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The Buddhist Path to Simplicity: Spiritual Practice in Everyday Life
The appetite of craving arises from the pain of disconnection. The pain of believing ourselves to be incomplete or inadequate compels us to seek from the world all that we feel unable to offer ourselves. This pain of disconnection is not always acute; at times we describe it as boredom, forgetting that boredom is never a description of reality but a description of a state of mind superimposed upon reality. Boredom is often a surrender of sensitivity, clouding our capacity to see, listen to, and touch each moment as if we have never encountered it before. The antidote to boredom is not more sounds, sensations, and experiences, but recovering our capacity to see anew in each moment. The world we think we know, the people we think we know, the sounds and experiences we have encountered countless times before, come alive to us in new ways each moment we give them our wholehearted attention. Our storehouse of images, associations, history, and concepts is burned down in the light of compassionate, full attention.
Renunciation is not the territory of saints or ascetics but the territory of each one of us who treasures freedom. Each moment we let go, we embody freedom and follow the pathway of happiness. It is a present moment practice; every moment is the right moment to learn how to let go.
GUIDED MEDITATION
Take a few minutes to sit quietly, relax your body, close your eyes, and breathe out. Reflect for a moment upon the places in your mind and heart you visit the most often, yet feel to be the places of greatest sorrow or struggle. A failed relationship, a childhood hurt, a tension with another person, a frustrated hope. Be aware of the stickiness and tightness of these places, felt in your body, mind, and heart.
What is needed for you to be able to let go, to find a new beginning, to find peace? Is it forgiveness, compassion for yourself or another, tolerance, or understanding? How could you find simplicity in this moment?
Reflect upon the times of greatest happiness in your life—found in intimacy with another, moments of true appreciation and sensitivity in nature, times alone, a moment when you have felt that this moment is complete.
Be aware of what it is that opens the doors of appreciation, connection, and calm; that makes the expectation, fear, wanting, and distractedness fall away. Take some time to hold in your heart the question,
CHAPTER 3 Integrity
Upon goodness of heart is built wise attention;upon wise attention is built liberating wisdom. THE BUDDHA
IN the midst of some of the darkest moments and most tormented events in human history there have emerged individuals who stun us with profound but simple acts of goodness. A homophobic inmate on death row reaches out to hold the hand of a prisoner dying of AIDS. A teenage monk, his body broken by torture, meditates to extend compassion to his torturer. A young girl, her body devastated by napalm burns, finds the generosity of heart to offer forgiveness to the pilot who dropped the bomb. In a single gesture, through a few words or simple acts of kindness, someone’s world is transformed. Integrity is the gift of a wise and loving heart. There is no one whose life is not enriched by the kindness, respect, and compassion that finds its source in integrity. James Russell Lowell succinctly expressed it saying, “All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.”
We may not find ourselves in desperate situations that ask for heroic actions. Integrity finds expression in the countless moments in our lives that invite us to interact with the world from a deep inner place of honesty, respect, and compassion. It is easier to be motivated by the wish for personal advantage, comfort, and gratification than to be guided by ethics and wisdom. Yet the healing of our planet, our communities, and our families asks us to find within ourselves the goodness of heart that seeks to protect and enrich, rather than to exploit or harm.
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