Practitioner's Notebook

Once you stop worrying

 

Once you stop worrying about whether you exist or not, then things become very interesting. The mind is incredibly alive, sensitive, and active. Clouds of energy are continually on the move in our mind. There is brooding; there is fire energy; there is big space and little space, cool space and hot space; our awareness can be bright or black or dull. Various familiar or bizarre thoughts pass through. The important point is that none of it is personal. There is no question here of a personal self. That is just not part of the picture. For example, thoughts of "me" and "I" are among the most bizarre and unlikely of all.

If you approach meditation with too much worry of how it is supposed to be and what you are supposed to experience, then you won't be able to realize what is actually going on. And what is actually going on unfolds continually and invites our inspection. What we find out is very, very interesting although, because it is always the unprecedented life of our mind that displays itself, we can never fully put any of it into words or even into thoughts. Experiencing our own mind, we are left with nothing to do and nothing to say. Hence the “silence of the Buddha.”

 

These teachings are updated weekly.  Come back next week for another teaching by Reginald A. Ray