Perception

Awareness typically gets washed away by pleasure, or crushed by pain.  Vicious are the tsunamis and earthquakes of the mind.  Nothing comes close to what we can do with our own perception.  How does one person greet death with humor, while another is terrified?  Any experience we have had, or will have is subject to perception.  Without a mind the senses are just empty holes.

I remember hearing a story about a little girl that never had shoes in her life.  When she got them for her birthday, she was more excited about being old enough to walk miles each way to fetch water for her family.  She was so proud and happy to be useful to her family that lives in squalor.  While most children her age in the states don’t appreciate their parents buying them the latest Jordan’s.  Let alone walk miles to fetch water.

But before you go beat your kids up, and take away their new sporty shoes.  Take a moment to realize that the most powerful thing you will ever experience is your own mind.  It is what allows us to know things and appreciate things.  Let’s not allow this wonderful precious mind to become a burden, or worse, a bully.

I’ve lived with a bully in my mind for most of my adult life.  It is the very reason I came to this practice to find salvation from my own self imposed suffering.  But it wasn’t until I started making progress on the path that it really started to hurt.  Observing Uposatha was pure agony.  Since, it gave the bully no place to hide.  Nothing to keep me distracted from the horrible things I do to myself moment to moment.

I had to finally recognize that my old karma was tied up with terrible values, the habit of taking joy in beating myself up.  Yet, my old karma is not going to go away overnight.  But every moment I begin to beat myself up, I can make a choice, a change for the better.  I can be compassionate to myself.  But in order to see this, I had to take a really hard look at myself.  I was both my own best friend and worst enemy.  The question is simple.  Which values will I feed?

I observed Uposatha yesterday, and I did pretty good being compassionate with myself.  I didn’t catch every inclination to beat myself up.  But the moments I did catch, I reflected on what a blessing it was to do so.  For only through gratitude, patience and compassion can I find shelter from my own self imposed suffering.