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March 09, 2007
Meditation
"So here's a story for you. Here I am a Vipassana teacher with hundreds and hundreds of students, some who have experienced powerful meditative awakenings, but that's not my way. For a long time this was the hardest thing to accept that nothing happens. I am not a person with big dramatic experiences. For thirty years it has simply been a process of practicing, by not being caught by my ideas or discouragement or success. I would go for months of retreats and nothing spectacular would happen. This was pretty hard for the first ten years. (laughter) But at least I did not get caught into believing that I am some special person. Yes somehow something did change. What most transformed me were the endless hours of mindfulness. Giving a caring attention to what I was doing. I learned that the inner droppings of burdens would not happen all at once, but again and again. I dropped the judgments the fears, the distrust the tightness in my body. I discovered automatically how tightness could come and with that realization I starting letting go and my life began one of ease. The teachings became clear, that in reality there is neither coming nor going, but from the ground of being, nothing ever really happens or will happen. Seeing this was like a confirmation. I became less serious less concerned with myself, my kindness started to deepen. My friends told me I became more and more like myself, how odd. They say there has been a very big change in me, but it wasn't produced by any special event. I guess it is just the fruit of being present for this moment over and over, it’s that simple. So many ways, and each of these is a shift of identities. A freeing of the heart, an invitation to the joy of liberation. When you come in to interviews to speak with us in the course of the retreat, we see this in you. It's really a beautiful thing. You come and how hard it is. You struggle with grief, with loneliness, with the small sense of self and pain, with anxiety and then we begin to notice you have moments and periods where you're more spacious. Where the judgment with the way things are drops away. Where the resistance melts. Where there is a touching in for each of you to a deeper and greater reality and it's a most beautiful thing to see. You start to shine more, you get younger as the retreat goes on.. (laughter). ......This is your treasure. This is not a small thing. To know that it's possible in a moment to be free. Caught in all this stuff and in the next moment to know, wow I was really caught in that one wasn't I. Just in a moment, any moment, to step out of all the things that we take as I and mine in the world . It is a treasure to come back to the unconditioned from all the changing conditions. So when we were asked is enlightenment a myth....... How would you answer this, what would you say, what level would you speak from................."
~Jack Kornfield
Posted by soul sista' at March 9, 2007 06:15 PM