Find Composure in each situation!

One truly is the protector of oneself;
who else could the protector be?
With oneself fully controlled,
one gains a mastery that is hard to gain.

Dhammapada 12.160

An invitation and opportunity to practice composure as things come to be and dissolve in a rainbow of impermanence. That’s my teaching of non-attachment, it is not that it calls for impassioned disdain, as much as it calls for mindful presence in the here and now without visceral desire to chase after the delusion of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow… Mindfulness though shines light even and more so on those knots that through time seemed so solid realities and truths.

Impermanent truly are compound things,
by nature arising and passing away.
If they arise and are extinguished,
their eradication brings happiness.

Dīgha Nikāya 2.221

Though sundays currently splash time with visits with friends and Africa dance, I want to make room for a day visit at the Deer Park monastery. The joy of this little chant brought deep peace and reconciliation to my heart last time I visited: “no where to go, nothing to do”...

“Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.”

-Helen Keller

and that’s when, doing nothing, going no where I can reach deeper underneath the impermanence of the superficial and find that something in the world, which I can do, sweeten another’s moment of pain so that it does not solidify into ongoing suffering… that’s the meditation of the moment :)

I mean finding composure in each situation of course, as most things, flows easier out of my mouth into words than it does out of my body into actual tangible actions. Yet that’s my intention. Reading C.S Lewis thoughts on the character of our human mind though brought some new ideas about this. He says, “five senses, a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than a minority of them -never become conscious of them all. How much of a total reality can such apparatus let through…” And yet others, perhaps because of the capricious nature of “reality”, cry that reality should be regularized and at best prohibited. :)