Back to basics

Yes, before a shortage there a pain or a pleasure. And before them there Is a sensation. This should the be sequence: i recive a sensation, i decide if Is a pain or a pleasure. Depending from this i think what to do ( excape, fight, get closer to the object etc), the emotion comes ( i'afraid, Happy, etc) , i act. This should be the sequence that create the karma.

"They are like thieves who enter very quickly without being seen in the house."

That reminded me of something from Thich Nhat Hanh in Understanding Our Mind:
The four fields of mindfulness—body, feelings, mind, and objects of mind—
inter-are. Each field contains the other three. According to the practice taught in
this sutra [Discourse on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness], we recognize every phenomenon in each of these four fields as it
arises. Our principal task is recognizing. This is like the work of a doorman who
greets everyone who comes in or goes out. We are the doorman for our six sense
perceptions. If there is no doorman, the house is not guarded and can be invaded.
We light the lamp of mindfulness so that we can see and recognize everything
that is happening. In this way, the house is secure.

Many of his teachings are about constant mindfulness in all moments, not just noting every single breath, but he explains following your complete inhalation, watching the pause/turning-around, following the complete exhalation, watching the pause, and the still continuing with the next inhalation, during all activities, both simple ones and complicated or crucial ones. I'm going to go on a limb and say that it's a similar teaching with different words. Your breath not just being an anchor, but could also be seen as an embodiment of the background stillness, silence, and spaciousness that the rest of the experience arises out of.

"I have the feeling that to dissolve the emotion it's to late and even too hard."
I would somewhat agree that the earlier in the chain you can catch things, especially harmful reactions/emotions, the better. And I would agree that in some cases it can seem like it has built an unstoppable momentum. But it has been proven to me many times that it's never too late unless you tell yourself it is, though that's also the practice. Quick story:

I once saw a woman, parked on the side of the road, dart her red car into the road, right as a nearby black car was approaching very quickly from behind. The black car smashed right into her, it had no time to react, it all happened so fast. Both cars skidded several feet down the road even as you heard the brakes. The cars were then still, and you just heard silence for a few seconds. Then the woman gets out of her car, visibly shaking, tears streaming down her face, her hand at her mouth. A man gets out of the black car, furious at the woman, yelling at her. She's sobbing now, he keeps yelling at her. Then suddenly mid-sentence, he stops. He takes a few steps forward, and hugs her. After a minute, he goes back to check on the older woman in his car.

So, if we can be mindful enough to notice: No matter how far you've gone down the wrong road, turn back.
Or maybe in our case: No matter how far you've gone down the wrong road, dissolve it.

Thanks Fabio and Bob:

You describe the process well - thoughts .. emotions etc.

Just now - as I have said before, I am "dealing" with difficult emotions associated with my daughter's sickness.

With practice, I see more and more - If I can first "deal' with my thoughts - the heavy emotions don't get fed - and there is less suffering.

When I recognise the thief - I feel happier and much lighter. And most Importantly - this is very good for my daughter.

Thanks Sangha folk

cheers Jim

Dear Jim, you are racing a very difficult situation. I'm with you with all my heart!

Yes, it is true, Fabio, yesterday I could see my emotion started with a thought but it was already too late...
In spite of my good intentions of that day I became very angry and it started with a thought of fear.
At that moment it felt completely right to REACT but what would have happend if I had allowed myself to PAUSE before my reaction...
In stead of bringing my attention to the vision/object, and staying there I could have turned my mind inside, feeling the rage going through my body, my heartbeat and my breath going faster but also feeling the space within and around my anger. It might have deminished or even dissolved because it was in the end all about me...As Rinpoche says "Mind is the creator of stories and ego".
I think it is good to reflect these situations in order to deal with them in a different way next time, we can start again every moment!

"I think it is good to reflect these situations in order to deal with them in a different way next time..."
I think you're right. I haven't been consistent in this, but I'll start.

It reminds me of something Rinpoche teaches when he teaches Dream Yoga. Dream Yoga has practices of the night and of the day, the ones of the day possibly being more important. One main practice of the day is seeing everything as dream, as vision. As Rinpoche teaches it, you have multiple chances. Ideally you see it as dream as it occurs. Failing that, you immediately reflect afterwards, recalling how strong and real it all felt, but asserting that it was a dream. Failing that, at the end of your day, you review your whole day like watching a video tape played on fast forward. During that review you recognize the scene as a dream, and as a whole recognize the whole day as a dream.

I'm looking at dream and vision as two ways of describing the same thing, but my understanding may be lacking. Either way, I think this idea of reviewing or rehearsing, to give ourselves another shot for that incident, and to help future incidents, is very helpful.

Every night when I am in bed I look back on my day so I will add your suggestion,Bob, of seeing it all as a dream. I think it will help to let go of attachment as well of the good as of the bad things...

Jim, At the beginning of the winter retreat Rinpoche said: "Every situation will help you to grow". I wish you growth and all the best in your difficult situation.
Marijke

Dear Friends, i like so much to recive your messages ! Thank you

Thanks so much everybody.

The sun is shining today here in the valley.

Best Dharma wishes

Jim

Dear friends, today was very interesting for the practice. In this days I have around me a person very disrupted. The same as my mother, and you know what I mean. A very difficult situation for me. So, instead to avoid her, i decided to use her as " very famous person". O was a good idea, i could dissolve the vision for a small time, but enought to taste a deep vacuity and awareness and a small beatitudine. To me this person Is a gift, an occasion to go deeper in myself.

Haha! Nice! I think you have 2 successes there. You succeeded in using this person as your "famous person", and also you have a great mindset, you know what to do in general.
One thing to dissolve just the vision from memory, later, but you've applied this in the very moment! I thank you for sharing this, you take away all my excuses.

today I witnessed the birth of a dream, a very liberating and at the same time comic experience.
I have to make a premise, a client of mine complained that the varnish of a violin was too wrinkled. He had phoned me a little before the practice. Now I'll tell you about the experience. The consciousness had withdrawn from the sensory consciousnesses, I no longer felt the body. I contemplated the spaciousness of the mind. My client's thought appears. Immediately I find myself with her in a room where there was a kind of alien being, small, ugly and monstrous with black and very wrinkled skin. So I told her: if he too, who is an alien, has a wrinkled skin , what's the problem with the varnish of the violin? The dream had appeared! I immediately understood the connection with the phone call of my client and I found it very funny! Then a hallucination appeared, a cloudy sky above me that wanted to crush me. So I did as Tenzin advises, I approached to investigate if it existed, closer and closer. And it dissolved! I got great peace of it! And I thought, from now on, every demon that will appear in my mind I will be able to dissolve it by investigating its illusory nature!

Thanks Rimpoche!

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Bravo! Bravo!

Now, I'm just curious about some things if you don't mind my asking. What position were you in, sitting, lying down? When it all was over, was it or was it like waking up from being asleep, or even taking a nap? Or did it all seem like going into and out of a deep meditation?

You referred to it as a dream, "The dream had appeared." At any point did you have the thought, "I still have a body meditating or sleeping somewhere else."?
For me, it's gets very interesting when I consider that even this which I take as my body is just dream. And then we get into even more interesting territory to me when I consider that even my thoughts and reactions about all this are dream. And lastly, how much of it to apply to waking life is very interesting.

"I immediately understood the connection with the phone call..."
Almost always I can determine the origin of a dream, after I wake up. But to do so during, fantastic!
Thanks for sharing!

it was a very short experience, like a breath. But I was aware of everything. He was in the five-point sitting position, as explained by Rimpoche

Even the last few nights It happened to realize during the dream the connection with the events of the day before who generated the dream. The thing that strikes me most is the associative capacity of the mind. For example the connection: wrinkled violin varnish - alien small, ugly and monstrous with black and very wrinkled skin. Ah, he was also a hunchback! It seems that the mind takes from some internal container pieces of impressions, memories, symbols and very quickly assembles them to create the script for a film. The creative power is impressive.
Honestly, even with thoughts, which are the day version of the dream, the same happens. We fantasize all the time. and we call it " to think".

Sheakspeare, in Romeo and Juliet, says: we are made by the same substance of the dreams

Sorry the original phrase by Shakespeare is:
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

"The thing that strikes me most is the associative capacity of the mind."
Yes!
All kinds of stuff. Before bed one night I was showing someone a graph but the X and Y axis were mixed up, leading to a dream where a boat was up on it's end, sinking into the water. Both cases the 90 degree rotation.
Also, for some reason I took pictures of it in my dream, and then showing those pictures to another dream character my phone was pausing a lot and not showing the next picture very similar to a computer trouble I had earlier in the day. But then things combined and I was in the water, and my phone was getting wet, so then it "made sense" to me that my phone was acting strange.

Often, maybe always, any given thing or person in the dream is the answer of multiple influences at the same time, brought about by multiple associations. I'll catch the first one, but then be awestruck later to realize several other reasons it was as it was. For example, a person can get pulled into your dream since they have the same family role as someone else you're thinking of, but also separately their name is connected to the name of another person you dealt with that day, or in the past they often talked about a certain thing and now they are the representation in your mind of that topic which has come up again recently.

Also many things from your sleep situation filter in. Maybe you're hot and fall asleep with your shirt off when you usually don't, and you have dreams where you don't have a shirt, and your mind instantly can weave explanations for why. Or like last night by me so much rain and you could hear the sounds of cars on the wet roads. So I dreamed of a long bike ride through rain. Some parts of that dream I didn't question, and were left unexplained. The parts I did question, my mind instantly provided a story to glue it all together.

"Honestly, even with thoughts, which are the day version of the dream, the same happens. We fantasize all the time. and we call it " to think"."
Personally I completely agree. I don't think dreams or thoughts are linear or logical, they just arise out of the strongest impressions and associations our mind contains. But, I think we get very good at ignoring or pushing aside thoughts that don't seem to line up the way we want, or don't match how we identify ourselves. And in that way we lose sight of what our mind is really doing. I think this is a shame on many levels. We lose out on many creative insights and solutions to problems because they don't fit the way we expect or want them to. And we miss out on learning about who we truly are.

This is a very deep and acute analysis. Thanks

Thank you both for for sharing these experiences!!! In the end there may be not so much difference between night and day...and I like what Shakespeare wrote
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep...

Yesterday Thich Nhat Hanh passed away peacefully at the age of 95.
We already mentioned him several times in our posts and I just feel the need to mention him again now. With his wisdom, simplicity, kindness and peace he really influenced my life and I am extremely grateful to him .
Marijke

Can you share with us some of your experience with him?

Marijke, yes, if it makes sense, please share any experiences you had with him or any lessons or feelings you got from him.

While it's on my mind I wanted to share from some of my notes from his books. He wrote so many books. Many of them were remixes of things he previously wrote. But as one teacher said (maybe him) when asked why he kept saying the same things again and again, "But have you heard it yet?"

I personally feel like most of his books fell into one of two categories: 1. practical methods and examples of maintaining and applying mindfulness to our usual daily lives, often with a specific area of focus like work, relationships, anger, etc. 2. a combination of poetic and analytical presentation of some specific sutra or set of Buddhist principles.

These are the main recurring ideas I remember from his writings, but I am sure I am missing several:

• Heaven, Nirvana, The Kingdom of God, whatever you want to call it, it is here and now.
  
• You must deeply and mindfully live each moment. That way you become real and what's in front of you becomes real. It is there for you. You should be there for it.
  
• See the poetry of life, allow that mode of thinking to guide you.
  
• Look deeply into things, ask questions of the environment itself, plant questions into your mind and wait. But don't think. The answer will just come to you on its own.
  
• When listening to teachings, just let them sink into your mind like rain on the ground. Using thinking is like placing a tarp over the ground, you will just agree with what you already think and disagree with that which you dislike.
  
• Water the good seeds and not bad seeds, in yourself and others.
  
• Everything, including the smallest grain of sand, contains the entire universe.
  
• You are a continuation.
  
• You are manifestation, be a happy manifestation.
  
• We can begin anew, we are always beginning anew.
  
• We are each everyone, we are even the most horrible person. If you lived the same life as that person, were given the same choices as that person, surrounded by the same people as that person, you would do exactly as they do. Help them.
  
• Radio NST(non-stop thinking) always playing in our mind.
  
• One should choose certain things to act as a reminder to be mindful and return to yourself: every single bell or chime sound at all, every time you see a red traffic light, every time you're waiting for anything.
  
• You can craft your own gathas to recite during recurring actions in our lives. The gatha should bring you to mindfulness and to a deep and enjoyable connection with the activity it was crafted for.
  
• Make a pact of mindfulness with a staircase. You vow to be mindful of every step on that staircase, every single time. If you miss even one step, you vow to go back to the first step.
  
• Follow your breath all the way in, and all the way out.
  
• The breath: connects with this moment, helps you weather difficult emotions, protects you.
  
• To progress on this path you must be a poet, an artist, and a warrior.
  
• Three Doors of Liberation: Emptiness, Signlessness, Aimlessness
  
• Three Dharma Seals: Impermanence, No-Self, and Nirvana
  
• action without an actor
  
  

Bob, wonderful post! Thanks. I should print It and put on my tablet! Wow. That's very inspiring!

You already wrote a lot, Bob!
I followed a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh in Germany and went to talks he gave in the Hague, Holland.
What strikes me most of him is his BEING, he just radiates peace, serenity and presence and embodies this completely. When he entered the room the whole atmosphere became light and peaceful.
I did mindful walking with him. It is an experience that entered my body and breath and so often when I am walking this experience naturally comes back in my body, just as mindful eating, or pausing for a moment. Every now and then they rang a bell and we all paused what we were doing and went back to our breath. I still often take a moment to go back inside and follow my breath e taught everything you do can be meditation.

So from him I learned the importance of the mind AND the body and breath ( just as we learn from Tenzin Wangyal) As a yogateacher I taught Thich Nhat Hanh's
series of movements to my students.
Just like Fabios experience of his family also starting to meditate, I had the same experience. I told my sister about this teacher in a very difficult period of her life, she went to Plum Village in France where Thich Nhat Hanh lived with his sangha and got so inspired that she became the leader of a sangha in Holland. When my son was in a difficult period he also went to Plum Village and the practice of mindfulness as it was embodied there helped him a lot.
Thich Nhat Hanh was simple and humble and at the same time very profound. A central theme in his teachings is INTER BEING.An example of this my son sent me yesterday when he heard of his death. It is a gatta by Thich Nhat Hanh:

Tomorrow I will continue to be
But you have to be very attentive to see me
I will be a flower , or a leaf
I will be in these forms and I will say hello to you
If you are attentive enough, you will recognise me
and you may greet me
I will be very happy

greetings from Marijke

This is very poetic. Very. Thanks