Klistah Aklistah
Watching the fog lift over the Smoky Mountains i’m reminded…
The mind can be a friend
yet often the mind , so caught up in creating the next scene on the mental screen, is quiet the opposite. Content to be buried in the morning fog.
Because the mind likes variety. “Like a monkey running around” is the common example.
Practice helps us discern the difference between helpful and harmful mental activity. Helps us to take that monkey running around the streets of the mind and train it to be contented with one banana. To savor each bite. From Viksipta to Ekagra. Sit and wath the sunrise wise little friend, enjoy your breakfast and watch the fog lift.
So the mind’s activities can be helpful (aklistah) towards what?
- Helpful for taking another step in the direction of the heart
- Helfpful for lifting the fog it serves to also create
- Helpful for getting us by day to day towards less attachment to what falls away
- Helpful to make it’s efforts eventually obsolete and at peace
- Helpful to connect with your SELF
Harmful (klistah) towards what?
- the same
It is up to us to not just take this practice when it is convenient
It is also up to us to not just practice when we are desperate
But to stand between the opposites and stay steady…
Yes our mind can be a friend and to build a friendship takes time and continued nurturing. A good friend isn’t just one who is always providing more distractions. A good friend is that simple comfort of being seen, known, loved in the most mundane moments.
Peace is not so far away. Your changeable nature and your true nature are always side by side. It is this proximity that creates the illusion that you are this body…but with perserverance and loving contemplation it is also this proximity that allows you to see YOU when the fog lifts.
For more on this sutra and it’s supports click HERE
