In love with the World - 5. Letting Wisdom Arise

Contributors

Chloé, Paolo

Change and awareness

• The inherent nature of everything is change. It’s our preoccupation with a problem that nails it in place.
• Awareness is the essence of our existence, it is always within reach, but we don’t always recognize that.
• A Tibetan legend tells the story of a poor family who lived in a mud hovel. One day a treasure hunter came to their house and saw that the rocks they had in their fire pit were laced with diamond crystals. They became wealthy landowners – they had been rich all along but had not known it. “Our awareness is our greatest treasure and we already have it, but we do not know it.”
• “Right here right now is where the suffering arises. Between the sound and the projection, between things as-they-are and things as-we-want-them-to-be. This is what the Buddha taught: To misperceive reality is to suffer.”

Ego

• Ego is not an object, but a process— tendency for grasping, for holding on to fixed ideas and identities - what we call ego is really an ever-changing perception – it is NOT a THING
• Don’t want or need to be in combat with ego— just strengthens the illusion that it exists – it never existed in the first place
• The ego self is a process, roles we grow into and we need to grow out of 
• Parts of ego = healthy— intuitive sense of right and wrong
• Deepening understanding of emptiness → “dropping from the intellectual head to the experiential, feeling heart”
• The unpleasant experience on the train is an opportunity to go into a meditation starting with simply breathing first than contemplative reflection and accepting change and just letting it be ….
• Being able to observe and have perspective of “waves”/disturbances of the ocean without being afraid, threatened — a dynamic equilibrium of sorts

Questions

• Which roles and ideas contribute most to form an impression of solid, enduring, unchanging identity in your ego?   
• Can you explain if and how you perceive that you are not “the size and shape of your worries”?

Meditation

Impermanence