Easing Awake Sangha
  • Home
  • Guide
  • Events
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Donations
  • Join
  • Home
  • Guide
  • Events
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Donations
  • Join

Easing Awake

3/4/2015

 
Ease (peacefulness, equanimity) and wakefulness (clear awareness) are with us all the time. But they have no tension to draw our attention, so we miss them. Meanwhile unwholesome qualities like striving, desire, aversion, fear, and discouragement may also be present. These have a lot of tension and draw our attention. Like the nightly news, bad news grabs the headlines while good news is boring.

Searching for peaceful awareness is like scouring the countryside to find our noses. Rather than strive for easeful wakefulness, we can use them by taking a dispassionate interest in whatever is going.

If the mind is scattered, we just notice, “Ah, scattered mind.” If it’s peaceful we notice, “Hmmm, peacefulness.” If it’s grumpy and resistant we notice, “Far out, grumpiness.” What arises in the mind-heart is not as important as the quality with which we know it. This journey is easier if we smile and enjoy what’s happening rather than tensely control or fret about it.

Here’s the secret: unwholesome qualities cannot survive in the light of relaxed awareness. They dissolve like mist in the morning sun.

Even if ease and wakefulness seem puny, we can still exercise what we have. Dispassionate interest makes them stronger. As awareness grows, it will take care of those hindrances and distractions. We don’t have to do it. Our job is to take care of awareness. Then it can do its job of taking take care of us.

T. S. Elliot famously wrote:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Comments are closed.

    Archives

    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    September 2015
    July 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed