You He who binds to himself a joy doth the winged life destroy But he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity's sunrise It may become clear that seeing reality for what it is,
Understanding our own minds,
Seeing us the way we truly are,
However difficult it may be,
Is key in order to find peace inside.
As long as we're unable or unwilling to see nature in all its forms,
With all its nuances,
Both good and bad,
We'll always be running away from ourselves.
And that is a race we'll never win.
Also,
I hope it has become clear that intellectual understanding doesn't have the power to free us.
We need a deep wisdom that comes from experience,
From feeling it in our guts,
That come from something beyond words,
Beyond thinking.
Kind of like how we just know that we like the smell of newly-ground coffee or cut grass.
We don't need our thoughts to know.
This is why we meditate.
To feel truth deeply.
To take it all in.
To let nature be our teacher.
One such thing that we all know in our heads,
But that our hearts may have a hard time accepting,
Is that all things come to an end.
So,
We meditate on that,
Just listening to impermanence all around us.
Letting the flowers teach us.
Letting the sounds teach us.
Noticing how our minds create this sense of continuity and time.
Although all there ever is,
Is now.
Phenomena constantly arising and passing away within this knowing space.
This might feel liberating,
Or it might feel depressing.
Just notice whatever emotion it stirs in you.
Again,
Just investigate.
Just observe.
It is not impermanence that makes us suffer.
What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.
Listening to the ever-changing nature of all experiences.
Just observing.
It's like this.
It has always been like this.
It always will.
All is flux.
You cannot step into the same river twice.
Change alone is unchanging.
In the meditation hall in the monastery in which I ordained in Thailand,
We had a skeleton hanging in a glass cabinet.
A real skeleton.
It was the skeleton of a young lady who had shot herself at a late stage of cancer.
Before she died,
She had expressed a wish that her body be used for contemplation in the monastery.
So,
There it was,
Next to a picture of her while she was alive.
It was there as an incredibly powerful reminder of the truth of impermanence.
Of the frailty of life.
A reminder not to take it all for granted.
Some people find this real morbid and sick.
But what's the big deal?
Have we forgotten that we walk around with that thing inside of us all the time?
You see,
Truth is right in front of us,
Every moment.
It's just that we've had blinds on for so long that we don't recognise them.
When we don't understand death,
Life can be very confusing.
We have two lives.
And the second begins when we realise we only have one.
We are all human beings.
We are all human beings.
We are all human beings.
We are all human beings.
We are all human beings.
Listen to nature as she speaks to you right now.
Listening to the waves of experience rising and falling.
Noticing the ocean itself,
Awareness.
Knowing the ever-changing waves on its surface.
Noticing the ocean itself,
Awareness.
Noticing the ocean itself,
Awareness.
Noticing the ocean itself,
Awareness.
I remember before I became a monk,
I was terrified of dying.
I remember once at the bus station,
A thought occurred to me.
Am I going to die before my girlfriend or will she die before me?
That thought punched me so hard in the gut.
Both eventualities felt equally horrible in their own way.
It made me so very afraid and so very sad that I pushed a thought far,
Far away from me.
Something must have changed though,
Because during my time in Thailand,
I had quite a few brushes with death.
I got dengue fever,
Or as it's called in Thai,
Blood coming out fever,
And got pretty sick from that.
I had some pretty close encounters with really venomous snakes,
And I had a black bear happening upon me while I was sleeping out in the jungle once.
With nothing else than a mosquito net between me and him.
Even just everyday living was an opportunity to really feel one's mortality and vulnerability.
Sometimes living in remote jungles with wild elephants,
Boars,
Bears,
And tigers.
Nevertheless,
Even in those really critical,
Hairy situations,
My fear of death was clearly quite diminished.
Even though I think that it partly was a function of my demand on myself to toughen up,
To be a man and all that.
It wasn't the whole story.
There was certainly also deeper change happening,
A more genuine inner transformation.
I remember once when I was walking meditation,
Contemplating death,
And recognizing the fact that really at any moment,
A tiger could come along and finish me.
The really significant part of the experience was the emotional effect of the recognition that,
If that were to happen,
Everything would go on as usual.
Nature wouldn't give a shit.
That's the way of nature.
My body doesn't really belong to me.
It belongs to nature.
I felt at peace with that.
I felt at peace with that.
I felt at peace with that.
I felt at peace with that.
I felt at peace with that.
I felt at peace with that.
I felt at peace with that.
.
.
