It's been so long since Lojong...

[sabrinamari]

Abandon any hope of fruition.

Commentary: The key instruction is to stay in the present. Don'y get caught up in hopes of what you'll achieve and how good your situation will be some day in the future. What you do right now is what matters.

Lojong slogan 28, The Compassion Box, Pema Chodron

[59 Buddhist Teachings on Living Life with Fearlessness and Compassion, translated by the Nalanda Translation Committee, with commentary by Pema Chodron]

******

This one is really intense. I read it as, "Stay here. Stay here. STAY HERE!" I do spend time creating the future I want in my head and calling it when I know what I want, so I struggle with this a lot.

But I think the core piece is this: the future doesn't matter.

What matters is what's happening here, now, and how you are responding to it, here and now.

The most important thing is to be fully present, fully awake, fully aware of your triggers, your patterns, your weaknesses, your strengths---and fully able to decide in each moment who you are going to be.

Will you act---react---from your deeply ingrained patterns and places? Will you act from self-protection, fear and pain? Or will you see it all, understand it all, and choose your response based on who you really are at your core---the you whom you want to express in the world when you are awake and at peace?

This---THIS---is what it means to be powerful.

This kind of self-mastery is power worth having.

And this is what I want.

Without question, this is one of the few things about which I can say, at this moment, "WANT, WANT, WANT!"

I may not know what else I want, but right now, I know I want this kind of power.

Comments

Being Here Now

[bobby1933.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Thanks especially for this: "...choose your response based on who you really are at your core---the you whom you want to express in the world when you are awake and at peace..."

Re: Being Here Now

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

The universe talks through me because my boundaries are so soft and fragile.

Re: Being Here Now

[bobby1933.livejournal.com]

:) Sounds like you would be a perfect patsy for some con man, or for the Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans.

Re: Being Here Now

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Dunno. Maybe.

[showingup.livejournal.com]

I'm sitting with this one a LOT. Over and over again. It's all about the process, in a world where we're constantly told it's all about attaining a fixed, set goal. Sit, sit, sit...

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

And it is never complete, never culminating---all the time it is changing, unfolding in new ways again and again...

[hypanebliss.livejournal.com]

And yet both can be true.

In order to fully actualize the future we want to see a person has to master themselves in the moment. Be present. Be yourself.

Then, when you extend your arm you'll see that in reality you are already stirring trouble 20 years from now because time doesn't exist. :)

"You are waiting for a train..."

[klytus.livejournal.com]

Few things have made more of a difference in my life than being able to be present in the here-and-now, rather than caught up in the traumas of yesterday, and wondering about the maybes of tomorrow.