Thinking Mind, Grumbling Mind, Embrace Them All

Here is another refining. I have touched up Buddha, adding some more subtle detail, somewhat in the same way that by doing my practice I am refining myself. It is true that we all have Buddha nature and depending on how you like to look at it we can see ourselves as scraping the "gunk" of our karma off our lovely personal self portraits to reveal the our true nature. Here we are energy, having a human experience. And the teaching reminds us that this is a rare and precious occasion. But how often do we (I) really remember that my human life is a rare and precious treat to be savoured and held with reverence?

I have been watching my grumbling mind again (still?). So what else is new? The little faults I find in daily things and people. I see the grumbling and my first inclination is "I don't like it". I resist this aspect of my humaness, my karma. I have a difficult time making friends with it, seeing it as just thoughts. I go immediately to the place of feeling "bad" that I am petty. I heard a talk in an online course called "Awakening Joy", I believe the woman's name was Catherine Ingram, where she talked about standing on the tube platform in London's underground and thinking: "I could just push that person over there onto the rail line." She said that doesn't make me a bad person. It is just a thought.

And my Zen teacher has pointed out, it is what we do with that thought that is important. If we have an angry thought, do we act on it? Or do we simply feel the internal power of that anger, its energy and watch it pass (however long that takes). It is our response that we are working with. Thoughts and emotions arise. Do we react (without care) or respond (by considering the bigger picture)?

Our future karma depends on this. Do we strengthen those inclinations of anger and me, me, me? Do we build the neural pathways that lead to similar future reactions? Or do we work to resist and restrain ourselves from following "unwholesome" paths of action? These are the questions of the day, of the weekend for me? This is the cutting edge of practice.

So if I am mindful I remember to be compassionate toward myself, instead of judgmental. I can look at the suffering that this little scenario has caused for me and see that it is the suffering that leads to the end of suffering. If I had acted on every little negative thought, this would be the suffering that leads to more suffering! And experience tells me that this is not the way to go. So here I am finding polishing the family heirlooms (the human family!).

Grumbling Mind Meets Grateful Mind

Today I got to look at grumbling mind.  It was not big grumbling, but more a series of little grumbles .... the barking dog, the truck parked across the driveway from the house next door, the cat scratching the couch again and yada yada yada ....

 And by the time I headed out to do the too many errands in too little time I was grumpy for no good reason.  I  added "my grumpiness"  to the list of  what was wrong and then went Bingo! "what IS wrong with this picture?"  As kids we used to hear "it's all in the way you hold your mouth." And as I told my partner this he said maybe it should be "it's all in the way you hold your mind."

As we drove to pick up a cake and birthday gift for my mother on a fine day, in a fine city, where we are both well and want for nothing,  I remembered that in the "Awakening Joy" course  I took last year, Jane Baraz talked about the gratitude journal she keeps.  "I should do that." I said.  It would orient me to look at the good things in my life, rather than the habitual tendency to face in the direction of the small irritations.  It would be a helpful way to build wholesome mind habits rather than just slop into lazy complaining mind.  

There has been lots written about gratitude lately.  Brain researcher and Buddhist practitioner, Rick Hanson (from wisebrain.org) talks about the fact that the mind is inclined to give more attention to the negative .... This apparently is based on our origins as hairless little creatures out on the savannas where we needed to sit up and pay attention to the negative to survive.  The blissful were weeded out in the evolutionary process.  For this reason it takes a concerted turning of the mind toward gratitude to encourage a positive mental outlook.  We need to "grasp our will" as my friend the Zen monk calls it and look up, instead of down.  In Kosho Uchiyama's book that I'm reading called  "Opening the Hand Of Thought" he says, "You should always bear in mind that all sentient beings are suffering. Everyone is fretting about something inside their head.  That is why we practice."  And so as part of this practice I will choose to cultivate a little patch of gratitude.  I have the seeds, right here.  All I need to do is scratch a little place for them in the mental terrain, add a little water and watch for something to sprout.  I can taste the fresh flavour of gratitude already.  What are you grateful for today?