Before the Ecstasy…
I’m leaving early tomorrow morning to attend a 10-day Concentration Retreat at Spirit Rock, which I am very much looking forward to, but right now, it’s the laundry (and the packing and all the other getting-ready activities) that I’m focusing on right now.
I won’t be posting again until I return, so check back again sometime after Aug. 26.
In the mean time, I leave you with this quote from the Dhammapada, by Joseph Goldstein, from his book Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening.
“About this mind…in truth it isn’t really anything. It’s just a phenomenon. Within itself it’s already peaceful. That the mind is not peaceful these days is because it follows moods….
“Sense impressions come and trick it into happiness, suffering, gladness and sorrow, but the mind’s true nature is none of those things. That gladness or sadness is not the mind, but only a mode coming to decide us. The untrained mind gets lost and follows these things, it forgets itself, then we think that it is we who are upset or at ease or whatever. But really this mind of ours is already unmoving and peaceful…
“Our practice is simply to see the Original Mind. So we must train the mind to know those sense impressions, and not get lost in them. To make it peaceful. Just this is the aim of all this difficult practice we put ourselves through.”