‘I suppose very few of us have passed through even a short period of existence without having noticed the different qualities of dreams. There are those that are evanescent; then there are those that possess you and you can’t shake off; and yet others that may be the urge of your life—its guiding star. Nor can the most superficial fail to observe how dreams and life react on one another.’
When I lost my mother after looking after her for five years, not only had I lost the last member of my family, but I also lost the main motivation for getting up in the mornings.
Only by familiarizing ourselves with all the elements, allowing these things to pass into our awareness untrammelled, and then out again — to allow them their changing nature — only in this way can we learn to live with them, accept them and be free of them. What we do not accept, what we love and hate, we are bound to.
The Buddha in effect produced a manual for seeing life as it is and dealing with it and its problems, undeluded by idealistic belief systems or the claims of great yogic power…
Listening is much less connected with organising or pushing things round in our minds, and in fact listening and the listened-to are much more linked than actor and acted-upon. Listening also tends to be more emotionally neutral.
The modern world seems driven to extinguish silence, as if it were a threat…
There can be few sounds more maddening than snoring — someone else’s snoring I mean…
The central problem is that they all demand to be dealt with now, or otherwise there will be terrible consequences…
Sir John Aske has been a practising Buddhist for many years. He is a keen traveller and photographer (many of his photos on this blog), and is a regular contributor to Buddhism Now. He lives in Exeter. Other posts by… Read More ›
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