Coming Home

During the meditation practice, I had a feeling that a lot of conflicts in mind just seemed to stop. It wasn’t that the conflicts disappeared, but that these conflicts were just seen as coming from the same source, and not really disturbing to the sense of mind itself. Even when I felt the usual pains in the low back, I was able to see that the pain is not so important. What is important is to know in the heart where the mind is. And I also felt a kind of trust in the mind that I have not really felt before. In fact, most of the time, I am simply afraid of falling through some crack, not realizing that the real ‘I’ doesn’t really go anywhere. It only seems to go somewhere because of fluctuating conditions. I felt the power of loneliness itself when I started to see ‘why’ I behave the way I do, and the kind of losses to which I am prone to fear.

                I think that underneath the struggles I have with competition and staying afloat have to do with this fear of being left behind, or a kind of social death. But who leaves who behind? It’s important to linger on that idea for a while. What really happens is that “I” lose the wholeness of mind to the thieving, wandering thoughts. What these thoughts do is divide awareness into so many parts: pursuer and pursued; abandoner and abandoned; interrogator and interrogated. Then I am like a dog chasing after my own tail. Who is really the judge in my experiences? Who can alienate the mind from itself? I have to keep coming home to know that only I can do this.

                I begin to feel that a radical trust in mind is the only way to cope when I get fooled by my own deluded thinking, which separates me into an “I” and an overall environment. I think it means having a determination to trace all the thoughts and conflicts back to their source. Otherwise, one only creates unnecessary suffering, clinging to what was never really permanent in the first place. And far from being an irresponsible position, this turns out to be perhaps the only creative way to handle responsibilities when the overall climate of things continually shifts.