Choosing

In choosing to be with another to be with any other human being, we are choosing their set  of workable and their set of intractable problems.

In their choosing to be with us, they are choosing our set of workable and intractable problems.

There is no escape from one person to another, just different sets of problems.

We can only try our best to work with their problems and hope they do the same w ours.

How we place our focus is pretty important.

One photo is the fireplace at the public library in Rockland, Maine

the other is the paint peeling om the window frame above it.

Death

Our mortality, our Death, can be experienced as our friend. 

We can consciously live our lives knowing that death can come at any time-now,now and now.

For an advanced Buddhist Practitioner the time in the Bardo can be said to yield the opportunity to choose to be of greater service to all sentient beings.

Most of us will not have trained enough, however, so it can be said that some sort of our essence comes back according to the fruits of our many lifetimes of karma.

However, in that light, all we have is the ever flowing moments of now in which we can choose to do what is best or at least better.

We can just be….On a warm February day at the Beach in Maine

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No Me

This self that we cherish, think so highly of-does not exist.

We try to hold things together, yet what are we holding together?

We can simply be.

‘I’ have things to do, things I want, don’t want. Things that will satisfy ‘me’. 

I can simply breathe, enjoy things as they are- let go.

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Staying open

Watch yourself when you’re open, open to your surroundings, to people and places. What makes you turn away, change the topic needlessly, leave physically or figuratively. Are you done, are you bored, impatient to get on to the next ‘thing’?

If there is no need to leave, try staying until there is. See what happens. Many times we cut situations off far too quickly, before the moment has yielded its fruit for us. Many words, words that might have been spoken from the heart are not, due to hurrying along to the next item on our agenda.

Did you see the first time a bird landed at your feeder?

Heaven or Hell

Most of the Beings I am familiar with are living in Heaven-here on this Earth. Yet they choose to fill their minds with Hell-and so they miss out. In living in Hell they also wish to convince others they are in Hell with them.

In general, we should avoid these Beings, pray for them. Most of us do not have the capacity to pull them out of their self imposed Hell life. Usually they have woven a very complete,suffocating cocoon. Many of these Hell people are very ‘religious’, very self righteous, yet spend their waking hours seething in hate for others.

Do not associate with these people. They have missed the point of life of living.

Have a Mind?

Do you even know that you have a mind ?

Do you know it’s natural state?

Do you keep it constantly busy and full of stuff? Opinions, emotions, facts….busy,busy,busy…..forever?

Is that your habit?

Do you ever let it rest and just be?

If not, then rarely and only fleetingly will you ever know peace.

Own your life

We must not lose track of the fact that this is our life-No one else’s.Our life is OUR responsibility.

It becomes terribly confusing and quite messy when we try to live our life for others.

It is far better to live ones life with others. (Much word there)

Our egos are terribly complicated things. One wants in many ways to weaken it so that it is more able to see reality as it is.I do not say this in the manner of speaking that we become a pile of mush, not ever!

But that we become able to see the world unfiltered, no through all of our filters. Then we are both able to act properly and be in proper relationship to our world. The world will always break through and continually teach us as to what is actually reality. So in many ways our job is to train our minds to let go and then to behave accordingly. The more we do this the more authentic our lives are, the less we do this the less authentic our lives are.

It is very simple, yet very hard to do.

It takes practice, practicing all of our life.

Not Solid

We steadily and unceasingly work to make ourselves and all that is around us seem solid and substantial.

Our home is ours, but then we move.

Our ‘look’, our ‘style’, disappear like our fist when we open our hand when we change our mind.

Our spouses, our family, our friends and enemies, we will be parted from all of them on our death or theirs.

Our lives become more real when we let go of trying to be what we are not. We are a very fragile collection of parts-ephemeral and passing.

We can relax and take joy in that!​

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holding hands

Many of us haven’t discovered that we have a mind and that it can be worked with.

We wake up and run on autopilot.

We CAN work with our mind.

We can watch how it works, how thoughts arise, how we hold them or let them go.

We CAN choose what thoughts we cling to and what we let simply rise and fall.

We CAN choose new things or objects to place are mind on.

In one month, how many of the things we have worried about will matter? Let alone in a year!

Choose what is important and dwell there.