The Simplicity of Mindfulness

… Going on, as we do, obsessively trying to improve our conditions, can become an end in itself, and a pointless distraction. Would people in their right mind think of fastidiously redecorating their hotel room every time they checked into one?
Glimpse After Glimpse
Sogyal Rinpoche

۞۞۞۞۞

Sogyal Rinpoche wrote that the “word for body, “lu”, means ‘something you leave behind,’ like baggage”. Whether I believe in a life after death, reincarnation, or that this life is the only shot at it, the concept is the same.  I am compelled to make choices about how I want to live it. Do I want to go to bed at the end of this sojourn at last leaving the most toys or do I want to live a life of meaning and purpose?

     Today, in the modern world, I need to have a few things beyond a roof over my head and food in the larder if I am going to pay the rent and put food on the table. Unless I choose to live monastically, collectively, or in a cloister of some sort, it is most difficult to survive low-tech. I must work at it even if that work is as basic as panhandling for food and I sleep in a cave. The rest of my stuff is extra: i.e., a desktop or a laptop computer for work or play, a cable connection, a smart-phone, a car with all the extras and so on. I can still live simply. and it takes some focus, but, if my aim is to be of use in the world, I can consider these things as tools rather than distractions and put them to use:full purpose... to inform, communicate and even to play. The idea is to enjoy this life I live as fully as I can whether or not I believe I am going back into the dark night or into the light. I have found that there is more of that joy in the simplicity of mindfulness.
geo 5,234