BMC Newsletter #40

To those who practice meditation and search for wisdom's way

How do we make our life grow? What does it take to make things move? Why can’t I get out of this rut? Is this all there is to this relationship, to this job, to this move, after all my expectations and dreams? This is the all too common song—life is country music, the sad ballad of loss and limitation.

Yet, no matter how wide and desolate the desert gets, we know the oasis is possible because we’ve stumbled into these cool ponds of water with date palms and flowers in the past, and we’ve seen our life suddenly flower with good fruits sweetly ripe for the picking. But the good times can quickly be lost in the next sand storm, and once again we find ourselves back in the wasteland where possibility had dried up.

So how do we get our eternal spring to flow once more? And, moreover, how can we stay there? The trap is in the attachment. Like the monkey who is caught by the banana in the bottle because he won’t let go of it, we get caught in the forms with which we identify and hold in our minds with such fascination that we forget who we really are. We become lost in the dreams of our own thought, forgetting the essential truth that we are not our thought or the forms our mind creates to experience.

Joy arises, but
Pleasure comes.
Joy is undying;
While Pleasure
Becomes Pain.

Meditation is one tried and true way to keep our life grounded in the flowing spring of our being, so that no matter what life presents to us, what forms dance before our eyes, we never forget that we are not that, and that we are more than the content of our mind. Meditation helps us discover that spacious awareness that is the Knower of experience and thought—the I before the ME— and to live in the joy that bubbles from our internal spring of being, no matter what the present experience happens to be.

This weekend I’m changing the sign of our yoga center to the Blackstone Meditation Center, and I hope it will be an oasis for those who want to practice meditation and discover their own inner wellspring of joy and light.

Thank you,
Ed
Om Peace
7/21/07
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