A Swept Floor Never Stays Clean.

By Arnie Kozak

If you sweep the patio in November after leaves have fallen, you wouldn’t expect it to stay clean forever. The patio is like the mind. Mindfulness meditation practice can feel like sweeping the mind and clearing away the thoughts strewn about making a big mess.

It’s easy to get caught up in resistance and resentment toward these leaves: “Damn it, I just swept that floor!” Despite our protests, nature has another idea. Nature doesn’t care if we’ve swept the patio or how long it took us to do it. In the same way, the mind has its nature and it doesn’t really care about your agenda. The mind will continue to do what it does: give rise to thoughts. If we expect the mind to stay “swept,” we are setting ourselves up for disappointment.

Meditation will not “fix you”; it will not change things once and for all. Nothing can do this. Our job is to keep sweeping. Thoughts will continue to come and blow onto your clean-swept patio. Just sweep. No need to ask questions. No need to complain. Keep sweeping. We don’t need to analyze, interpret, or fix the leaves; time after time, we just need to sweep, returning to this moment just as it is, again, again, again.

With continued practice, we can start to recognize the wisdom in not reacting, or if reactions arise (as they sometimes will) of not amplifying them and feeding them. We can learn to enjoy the coming and going of the leaves—and even of the endless sweeping as well!

–Arnie Kozak, from Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants (Wisdom Publications).

~Peace to all beings~

Buddhism, Hinduism, Karma, Fate and Predestination.

Whatever decision we think we are making is actually being made for us, because the decision is the end result of a thought and we have no control over the arising of the thought.

-Ramesh Balsekar

James: Upon first reading this I agreed with it but now that I've been contemplating upon it for awhile I'm wondering, "Do we really have no control over the arising of the thought? Don't we have control over what we think?"

I realize that karma plays a role in our thought process but this quote seems to confuse karma. It rather seems fatalistic and seems to lean toward teaching predestination and from what I've learned Buddhism doesn't teach fatalism or predestination:

It is quite often the case that we find people misunderstanding the idea of karma. This is particularly true in our daily casual use of the term. We find people saying that one cannot change one’s situation because of one’s karma. In this sense, karma becomes a sort of escape. It becomes similar to predestination or fatalism. This is emphatically not the correct understanding of karma. It is possible that this misunderstanding of karma has come about because of the popular idea that we have about luck and fate. It may be for this reason that our idea of karma has become overlaid in popular thought with the notion of predestination. Karma is not fate or predestination.

James: I'd really enjoy hearing your thoughts on this quote, fate, karma, predestination and how it relates (or not) to Buddhism. Part of this could be a difference between Buddhism and Hinduism as this quote came from a daily Hindu wisdom email. And while I don't know Hinduism as well as Buddhism it was my understanding that Hindus don't believe in predestination either.

~Peace to all beings~

Nothing Lasts Forever.

Body impermanent like spring mist;

mind insubstantial like empty sky;

thoughts unestablished like breezes in space.

Think about these three points over and over.

-Adept Godrakpa, "Hermit of Go Cliffs"

James: I've been meditating over these verses for awhile now and the essence that I feel from these lines is one of liberation from the chains that keep me anchored in the deep bedrock of the ego-self. Reminding myself of the impermanance of the body emphasizes that the disease schizoffective disorder, which clouds my brain at times is merely a guest in the present moment of this birth/life.

A spring mist can dangerouslly cloud ones path and confuse a hiker climbing a mountain, which could cause him/her to fall off a cliff. However, if the hiker patiently sits still and is mindful of his/her surroudings then soon pockets of sky will appear again and the route becomes clearer. It's the same when dealing with a mental disorder.

Because forcing my way through cloudy "misty" states of mind that come with schizoaffective disorder makes things worse and leads to decisions that are inherent with danger. Living with a mental disorder gives a person plenty of chances to accept that the mind isn't the ally that we often believe it to be. The power of the mind to control my life is stripped in accepting that the thoughts the mind produces are usually nothing more than projections on a movie screen.

The mind can only be trusted to protect itself.

PHOTO CREDIT: Water Rock Knob, near the North Carolina/Tennessee border of the Blue Ridge Parkway. By Mr.icon on Flickr.

~Peace to all beings~