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Kindle Notes & Highlights
While you’re waiting for something else to happen, your life is still your life.
The small self feels naked and exposed, anxious, unproductive, or afraid of boredom. Noise is a way to cover up self-consciousness.
phenomenon of entrainment as one reason we can feel so rushed. Since nothing happens in isolation, and our very DNA is programmed to resonate with everything else in the universe, we are innate harmonizers. Put two clocks (the old-fashioned kind, with pendulums) ticking away side by side, and before long they will be ticktocking in unison. We’re no different; because we’re social creatures, when we walk down the street with someone, we subconsciously try to move in sync with that person’s gait. When we converse, we synchronize gesture, posture, tone, and breath. Our nervous systems naturally
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The noble Dharma, or liberating Truth, is being eloquently expressed right here and now, for those with unobstructed ears to hear and eyes of pure vision to see.
All of these places carry a certain energy and vibration, either from their unique natural materials, location, or design, or from the collective mind and spirit of the people who frequent them. They are imbued with energy, or Chi. When we visit holy places such as the Great Pyramid, the cathedral at Chartres, Stonehenge, old Jerusalem, Benares, or Lourdes, we immediately feel uplifted as the powerful natural energy or drala of the site or the accumulated prayer-energy of generations of faithful pilgrims recharges us.
shicha, the Fourth Time—the Tibetan Buddhist term for a transcendent dimension of timeless being that intersects each moment of horizontal linear time
A prolonged time away from home is also a trip away from old habits and a well-worn comfort zone, and it can refresh our inner life. Sometimes we can experience new awakenings in such places, or access feelings we’d forgotten—perhaps since childhood. Such moments of grace remind us that the intellect can go only so far, and that perhaps our present life path is not entirely the one we need and long for.
“How do you want to live your life? What is most important? Spending time with people you love and doing things you love, or chasing after things that will give you temporary pleasure, prestige, or fame? My experience is that when I do things that I love to do, whether cooking, laughing with friends, walking in the forest, writing a poem in my favorite café, or helping my patients in the hospital, it brings me back to the present moment. Time somehow expands, and I feel I have all the time in the world.”
He was talking about time and our universal, timeless mission and vow to help deliver all sentient beings beyond suffering and confusion and to nirvana-like peace, felicity, and bliss.
In the Chinese doctrine of the five stages of transformation, this period of life corresponds to balance. Everything reaches a stage of perfect harmony and contentment.
Middle age
Old age has also undergone a dramatic change. In traditional societies, elders are venerated for their wisdom and actively sought out for their guidance. In the West, aging has long been a time of boredom, isolation, loss of purpose and relevance, and often deep loneliness as we sequester seniors in institutions to live out their days blankly staring at a television.
In my own life I have found that it is only through acceptance and appreciation of our difficulties that we become fully developed human beings; often something must be relinquished in order for new growth to take place. Spiritual rebirth requires some form of loss or death. There is no other way to the light than through the darkness.
necessary stages of grieving. These usually include some permutation of the following: (1) shock, denial; (2) pain, anguish, anger; (3) bargaining, negotiating; (4) sadness, despair, hopelessness; and (5) gradual letting go and eventual acceptance.
the guiding principle is to start wherever you are, with awareness and patience, and then to seek understanding.
As with so many times of uncertainty, the more we try to control a situation rather than simply be authentic, the less likely is it that things will work out.
Brigitta gave herself space to continue on her own path, work things through, take a breather, and settle into her own life. Despite her fears that she would spend the rest of her life alone, she used the openness of the bardo that her new job gave her to enrich her own life and reflect upon her wishes, needs, and priorities.
Any gap experience is a bardo and an opportunity for us to stay awake and aware instead of coasting. Listen to the silence between the notes. Extraordinary richness resounds therein.
Keeping a “beginner’s,” “original,” or innocent “don’t know” mind means cutting off wasteful thinking and simply centering in what is happening in the now, the only occurrence that has any truth or reality, without adding conceptual scaffolding.
The way to move forward through any bardo, big or small, is to set your sights on a dream or goal while maintaining that “don’t know” mind. This will help keep your life in motion and help you put down roots when you are floundering. Even “not doing” is a form of doing and has its own ineluctable results. So you can set a life goal and begin to move toward it but still remain open to the possibility that something entirely different may unfold.
Each lifetime is an opportunity to “clean house,” as it were, and to make better choices, thus enhancing and maturing our spiritual consciousness. Buddha himself said, regarding rebirth and karmic unfolding: “If you wish to know what your past lives were like, look at how you are now. If you want to know about your future lives, look at what you’re doing and being right now.”
Our lives don’t suddenly stop when we achieve a major life goal, nor should they.
This countertendency is also gaining momentum and can be described as natural, organic, sustainable, holistic, cooperative, and spiritual. There is the potential for the beginning of a new cycle of peace and harmony that could lead to our cocreation of an enlightened planet and endure for thousands of years. The possibility of contributing to this awakening is inherent in every moment.
Scientists report that the Schumann resonances—electromagnetic waves that have been identified as the earth’s natural frequencies—are now rising in frequency, potentially endangering the entire biosphere.
And just as the planet’s rhythmic pulse will help unify your body, mind, and spirit, the vibration you create will help sustain the earth and its extraordinary biodiversity.
Imagine, if you will, what it might be like to leave the confusion and stress of daily life one day, walk out your door, and have an epiphany—a glorious vision of time like a shining wheel before you.
As the monks work, their prayers, that living energy of attention, go grain by grain into the extremely intricate and vivid powder design of 722 deities—which are different manifestations of the supreme meditational deity Kalachakra—along with Sanskrit symbols; sacred implements; human, animal, and plant figures; and other mystical elements.
The entire sacred artwork is destroyed—another lesson in impermanence and nonattachment. The sand is swept up, put in a jar, and then poured into a local body of water to disperse and spread blessings throughout the universe.
To some, the Kalachakra might seem like an interesting cultural artifact. But it can remind us to sweep up the best grains of our lives, marshal our best intentions, and, through the supreme power of enlightened mind, send them as seeds of healing energy out into the world and the future.
We can go our separate, individual ways and live for our own personal enjoyment. Or we can combine our collective energies and cocreate a “Global Time Zone.” Instead of racing one another down a track to temporary riches and the illusions of security, we can share in the knowledge that, in the fullness of time, with our wonderful modern technology, communication, transportation, and other products of our ingenuity, there is more than enough for all. We can choose to become the mindful planetary stewards and wise children and sage elders we wish to see in this world, for the benefit of present
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As the Dalai Lama recently said, “Help develop world peace through cultivating inner peace along with altruistic social engagement and compassionate action. Take responsibility now for a better and safer world.”
too much emphasis on a goal obscures the reality right here and now.
It balances contentment where you are with Right Effort, and radical acceptance with a compassionate commitment to spiritual transformation on both the individual and the collective level. I call this “being there while getting there, every single step of the way.”
