some ways see myself in them. I can't help it. I think that's what makes me sad and scared. But then as I said there is guarantee that my life would turn out the same. But then there is the possibility that it will.


I know what my teacher would say. If you can do something about it then do but if not let it go. In some ways I cannot do much about it but I also feel that I can do much about it too. Much about it in the way I live my life right now. In how I respond to things right now. But then again, I feel sad and frightened, emotions which are not good and probably will not be a good way to respond in the moment. But I cannot do much about it. They feel like little dark clouds that come and hang over for a time and drift away. Then it clears again only to arrive back again.


It's been a tough ride, especially this year. Quite a number of people known to me have died during the last 12 months. My dad got pretty sick in April out of the blue and still recovering with no end in sight. My cat sitter died only last week. These experiences have left me feeling 'blue'. Also how my family members have dealt with my dads sickness has also left me feeling scarred. Perhaps I need to give myself sometime to gather itself around these emotions and experiences. But life is funny....it has its own pace and I don't have much control over it. So I feel like I'm being bombarded with these emotions and experiences, chunked into a short period of time.


So I am not yet enjoying this time in my life yet. My husband says this is the time in our lives, when most people who are close to us, like our parents and uncles and aunts will die. Yes it's their winter time just as it is our fall. But I'm not sure my heart has gotten accustomed to that reality. I guess I am going to have to be patient with myself and my heart most of all. It's tough. It's tough to have to face the reality of aging and it's tough to face sickness and its tough to see your loved ones going through it. It's tough to face death. Last year I had two of my closest hospice patients die. Seeing them through it was tough. I didn't think it was like that at the time. But maybe it was even though I didn't feel it at the time. I have stopped my visits to the hospice patients because I feel sad now. I feel disease.


I feel the same with myself. A certain amount of sadness, disease and fright. I maybe repeating myself but I am writing everything that I feel and have felt over the last few weeks and perhaps months.

 

Irma

Hurricane Irma hit the US last weekend. Before that, it created much destruction in the Caribbean islands. It was a category 5 storm with sustained winds of more than 185 miles per hour for the longest time in the history of storms, as per experts. It also held it's strength for a long period of time. I had never followed the path of a storm before but this one intrigued me and so I did.

What was most interesting was how the storm, as it travelled across the Caribbean into the US, almost felt like a living thing. At least for me it did. It had a path and boy did it travel that with persistent intention. It made me wonder what makes a hurricane and how does it keep to a path and how does is sustain it's strength. The science behind was fascinating. A hurricane required certain conditions for it to become one. Air pressure, water temperature, currents, presence of water and or land are some of it. At least that's what I picked up. It was the warm waters of the Atlantic and pressure systems that created Irma. Had it hit land then the hurricane would have lost it's power. The eye keeps it power as it travels over warm waters and when it hit the land it looses power. This is why the US didn't have the amount of devastation they were expecting. It hit Cuba the night before and the eye of the storm lost it's power and was not able to gather it's strength before making landfall in the US. But until then the eye kept creating an recreating itself many times over the course of it's path.

To me the hurricane reminded me of beings. Humans and otherwise.

Buddhist don't believe in a self or a soul or a permanent entity that moves from one life form to another. It is the causes and conditions that shape how and what and when things move. For example, for me to be born as a human being, there were certain causes and conditions present. Without those there wouldn't have been "me" as you and I know it to be. It is also the causes and conditions that sustain me as I move along in my life. Causes and conditions are within and without. Internally, my thoughts, actions and words shape and guide my life's path and externally people I live with, friends, places I live in and many more conditions also keep modifying that path. Absence of one or more conditions can alter "me" and "my life" considerably.

It made me realize, in some ways, how little control we have of me and my life. Just like Irma hitting land, I could get hit by a car and die. I mean it just made me think how vulnerable we are and how much we are shaped by conditions. But we may not even know what they are, because there are so many of them. We don't have the capacity to notice all of them. We move and think so fast that most of these conditions take effect and become the next round of causes in a matter of seconds, perhaps even milliseconds. I was simply fascinated.

It also make me think how much effort and a keen sense of awareness we must cultivate in order to make any change to our direction in life. Not only it's enough to change the external conditions but also it's imperative we change our internal conditions, mostly our thoughts. Our thought has much power but recognizing the thought and it's color and shade and gradient takes much effort. Without that we can be tossed around quite a bit within and without. We will keep inventing and reinventing ourselves either as humans or other beings in different realms.

Somehow there has to be the nullifying of causes and conditions in order for this continuum to come to an end like Irma did by Monday. To me it made me realize that Nibbana is a possibility. At least the science of it :))

 

Lost bag; lost mind

I have never been someone possessed about clothes and shoes. Every year I go through my closet and happily give what I don't use and what I feel I should give away. I am not a hoarder. I don't have a habit of lamenting over broken and damaged stuff around the house and keep using them without feeling the need to replace all the time. I have a habit of keeping my house lean. We don't have anything in excess and I don't buy things in excess so I can have them. I do not buy just because it's cheap or there are deals. It's just me. So the image I have of myself is that I am not possessed by my things.

That was heavily tested during our trip to Iceland when we lost our bag. Between me and my husband we only carry one checked luggage. My husband has a habit of carrying a hand luggage but I don't. But this time round, he insisted that I did carry one so I packed a few items for a day or two. In the bag was most of my clothes for the 9 day road trip we had planned in Iceland. When we landed our bag did not arrive. No one was there to even trace it. So all we could do was file a claim and leave.

I was devastated. My husband and I are frequent travelers and we travel all over and never have we had a delayed bag. Even when it was (once when I travelled to Australia) we always were able to find out from the airline people when it was going to reach us. But this time, there was no such hope and we were about to embark on a road trip around Iceland. I did not have most of my clothes. I felt disorientated, that's what I told my husband.

I am not someone who has a lot of expensive clothes. I have a few good ones and for some reasons I packed most of my good expensive stuff into the bag. My Lululemons, Nike shoes, Colombia sweaters and my new Victoria secrets undies and bras were in the bag. Boy did that hurt. I don't think my husband will ever forget "my beautiful brand new victorias secret undies" for the rest of his life. I must have said that every day. All the goods in the bag, if lost, would have been worth over $3000. So for me it was a lot of money and I knew even when my husband kept saying, we'll replace them all when we get back home, I just knew I would not waste money like that. So I was devastated.

For the first time in my life, I was miserable beyond console, over my lost belongings.

I remember my husband saying many things to calm me down in the few hours after we figured we won't be getting it anytime soon. I don't think it made me feel better. So he said perhaps we should go back to the hotel were to spend the night and make a few calls. But I had planned this vacation for month. Looked at routes and places to visit and I had a few things lined up for the first day and now it looked all was going to go up in flames because I could not overcome my grief over missing bag.

But luckily my desire to see Iceland was far bigger than my desire to look for the bag using our vacation time. Thank goodness. I knew if I went to the hotel and tried to figure out what happened to the bag, considering it was Saturday...I knew it would be double misery. I don't handle being unhappy well. Plus it would make us fight too. Then there will be more misery. So we agreed to go sightseeing. I remember telling my husband that I don't want to be photographed cause I was too miserable to smile. So we agreed no photos of us, but will look around.

Iceland is beautiful. The vastness of nature and space simply absorbed my misery, at least that's what I felt. I forgot all about my bag and simply enjoyed the sight seeing. But when we got back to the hotel, it hit me again like a wave. I had a good cry. Sometimes crying makes things better cause I am able to get that boiling negative feelings out of my system. I also said an affirmation. I am not someone who has stolen or taken what has not been given to me. Even if I find things lying around on the street I will not take, because it is not mine. So I said that since I have been good, that my belongings should be returned without any of it stolen. But that would not bring me peace.

So we travelled or 9 days without any word of our luggage. We tried to each out via email when we could but nothing happened. We ended up buying most of our toiletries and some clothes and using laundry facilities in hotels to get what we had washed and cleaned. After the first day and a half most of my regular episodes of grief and despair reduced.  But it never went away. It raised it head up from time to time throughout the 9 days.

I realized that it takes one to lose something of great value to understand how much attached you are to them. Yes I was not attached to things if they were lost one at a time over a period of time. But this was a loss in one go. Many things I liked and it made a hole in my heart. I kept thinking about people who lose their houses, loved ones, in storms, hurricanes and landslides....I tried to give myself perspective. I tried to tell myself that I only lost things that can be replaced. There are things that cannot be replaced like people, like your peace of mind. I'm telling you, that work is easier said than done.

But we had a wonderful time. Yes we had a fight or two because of my misery and my husbands matter of factness but overall it was wonderful.  I was ready to come back and file a claim for a lost bag cause Air Canada said if you havent' received your bag in 5 days, then we shoud assume that it was lost. So I had to some degree made up my mind to bear a loss of over $3000. I also said to my husband that I there will be continued miserable episodes from time to time for some months to come.

So we were heading back home after 9 days. As we were checking in we tried one final time to ask if anyone could try to locate our bag. The lady at the check in counter was very sweet and she was happy to do that. She took all of the information and any tags that might aid them of identifying it. She said for us to wait by the side of the check in counters so she could ask a person to go through bags. I was surprised. I did not expect to wait...I simply thought they'd take the info. down and check later. There was another gentlemen who was also trying to locate his bag. About 15 minutes later she came to us. She told the other guy that they could not find his bag in the first check and they will go back to do another one. I assumed she had similar news for us. But instead she said, 'we found yours. come back to te counter". I remember saying "Holy crap". We went to the counter and there it was our bag.

We saw it after checking it in Chicago 9 days ago.

At home, once we opened tht bag, it was untouched. Nothing was missing. It was incredible. So we found our bag and all the lost items. We were thrilled. But I don't think I'll ever forget the lesson I learnt. First of all about how we over estimate ourselves and under estimate our attachment to things. Second, to we prudent; I mean these things can and will happen and perhaps a hand luggage is good to have from time to time. Third, never lose sigh of your objectives. We went to have a fun adventure, and I am glad despite all this we have some beautiful memories, stories to share because we knew that was our objective.

Everything Belongs

Everything belongs. The good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, what is painful and what is not, what is easy and what is difficult, what we like and don't like, what we want and not want, they all belong. The problem is that we wish things did not belong. We want to have certain things only and other things we want out of our lives. But irrespective of what we want and what our opinion of these things are they all belong. They all have a place right here and an equal right exist right now just as much as I do.

I found this insight extraordinary. All of life, we try to get close to things that are good to us, things that make us feel better and get away from things that are not good to us and things that make us feel lousy. But the judgment is made by us and no one else. The outcome of that judgement is felt by us and no one else. That makes us life easy or difficult. So I create the world I live in. I create the emotions that I feel. I am finding this extraordinary. I have no other words to describe it right now. It's shocking too. So much we have in control yet we walk like the world is responsible for what we go through and how we feel. When we are totally in control of how we feel and what we go through. Perhaps the what part might not be in total control. I mean...I could lose my bags on a 9 days trip, my sister can say mean things to me....these things I don't have control over but how I respond to them, is totally within my grasp.

So what do we complain, blame and become miserable and hateful and resentful? Is it because we don't understand what we are capable of? Or is it that we don't want to take that control for ourselves? Are we scared of such exercise of freedom and right? Are we intimidated by that? Or are we in unfamiliar grounds? That amount of freedom given to us, when we don't know what to do with it and how to maneuver ourselves within that space that's totally ours? I don't know the answers.

But from where I come, I feel that for me, it's a little bit of all of that and perhaps more that I haven't yet understood. But whatever it is, I understand that everything has a right to be. There is no point in me, trying to wish things that did not exist or things exist. These kinds of wishing and hoping even a little makes my life difficult, creates turmoil in my emotional world. What for? Does that help me? No but I still find myself wanting and not wanting things. It seems crazy to me that despite understanding this, I still could wish for what does not make me peaceful.

This is the very reason that my mediations can go up and down. I have seen and noticed that when there is peace I like it and when there are thoughts I don't. I wish for peace and I don't wish for lack of it. But my wishing no matter how many times and how long does not make peace or lack of it, more possible or less impossible. But when I let both be, as Ajahn always tells, then I am at peace. So I realize that all belong. There is no need to wish or not wish. You just have to allow things to be.