“Water, if you don’t stir it, will become clear;
The mind, left unaltered, will find its own natural peace.”
~ Buddha
Spring is here! Last night, for the first time in months, I almost needed to turn on the fan. So still, so calm this morning. My photographs were just as much about reflections as they were about the sunrise this morning. Again, making it hard to chose just one photo, each moment being beautiful. I took 39 photographs in all. I finally chose this one, as it best reflects the stillness.
As I went to sit this morning, the stillness was interrupted by a brief, territorial cat fight. I think I caught a brief glimpse of the neighbor’s cat going down underneath the house, just outside of where I sit. My one cat, Gabby, finally came up to join me on my bench. I had to chuckle at how easy it is for cats to have their fur all up one moment, then rest in stillness seconds later.
It made me think of Buddha’s teaching on stilling the mind. The teaching of the Buddha is vast. Just the ‘Word of the Buddha’ alone fills over a hundred volumes. Then the commentaries and treatises by the great Indian scholars fill another two hundred and more, and this is not even counting all the works of the great Tibetan masters.
As I wrote a friend yesterday, the teachings of Buddha can be very simple, yet it is quite complex in practice, because it goes against our ‘normal’ learned way of perception and being.
Even the above quote … Most new meditation practitioners think ‘they’ must quiet the mind. That it is a process of doing. I did for quite some time. Try it … It’s impossible. This is lesson number one. In actuality, if we give ourselves space to watch the muddy waters of the mind and emotions, without stirring them up some more, they do eventually settle. Maybe not as quick as a cat’s, but mind does calm down naturally.
It is said that when the great master, Buddha himself, was asked to summarize his teaching, he said this:
The non-doing of any evil,
the performance of what’s skillful,
the cleansing of one’s own mind:
this is the teaching of the Awakened One.
Instruction is clear … Now the practice ♥
To read a beautiful story on ‘clearing the muddy waters’
http://omtimes.com/2012/09/clearing-muddy-minds/
