Finding Good After A While

  During the meditation session tonight, I had a few wandering thoughts about not progressing in practice. Somehow the judge inside me was quite strong today, and it was hard for me to let go, but then later I went into huatou with a kind of strident curiosity. And afterward, the group members got into this discussion about not making meditation into a kind of chore, but seeing it as a window into a natural awareness. The idea of even trying to change oneself during meditation practice only creates a greater burden, and transforms meditation into another 'thing to do' rather than the clarity of mind itself. What I most appreciated from the discussion tonight was the idea that painful or discomforting emotions need not be seen as 'problems'. In fact, it's the problematizing itself which creates discrimination and makes it harder for practitioners to fully awaken without dualistic concepts.
   I think there is a different idea here: by learning to fully abide in an experience without discarding it for another one, we can learn to see the inherent good of the experience, and of all experiences for that matter. It is the realization that all experiences have advantages, and one needn't seek out the good since it's already embedded in the present. But because we are always using the mind to compare one thing over another, there is not enough time to simply abide in the present and see its own unfolding good.  But in a world which values quick fixes and looking out for 'perfect' choices (as though such could be found), it's very rare to see this kind of 'unfolding' good in the experiences we are having. I have sometimes heard this 'unfolding' good refer to as the act of something 'growing on you'. We don't begin to appreciate something unless we give the necessary time and attention that is due to that situation.
      Why is it hard to see this process unfolding? I think there are two reasons, among others. One is that in a fast paced world of multitasking, it can be hard for people to find the sufficient time to devote themselves to understanding something deeply and wholeheartedly. A second possible reason is that people assume that things are entirely pre-packaged and complete, "all or nothing" affairs. But in reality, most valuable things come in mixed packages, and it would be unrealistic to assume that things are always good all the time. We might think that a certain kind of music is unsuitable to our tastes, only to find later that the music had a certain kind of appeal that had previously escaped us.
     I find that if I am able to abide in difficult thoughts and try to behold the good in every situation, I grow more confident to deal with suffering. I am able to see that seemingly negative situations can have potentially good or positive aspects to them, and suffering is impermanent.