-Abhishek Tamang Thokar
Imagine that you are having your best moments,listening to your favorite song ,sipping cappuccino,even lemonade and it’s raining outside while you are rejoicing the dewdrops of rain.You feel at ease ,you kind of forget the incessant cocoon of the conceptual minds even for a while .You subconsciously desire this moment to stay with you forever but the truth again disappoints us falling the assembled phenomena apart as the truth of existence is impermanence.
The longing that things would stay with us forever is a wrong view in the Buddhist teaching as each thing is constantly changing on gross as well as subtle levels.If something is pleasant and gives us a fleeting pleasure ,we consider it a good change but if something goes against grain or out of our preferences and inclinations ,we don’t appreciate that sort of change .We are attached with our various images ,people ,things so forth .We want those whom we love to stay with us forever ;we want the permanency of the assembled phenomenon.
However ,the truth is the consequences of the continuum ,obviously the relative one .If we remember the time when we were seven years old ,a great deal of changes might have occurred till now on physical,psychologicaldimensions.Are we the same persons or the different ones?We are neither same nor different.The cells are changing ,being born ,dying ,thoughts ,feelings are changing their intensity,texture ,the moment that happened yesterday won’t happen again which is like a past lifetime .The more we become aware of these inevitable truths ,the easier it becomes to accept the ebbs and flows of life .
The joy of mindfulness
Mindfulness is the attentive heedfulness of the present moment .We needn’t to make an incessant effort,pressure to be mindful but a sense of delicate relaxed state of mind is important.When our minds are calm ,we have experienced that mindfulness becomes easier but if we try with a rigidity of the efforts ,it can hallucinate or cause discomfort.
The power of now, Be here and now
We are in one place and our minds are wildly wandering beyond our comprehension,it often becomes an unfathomable riddle ;a tapestry of confusions ,polarizations and kleshas .We are haunted by the past and future but the past has already happened and the karma we do in the now determines the future. Buddha advised us to maintain the awareness of the present moment .
The cause of suffering is Kleshas
Klesha is a Sanskrit word which means the defilements,an emotional affliction.Oursamsaric confusions attachments,ignorance contribute the defilements and the karmic seeds can intensify .The Buddha’s followers focus on inside ,they don’t see any points to blame the external world but their own kleshas,the SEM/ conceptual mind which is dualistic and causes the polarizations .Once we begin to work on our own kleshas,we experience a gradual transformations in ourperspectives,the way we think
feel and act .The mind is considered more significant than body according to the Buddhism.AsTrungpa Rinpoche calls Nostalgia for samsara which refers to the ruminations for the fleeting experiences and we grasp with them .But ,we all have basic goodness.AsMingyur Rinpoche says that we have love compassion,wisdom ,awareness all the time and we just have to recognize them.
Just As It Is
We have a habitual tendency to put the labeling,imputations on the phenomena or the inner dimensions .We hardly can accept the things as they are and as we are .Things are neither good nor bad but they are just as they are .We can practice to let our thoughts ,feelings ,mental patterns be as they are giving them space and revering them ,making friends with our beautiful monsters .Our antidote must be Just As It Is .We can practice open awareness meditation formally and informally as well .We allow everything be as it is ,we be with mind itself leaving the mind as it is without any fabrications,adapting.If it’s good,welst it be as it is ,if unpleasant,let it be as it is .PemaChodron,a renowned Buddhist nun considers it as a practice that can burn the karmic seeds .
Truths : Realtive and Ultimate
On Relative level ,whatever we experience,witness with our senses is true and they have the incredible power to keep us stuck in the vicious cycle of samsara.IPhone,Rolex ,BMW are relative truths and we may have attachments or cravings and aversions with these objects .Untimately ,each assembled phenomena doesn’t exist ,they have no reality ,they are interdependent,they lack the inherent existence.They are empty luminosity;they aren’t nothingness .Even though they are illusions they trouble us ,they make us cry as DzongsarJamyangKhyentse puts it correctly.They are very powerful illusions.It’s like what a great Buddhist maha siddha Shantideva uses an analogy where a woman has a child in a dream and begins a great attachment towards a child and unfortunately a child dies .Then,a woman gets depressed,nostalgic,anxious .However,having a child and died both are the expressions of the mind ,an illusion and a dream itself is illusion .So ,we can remind ourselves that the dreamlike suffering is illusory,they are like a rainbow ,shadow .If we apply wisdoms ,they don’t trouble us much .We can suffer but the suffering also will be a beautiful experience to itself .ThichNhatHanh says that if we know how to suffer ,we suffer much less .
Daily reminders
Each practice a Buddhist practitioner does will connect with the inescapable truths of impermanence,dukha ,empty luminosity and non self .We can begin with the contemplations of impermanence and suffering at the beginning.How everything is changing and being aware of it can deepen the path of our pursuits of truth .We just need to pause ,slow down or taking a few long breaths and noticing the thoughts ,feelings,sensations that’s lurking in our mindsream nonjudgmentally .It’s not one day practice but it’s a constant one .We are working on the innumerable lifetime of karmic debts which isn’t easy indeed.Otherwise,each of us would have already become Arhats ,Buddhas .It needs the accumulation of merits ,practicing the paramitas ,bodhichitta,compassion,wisdoms,skillful means and so forth .
The Buddha advises us to practice the virtues.Similarly ,our own minds which are dualistically polaraized produces the sufferings and we impose the imputations upon it .Buddha advises to apply mindfulness even in small activity:suchas,while drinking water ,walking ,browsing the social media so on .It can engage us to the nowness .As every phenomena is assembled,interdependent and bound to change ,we can cultivate the gratitude since this very nowness won’t occur again in the future .It will soon be a stack of the memories .Practicing gratitude allows us to use in our best of the present moment.
(Abhishek Tamang Thokar , a Buddhist practitioner, a teacher , a student )
