Tara Brach - Absolute Cooperation with the Inevitable | Psychology Today

Absolute Cooperation with the Inevitable

Aligning with what is here is a way of practicing presence.

The modern-day mystic and Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello once said: “Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.” This statement struck a deep chord within me. It seems to me that what he meant was to be absolutely open to life as it is.

Think about the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean that flows from the tip of Florida up along the eastern seaboard. If you were to put a straw in the water, aligned with the Gulf Stream, it would move with the flow of water. The water moves through it and carries it along on the current. Everything is aligned; it’s total grace. Now, if it’s misaligned, and it’s not moving with the flow of water, it gets spun around and moves off course.

Aligning ourselves with the flow of aliveness is an essential part of our mindfulness practice. Like the straw, if we move out of alignment, we’re moving away, spinning about, in reaction…in some way unable to be one with the flow of grace. So we seek to stay aligned, letting the flow of life move through us.

What are some ways that we remove ourselves from the channel through which our life flows?

I noticed this happening the other day when I was driving home. I have my own accustomed speed, and the person in front of me was going much, much, much slower. You know what that is like, don’t you? Now, I wasn’t in a rush to get somewhere. I wasn’t on my way to the airport to catch a plane, but it didn’t matter. I was driving at a speed that felt really different from my preferred speed. I was experiencing impatience and anxiety, and it was building. Everything in me was leaning forward. I felt like I couldn’t be okay unless the situation changed.

So I paused, mentally. I recognized that I had a demand that something be different than it was at the moment, and I tried to let go of it. This example is a small thing, but this happens in many ways, some small and some much larger, in our human experience. We get caught in feeling that happiness is not possible unless things change. Consequently, we cause ourselves tremendous unhappiness, because we’re demanding that things be different.

It’s interesting to notice how this happens. I think it arises from our social conditioning about what brings happiness. We are led to believe that we need certain things to be happy: “If I can get this job,” “If I can earn this much money,” “If I can buy a house in that neighborhood,” then I will be happy. Or we might think, if only I were healthier, or thinner, or if my boss quit so I could have a different boss, or if I had a different spouse…and on and on.

We wait for things to be different in order to feel okay with life. As long as we keep attaching our happiness to the external events of our lives, which are ever changing, we’ll always be left waiting for it.

What if we were to pause and align ourselves with the current?

What if we moved with the flow of what is?

What would that mean for you in your life, right now?

Aligning with what is here is a way of practicing presence. It allows us to respond to our world with creativity and compassion.

What is actually happening is that we’re opening to the universal intelligence, the universal love that can flow through us when we’re aligned. When the straw is aligned with the current, the Gulf Stream flows through it. When we’re aligned with the flow of our lives, there’s a universal wisdom and love that flows through us, which is our true nature.

© Tara Brach

Absolute Cooperation with the Inevitable | Psychology Today

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Byrne: on intention

Live Session Summary, Sunday, December 31, 2023: It was good to be with you for our Live session today. Happy New Year to All!  And thank you, Marjon and Ginette, for being willing to be admins for the Group. This is super helpful and supportive!  🙏🏻

The theme of the session was exploring our intentions in this ‘one wild and precious life.’ (Mary Oliver, ‘The Summer Day’). Here are some of the key themes, along with quotes and names and authors of poems I shared.

I began by talking about the fact that many people make resolutions to change their habits at this time of year, but that the rate of success is low—according to some studies, 80% fail to keep up with their resolution by February and only around 8-10% maintain their resolution to the end of the year. 

I shared my personal view that it’s more helpful to think in terms of cultivating intentions rather than making resolutions—where there is often insufficient awareness of the conditions that are supportive of making changes in long-established behaviors. I spoke about intentions as being key to everything we do and shared the description by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (who wrote about ‘flow’ states in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience) of intentions as operating like “magnetic fields moving attention toward some objects and away from others, keeping our mind focused on some stimuli in preference to others.” (He also spoke about attention as being a form of ‘psychic energy.’)

I invited us to think about our intentions in relation to our spiritual practice or spiritual journey as we move into the new year. I stressed the importance of bringing awareness to our practice in a spirit of compassion and non-judgment, otherwise it’s easy to get caught in suffering through judging ourselves for ‘falling short.’

I discussed the way for many us, myself included, it’s easy to become complacent in our spiritual practice—doing enough to ‘stay out of trouble’, but not necessarily moving towards the depths of freedom that the Buddha and other teachers of awakening point to as the potential and the end of our practice. I spoke about the importance of regular practice and not underestimating its significance, but also asking ourselves Mary Oliver’s question; ‘What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’ Are we giving sufficient attention to realizing the depths of freedom that are possible for each one of us in this human life?

The Greek philosopher Socrates spoke of the most important thing we can do in our life as to ‘Know Thyself’—and this understanding is really at the heart of all the Buddha’s teachings of mindfulness and abandoning suffering. In Zen Buddhism, they speak of bringing an urgency to our spiritual life and practicing “as though your hair was on fire.” I spoke of how it’s important to hold this metaphor in a skillful way and not turn it into another kind of clinging, but also reflect on how easy it is to believe that “we have time” and how fleeting this human existence is. I shared lines from The Diamond Sutra, a classic of Buddhist teachings—and the oldest printed book in the world, dating from 868 CE:

Thus shall you think of all this fleeting world:

A star at dawn; a bubble in a stream;

A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,

A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream. 

I spoke about how the Buddha’s teachings of awakening are, for me, the bedrock of my practice and teaching—and there are also contemporary teachers of awakening, who bring an immediacy to waking up that can be a powerful support for waking up. These teachers include: 

• Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now), 

• Adyashanti (‘The Always and Already’—a talk on his website; True Meditation, Emptiness Dancing, and others) 

• Gangaji (The Diamond in Your Pocket and talks on Insight Timer)

We finished with a short practice that invited us to reflect on two questions: 1) What is in the way of being completely free, completely at peace, right here and right now?; and 2) Do you have an intention for deepening or focusing your spiritual practice as we move into a new year—and what does that look like?

I shared ‘In Blackwater Woods,’ a poem by Mary Oliver and intended to share a quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti, a renowned 20th century Indian spiritual teacher and philosopher: 

“We come to this infinite web of life with a thimble, so we go away thirsty.”

I’m very grateful for our community and our time together. 🙏🏻 Wishing you a happy new year and an auspicious and peaceful year ahead. I’ll see you again in two weeks, on Sunday, January 14, 2024 at 9am eastern for our next Live session. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻

Hugh Byrne: Intention

Live Session Summary, Sunday, July 31, 2022: 

Good to be with you today. The theme of this week’s Live session was, ‘Intention: Remembering What Matters Most.’ I began by speaking of my own experience: how I am able to focus well and accomplish things when they are important, interesting, or enjoyable to me. But when space opens up and there are fewer obvious priorities to give my attention to I can feel stuck, unfocused, and, at times, feel a sense of malaise and lack of direction. I’ve found that at these times reflecting on intention and what matters most is the most helpful path to finding my way out of these ‘stuck’ states.

I discussed what intention means and why it is important in freeing ourselves from painful or difficult mind states. Webster’s dictionary defines intention as ‘the determination to act in a particular way.’ Meditation teacher Gil Fronsdal speaks of intentions as ‘often more basic than what we want; they are the deeper purposes for why we want what we want.’ And Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote extensively about ‘flow states’, said ‘intentions operate as magnetic fields moving attention toward some objects and away from others, keeping our mind focused on some stimuli in preference to others.’

This sense of intentions as ‘magnetic fields’ is a useful one in illustrating the way they help us gather our attention and other beneficial qualities to help move us towards what is important to us. When we are clear about and focused on what matters to us we are much more likely to both achieve our goals and be happy—if our objectives are not harmful ones. Conversely, when we are disconnected from our intentions, we are much more likely to be moved by our unconscious habits and neither move towards what’s important to us nor be happy. As Yogi Berra said, ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.’ And Carl Jung: ‘What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate.’

I spoke about three different understandings of intention in Buddhist teachings: 

• Volition (Cetana, in Pali), a mental factor that urges the mind in a particular direction—e.g., the intention to stand up or look around

• Intention as ‘resolve’ or ‘determination’ (Aditthanna), which is one of the ten perfections (paramis), or qualities that support awakening

• Wise/right intention (Samma sankappa), the second factor of the Eightfold Path, which is intention directed towards freeing ourselves from suffering. This involves the cultivation of the intentions of 1) renunciation or letting go; 2) good will or loving-kindness; and 3) harmlessness or compassion.

Finding my way out of the ‘stuck’ state required all three forms of intention: 1) the volition or will to make a change and put in the effort to let go of the painful state; 2) the determination to stay focused and avoid sliding back into the difficult and unhelpful mind state; and 3) the intention to commit to letting go of the unskillful mind states when they arose and to meet my experience with self-compassion. One of the most significant changes I have seen is how cultivating wise intention can help us move from difficult and unpleasant mind states to palpably happier and more contented states.

I shared Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi’s saying, ‘The most important thing is to remember the most important thing’; Mary Oliver’s ‘When I am among the trees’; some lines from Shantideva’s Prayer; and ‘Lost’ by David Wagoner. 

Please let me know if I missed anything or if you have any questions. I look forward to seeing you next Sunday, August 7 at 9am eastern for our 100th consecutive Sunday Live session. Please join us if you can—and have a lovely week. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏼 🌻

Wendell Berry - Sabbaths 2001 (8 verses)

 "This sounds so silly, but who knew simple kind attention could make you feel more alive." - Anon

http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/wendell_berry/poems/123

VI

Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind's
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.

Simone Weil: the rarest and purest form of attention, in its purest form, is like prayer'

From Hugh Byrne's Sunday, 31 January 2021 Insight live meditation: 'Am I placing my attention on fueling my anger, fueling my anxiety? Paying attention to serve what intention? Is my attention imbued with 'kindness' with 'compassion'? Compassionate Attention', 'wise mindfulness?'.

Suggestion to allow my attention to lightly focus alternately on body, on feelings, on thoughts, on sounds...then on a larger perspective..