- “We have been walking so long in the dark that we forgot how to turn on the light.” - Buddha
Think of Enlightenment in terms of habitually walking through a dark room, bumping into tables, chairs, and other bits of furniture.
One day, by luck or accident, we brush against a switch or button that turns on a light.
Suddenly we see all the room, all the furniture in it, and think “Look at all this stuff here. No wonder why I kept on bumping into things.”
As we look at all this stuff, we realize that the light switch was always there, we just didn’t know it. Or maybe we just didn’t think that the room could be anything but dark.
So enlightenment can be described as turning on the light in a room that we’ve spent most of our lives navigating in the dark.
Re-source: Relate
The mind is so intimately related to the way that we relate to ourselves and the world around us.
- This is difficult to see at first.
- With meditation, we begin to become familiar with the mind.
“Looking at the mind is like trying to see your own face without a mirror.”
- You know you have a face and you have some idea of what it looks like, but that idea is a bit hazy.
- Its features are a bit obscure by layers of impressions that are constantly shifting, depending on our attitudes, emotions, and other conditions that affect our idea of our face.
- Similarly, we know we have a mind, but its featured are blurred by overlapping thoughts, feelings and sensations.
craving and resource from “Joyful Wisdom” – Embracing Change and Finding Freedom - by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche with Eric Swanson
