As we ramp up for the move to Northern Colorado, all the usual tendancies try to creep into my days - to second guess and to worry about how things will all turn out. Will it really be better? In what ways will it be better or worse? Compared to what?

Silly and unproductive. While I still experience the feelings, at least I don't take them too seriously any more. I started reading a book a few days ago that has the following in the introduction...

...it often seems as if we are preoccupied with the past, with what has already happened, or with a future that hasn't arrived yet. We look for someplace else to stand,where we hope things will be better, happier, more the way we want them to be, or the way they used to be. Most of the time we are only partially aware of this inner tension, if we are aware of it at all.

What is more, we are only partially aware at best of exactly what we are doing in and with our lives, and the effects our actions, and more subltly, our thoughts have on what we see and don't see, and what we do and don't do.

For instance, we usually fall, quite unawares, into assuming that what we are thinking - ideas and opinions that we harbor at any given time -are "the truth" about what is "out there" in the world and "in here" in our minds. Most of the time it just isn't so.

We pay a high price for this mistaken and unexamined asumption, for our almost willful ignoring of the richness of our present moments. The fallout accumulates silently, coloring our lives without our knowing it or being able to do something about it. We may never quite be where we actually are, never quite touch the fullness of our possibilities. Instead, we lock ourselves into personal fiction that we already know who we are, that we know where we are going, that we know what is happening - all the while remaining enshrouded in thoughts, fantasies, and impulses, mostly about the past and about the future, about what we want and like, and what we fear and don't like, which spin out continuously, veiling our direction and the very ground we are standing on.

Wherever You Go, There You Are
Mindfulness Mediation in Everyday Life
Author Jon Kabat-Zinn


Pat stuck in the Wyoming snow this morning, with a few of the tractors that eventually cleared the way and pushed him out of where he bogged down.


This very morning, as we experienced a harrowing wrap-up to Pat's Fort Collins/Wyoming scouting trip, I received the following email from a list I subscribe to:

Every single negative thing we have ever thought or done has ultimately arisen from our grasping at a false self, and our cherishing of that false self, making it the dearest and most important element in our lives. All those negative thoughts, emotions, desires, and actions that are the cause of our negative karma are engendered by self-grasping and self-cherishing. They are the dark, powerful magnet that attracts to us, life after life, every obstacle, every misfortune, every anguish, every disaster, and so they are the root cause of all the sufferings of samsara.

Gradually, as you remain open and mindful, and use a technique to focus your mind more and more, your negativity will slowly be defused; you begin to feel well in your own skin, or, as the French say, être bien dans sa peau ("well in your own skin"). From this comes release and a profound ease. I think of this practice as the most effective form of therapy and self-healing.

Sogyal Rinpoche


All of life's lessons are related. All the solutions are sensible, practical, available, and repeat endlessly in the body of wisdom that has been handed down for several thousand years and continues to be made comprehensible by contemporary teachers.