Calm Abiding

The practice of mindfulness, of bringing the scattered mind home, and so of bringing the different aspects of being into focus, is called Peacefully Remaining or Calm Abiding.

    All the fragmented aspects of ourselves, which had been at war, settle and dissolve and became friends. In that settling we begin to understand ourselves more, and sometimes even have glimpses or the radiance of our fundamental nature.

Glimpse After Glimpse

Sogyal Rinpoche

~

   I get it, this whole business of mindfulness, when I defragment my computer. Files scattered all over the disk are brought together… defragmented. The more scattered the files on the disk, the longer it takes. The ultimate end of it is to help my computer run more efficiently. My mind is fragmented… worries;… plans… even beliefs… all of these and more distract me, putting obstacles in the way of clarity. Living in the past or projecting into the future, the present is skipped over as though it wasn’t important at all. I look back at my life and can see a series of moments resulting in long term consequences… both for good and bad. How many times did a chance meeting result in a life-long friendship or love affair? I have sat in a jail cell regretting that moment of fear, desire, anger or drunken disregard for consequences that ended badly for me. It is the moment I am in that insists on clarity of mind; from how I act down to the words I use rooted in my consciousness. Conscious contact with the Heart of Compassion opens my mind to a Calm Abiding moment, free of fear, resulting in a consciousness that transmits compassion.

geo 5,205