I would like to share with you the story of the two farmers,
Which is an analogy to explain the cultivation of mindfulness as an open quality of awareness.
The story goes this way.
Two farmers set out plowing their field,
And while plowing their field,
Right in the middle of their field,
Suddenly their plow gets stuck.
Looking at the shear of the plow,
So the metal part that goes into the soil,
To till it,
They notice that the shear got stuck to a rock jutting out of the soil.
On seeing such,
The first farmer abruptly stops,
Visibly annoyed by what happened and the presence of the rock in the middle of the field.
Being frustrated by such,
He starts to think,
How am I going to plow the field with such a huge rock set right in the middle.
Thinking to himself he says,
I know,
I will remove it.
So he firmly sets his feet into the ground and positions himself to grab the rock and dislodge it from the ground.
He firmly grabs the rock with his bare hands,
Trying frantically to dislodge it out of the ground to no avail.
Further feeling frustrated by such,
Thinking to himself he says,
I know,
I will get a spade,
Dig around it,
And when I reach the bottom,
I will lever it out.
He sets himself up,
Starts digging around it,
But to no avail,
And all the while the rock seemed to just be getting bigger.
Feeling tired and frustrated by such,
He says to himself,
I know,
What will do the trick.
Thinking to himself he says,
I know,
I will get a mechanical digger,
Sure,
That will do the trick.
So he acquires a mechanical digger and starts excavating,
Removing the soil and chipping away at the rock.
Finally he sails with a smile on his face,
With that sense of satisfaction,
The rock is gone,
He gets out of the digger and dusts his clothes.
Then looking around he realizes that by the time he had finished there was no more a field to plow.
Likewise the second farmer while plowing his field also gets his plow stuck in the middle of the field.
He stops,
Looks at the shear of the plow,
And notices that it got stuck to a rock.
Noticing this he stops,
Encounters the rock,
Looks at the rock,
But never loses sight of the field.
He gently dislodges the plow and continues plowing the field.
At the end of a hard day's work he looks at the field again and sees the rock,
He approaches it,
Sits on it and comes to the realization of what a vantage point the rock is at giving him a view of the whole field.
And such is the cultivation of mindfulness,
Not only in our practice of meditation,
But also in our actions in daily life.
So in our meditation practice and everyday mindful endeavors our actions can reflect in one of two farmers.
We can either get caught in our heads in frustrations thinking of how my things not be going our way,
How we might do things differently,
Or similarly to the second farmer we can encounter the particular situation we might find ourselves in,
Acknowledge how a situation might be making us feel and how easily of a tendency it is to get caught up in frustrations,
Anger or annoyance.
So gently acknowledging how we feel without getting carried away or lost in such feelings.
So without losing sight of the whole situation,
Without losing sight of the whole field of our experience just as it is.
And doing so can enable us in such a way so as to harness the energy,
In such let's call them negative emotions,
Channeling them wisely so as to diligently address the situation like the second farmer did.
And looking into the actions of the second farmer it could be said that the essence of mindful action lies in the fact of a genuine appreciation of what we got and the fact that we are alive.
And it is this appreciation and gratitude that we are alive is what will ultimately help us act and be more mindfully aware of how situations in life make us feel without getting lost in such feelings.
This enabling us to respond and not react and when we respond with awareness and not mindlessly react to situations we end up making choices that not only affect our own lives in a positive manner but also the lives of countless others.
As the quote attributed to Viktor Franklien,
The author of the book Man's Search for Meaning says,
Between stimulus and response there is a space,
In that space is our power to choose our response,
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
