Monday, November 28, 2005

Our Real Home / Awareness

     It's like the water of a river. It naturally flows down the gradient, it never flows against it, that's its nature. If a person was to go and stand on a river bank and seeing the water flowing swiftly down its course, foolishly want it to flow back up the gradient, he would suffer. Whatever he was doing his wrong thinking would allow him no peace of mind. He would be unhappy because of his wrong view, thinking against the stream. If he had right view he would see that the water must inevitably flow down the gradient and until he realized and accepted that fact the man would be agitated and upset.
     The river that must flow down the gradient is like your body. Having been young your body's become old and now it's meandering towards its death. Don't go wishing it was otherwise, it's not something you have the power to remedy.
-Ajahn Chah



     The mind spends most of the time lost in fantasies and illusions, reliving pleasant or unpleasant experiences and anticipating the future with eagerness or fear. While lost in such cravings or aversions, we are unaware of what is happening now, what we are doing now. Yet surely this moment, now, is the most important for us. We cannot live in the past; it is gone. Nor can we live in the future; it is forever beyond our grasp. We can live only in the present.
     If we are unaware of our present actions, we are condemned to repeating the mistakes of the past and can never succeed in attaining our dreams for the future.
-S. N. Goenka

5 Comments:

At 8:52 AM, Blogger boo said...

Ah... indeed... that is how i live my life... being in the moment... it's the only way to be joyful... all the time... everything else... is madness...

 
At 11:16 AM, Blogger tinyhands said...

Forgive my ignorance, but what then is the purpose of the spells, wishes, and astrology?

 
At 7:47 AM, Blogger Badaunt said...

Regarding the last two comments: Hee hee.

Reading this entry made me realize that this is why teaching is good for me. It FORCES me to live in the present. You can't daydream in the classroom if you're the teacher. You keep getting bounced back into the present.

(I daydream on my days off.)

 
At 6:23 PM, Blogger boo said...

Well... i love tools... spell's are fun... wishes are fun... and astrology is fun... but all that is nothing... if your focus is on the future or the past always... all those things... are only tools... there are not my life... my life is being in the moment... if i am not in the moment... then none of those things... will make me happy...

 
At 10:34 PM, Blogger luminainfinite said...

this is funny to read while reading a blog at work...

and it brought me back into the preciousness of now...

how I will long for this moment later, and the only satisfaction comes in truly feeling it now

and using it to make the next even more enjoyable!

 

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