In love with the world - 12. A day at the Ghats

Contributors

Goedele, Carles

Summary of the chapter

The chapter starts with a walk along the river. That inspires Mingyur Rinpoche for walking meditation. Just as the river flows, he also let his thoughts flow, he doesn’t block them, but invites them in.

He thinks about the letting go of Mingyur Rinpoche, of his self, his monk robes, his habits. He feels very unsafe in the world now he is alone, unprotected by the monastery, by the habits. He is out his comfort zone, on a retreat.

He thinks about 3 aspects of a retreat:

• Outer retreat: refers to the physical environment, the space in which you do the retreat
• Inner retreat: refers to the body, the speech, the action
• Secret retreat: refers to the intention: he wants to make the world a better place, and in order to do so, he needs to make himself a better person. He says: transforming ourselves is transforming the world. He concludes that when we travel into ourselves, there the real self-transformation can happen. Self-transformation has nothing to do with altering external circumstances.

And at this point, awareness comes up: is it possible to experience just what is there, not creating another story or longing for, “I which this or that was different, I wished to be somewhere else”.  This longing for is in fact an expression of basic goodness, that what is always there. With awareness, we can have more and more access to our loving qualities in us.

Then he talks again about the gap, that formless space , when there is a break. When there is a break, there is openness, a mind free from grasping, from attachments, free from pre-conceptions. You can experience that naked mind in daily life. Every time when there is a stop, as simple as a sneeze . When you sneeze, there is a shock, the mind stops. A glimpse of the naked mind. If we are willing to relax our fixed mind and let go of ideas, we find an emptiness, which is not nothingness. We find luminous emptiness of mind, which is always with us and also an expression of basic goodness

Question

• When there is a challenge, a difficulty, or something that is lost (parents that pass away, end of a relation), how do we relate to that?
• Can we experience that, without the longing for: “I wish it was different”.
• Are there situations in your life in which it was too challenging to experience, and you retracted? What happened?
• What happened when you actually went through the challenge?  

Meditation

Be with the experience vs pushing back and avoiding the experience