No one can walk your path for you, and you cannot walk someone else’s. From birth to death, we each have our own journey. Our path is one of self-discovery and how we relate with self and others. The goal is insight and the only way to attain insight is by using mindfulness. With concentrated effort into the recesses of our minds we can learn to liberate ourselves from ignorance, anger, and cravings. This is the only way to free ourselves from our habituated addictions. Freeing ourselves from afflictions is the only path to true happiness. There is no way to find true happiness if we are overwhelmed with anger, hatred, ignorance, and cravings. As my mentor would remind me there is only one way and that is to go forward on the journey and uncover all the obstacles to peace.
Peace is freedom from all distractions and brings about happiness. Distractions are our judgements, ignorance, cravings, and anger. These distractions pollute our minds and our bodies and prevent us from living fully in the moment. We call these distractions, addictions, cognitive distortions that ruminate in our minds and take up space. These afflictions plague us all and keep us from moving forward in positive ways. Mindfulness provides us with a pathway to move forward and liberate ourselves from these emotions that bind us and keep us stuck. The key is to look at the emotions in the moment, not be triggered and let them go.
Not too long ago I discussed the light or lamp that burns inside each of us. You know the Buddha, the Christ, the Guru within. That part of us is always there waiting for us to turn towards the light to shine away the darkness. Breath work is one methodology that allows us to stop the drama calm the sympathetic nervous system and go within for comfort. The beauty of breath work is that it is portable and always with us. Our breath waits patiently for us to choose it over the distractions. Tich Nhat Hanh states, “Our practice is to light up the lamp.”
The practice is always about coming back to you. The most beneficial way to go about doing this practice is mindfulness/meditation. Mindfulness provides us all a way to effortlessly move through difficult situations. Breathing does not take much effort, right? We breath every moment of our lives till we no longer exist. You breathe in, just breathe. When we allow our breath to guide us it is effortless. However, when we are obstructing our experience with worries, and fears this can lead us to very dark places. Those worries and fears become stories that lead us to more stories, more triggers and despair. When we reach this point, we have difficulty seeing clearly. It is important to remember that life is ever changing and very impermanent. Nothing here lasts very long. We are the only ones who can change our minds. As Pema Chodren states, “You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.” Tich Nhat Hanh describes this experience as a kaleidoscope. Remember playing with a kaleidoscope as a child. Every time we turned the dial, we would see a different array of colors and forms, right? Then what happened you turned it again and again. Each turn presents something different. This is also a metaphor for life. We can change the path we choose to take at any impasse, or we can remain stuck in the mud. It isn’t a bad thing to be stuck in the mud of life after all a lotus flower only blooms in mud. So, when we are stuck it is important to remind ourselves that it is only temporary and maybe it is time to bathe in the mud. Let the messy mud be our teacher and be open to learning the lesson. Remember you can always choose again. We can change our minds, or we can remain stuck in the teaching moment. Is it necessary to cry every time we hit an obstacle to peace in our journey? Look at all the things around us that constantly change. Every landscape, the moon, the stars the sun, the oceans and the mountains all change. We also change none of us is the same person we were 10, 20 or 30 years ago. Look at something as simple as a flower it blooms, it dies and disappears and then blooms again thousands of times. Remember life can be as complex or as simple as we choose, and we always have a choice. I would like to end with a very beautiful poem by Tich Nhat Hanh. It cannot be stated more eloquently than this. Simply put same coin different sides you choose.
“Please Call Me by My True Names” By Tich Nhat Hanh
Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
Because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin, and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my
people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.