Waiting for that Door to Open

No one knows what is next. We think we do. We plan, line up a job, buy a house and car, buy insurance, and sit back and relax.  Relax what? We stop wanting?  Ya, sure! Advertisers see that fully stocked fishpond and grab the reels. They plant some more fears about how we don’t match our neighbors or their models and that our future does not match their marketing goals. I know because I used to be an art director of advertising for major companies...beer, hotels, gambling, and computers.

We really have no idea what is next, and can live almost all our lives thinking we do. Why is that? Because, we have planned it out all in our minds. The future never existed but we think it does. It rests solely in our pre-conceived ideas of it, so when one thing goes wrong we quickly get disheveled. This is not how it should be. Venturing quickly into our well-known states of sadness or anger.  Funny fact is that few of us, when things go amiss in our plans really just crack up and laugh. We should, because most of our mental future plans are tainted with our involvement. We are not un-partial, bringing into every action our own unique history and conditioning. Then with no real answer seemingly as to why it is like this, we share our mood with others. If only so and so agrees with me on this, then I will feel justified and thus hopefully better.  I know I have in the past, often masking it with clever sarcastic humor.  Faked, and most everybody knows. Your body tells them so, way before you spit it out. Maybe when things don’t line up with our plans, as most things do in life ...we will laugh.  Or take a breath and even say we just ...don’t know. Then maybe that “door”  will then open.

The Purpose of Samadhi

“So we see that it is most important to know about our self. How we came to be born, how we will be reborn, and when we sleep and dream what is the cause and condition for it. And again, when our thought flash here and there each moment, what it is all about.

Now that which flashes here and there in thought is called the ‘heart’. Before coming here, when still at home, your thought had already flashed here, is that not correct? And the next instant, did it not flash off to other things elsewhere? Now you are seated here, your thoughts flash back home, and elsewhere...

The purpose of is Samadhi to control these flashings of the ‘heart’. If we are able to control these flashings and keep the mind still, then he mind will attain to great power, to great utility, to great purity, and be able to achieve whatsoever the mind intends. The mind which is uncontrolled, flashing here and there, is a force which is being wasted in all directions, like a river flowing from the heights, which channelling off into streams and tributaries loses its original impetus and force. If this force were to be damned up, the power would be indeed great and could turn a great machine. So it is with the concentrated and controlled mind....”

— Teachings of

the Venerable Chao Khun Monkol-Thepmuni, Wat Pak Nam

Expanding my Bubble

I’m curious, does fear keep one away from being the person we want to be? What I mean is we often think our happiness or our goals are a long way from where we are right at this moment. So what is keeping us from using our power of imagination? Just think of a worry you have that has not even happened! One can seem to hype it up in your mind enough to make an OK day turn dreary. I know I do it time and time again. So I am beginning while meditating to imagine I have a great feeling. It can be something I like, or want that I know in my mind makes me happy and transfer that feeling to imagining I am happy. Like the happy feeling you have when in love when everything in life looks like beautiful and people don’t bother you. I, in effect, prolong the “love-like happiness’ I created and transfer it to imagining that I am the person I want to be. Hopefully I will be kinder and more compassionate in time as I go along. Thus knocking out the huge divide from where I am now to where I want to be. Perhaps, if I keep this up I will expand my bubble of happiness that I found in meditation to my normal interactions by actually being happier longer.

Create Simple Beauty

There is simple beauty in a lot of things in life. I sometimes take photos of things because of what they remind me of. Maybe a dream, a place I traveled or time spent with a loved one. Besides photos, smells and sounds or music can quickly change everything in our mind. We assemble our memories however we see fit at the moment. Do you remember the first time you smelled the rain on black top and what memories arise? Or that kiss from grandma when you arrived for the holidays? We can instantly create love, pain or disappointment. Sometimes, we find it way easier to assemble negatives, so to counteract this we need to remember that simple beauty….so what do you smell or hear when you see this photo?