He who binds to himself a pleasure
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the enjoyment because it flies
Lives in eternity’s solar rise.William Blake
As I walked throughout the automotive park beside the marina, I noticed a bit boy stuffed with joie de vivre, strolling beside his mom hand in hand. All directly, with one accord, they each jumped over a bump within the path. I discovered myself smiling, and once I caught up with them, I commented on how infectious a baby’s pleasure might be, and he or she smiled, ‘Isn’t it!’ she stated.
The baby’s reactions had been spontaneous and it had not needed to inhibit them for any size of time, and pleasure is all the time ready to burst out — as is crying if one thing goes improper. But because the baby grows older and conditioning units in, the crying stops — and so — too typically — does the enjoyment.
So the conditioning, initially useful to the growing ego, turns into a straightjacket, that not solely limits emotional extremes, but additionally the expertise of life and the best way we see it. Not for nothing do we regularly translate the time period Vipassana Meditation (perception meditation) as ‘Seeing’.
When I lived in Sussex years in the past, I had a favorite stroll previous the home of some previous household pals and thru the woods past. One day I took a pocket pocket book with me and jotted down among the fascinating issues I noticed on the best way; all the colors and shapes of the leaves and a mysterious divining twig that fascinated me. The subsequent time I went on the identical stroll, I observed all kinds of different fascinating issues and commenced to grasp how a lot of the time we spend locked in our heads, following inner conversations. It is just when these quickly stop, that we start to see the world we truly stay in; and a part of that seeing is pleasure, as soon as the veil of behavior and conformity is lifted just like the gauze curtain in a pantomime, revealing one thing mysteriously hidden.
As we develop, we construct a personality — a façade — which displays our experiences and expectations. But after a traumatic interval in my life, when all kinds of prospects and expectations collapsed, past my management, I dreamed that there was a big, shattered statue mendacity within the grass — and noticed it was me. But then, I noticed a small determine crawling out from beneath it, and realised that was additionally me. I started to grasp then, that the created particular person was not the defining attribute of myself, and never a everlasting entity.
Years later, investigating the thought of whom I used to be throughout a meditation session, I quickly misplaced my sense of self (it got here again) however I keep in mind I used to be stunned I used to be not bothered by it. There isn’t any remaining image of ourselves, however a continuous adaptation to circumstances. We have to grasp that life is a continuum, not simply bits that we are able to settle for or reject. We might have developed a persona (from Greek — a masks) however that’s all it truly is. On a go to by Soko Morinaga Roshi, I requested him if I ought to see myself as fluid fairly than a hard and fast entity, and he replied ‘Don’t see your self as something’. Advice from the grasp.
Joy just isn’t one thing we are able to grasp and maintain on to, it comes and goes like spring rain, softening all the pieces. But when the ego is concerned, with its recurring greedy or rejecting, all the pieces stops. I keep in mind a really chilly winter, once I was six, strolling throughout my grandfather’s farmyard, and seeing nice coffin formed blocks of ice, that had been tipped out of the cattle troughs that morning. What had as soon as been mushy, flowing water was now stable and frozen, simply as we are able to turn into when the ego steps in. Pema Chodron says ‘The second noble truth is the fundamental operating mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering — resisting the fact that we flow and change like the weather, that we have the same energy as all living things, “resisting” that is what’s referred to as ego’.
I as soon as went on a metta (loving kindness) retreat with a Sri Lankan monk referred to as Anrudha. He understood westerners very effectively and the way concerned we turn into with the destructive facet of issues. He requested us to jot down a listing of all our favorite issues — just like the music — however these issues that introduced out our pure heat, and the easier the higher, after which meditate on them. We did this for a number of days, and he requested us the way it was going. I keep in mind telling him, ‘A slight feeling of gold’. And he stated ‘Good, it’s going effectively’. He helped us to re-discover our pure pleasure in issues that had been overlaid with worries and uncertainties. ‘These feelings are the ones that are natural to you — they don’t come from wherever else,’ he stated ‘They are part of your real nature’.
As we progress, we are able to open up increasingly to those, they usually can — and do — turn into increasingly a part of our abnormal lives. I as soon as requested Douglas Harding — the creator of many desirable books, and who had skilled a profound state — what he remembered most, and he stated merely: ‘Absolute joy’.
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Categories: Buddhism, Everyday Buddhism, John Aske
