One morning, as I stood for alms in an outdoor market, an elderly man supporting himself with a walker shuffled awkwardly towards me. His daughter held him on one side with her arm. As soon as he saw my robe and bowl, and the shaven head, he let her go and, with palms pressed together, he made anjali, respectfully bowing his head and incanting the formulaic ‘Sadhu, Sadhu, Sadhu’.

Then, in wholehearted abandon, he began to pick fruit from a nearby vendor’s stall. At first he placed two apples into my alms bowl. Spotting a fancier variety, he set about selecting the choicest he could find. As he reached for the grapes, the shopkeeper intervened and motioned to him to hand over the fruit for her to wrap. But when she saw the cause of his excitement, she softened. For he was swept up in the devotion of giving and could not offer enough.

So effusive was his joy that he appeared to have forgotten his disability, his daughter, the fruit vendor and the protocol of the market. Beyond apples and grapes, the old man harvested the finest imported fruit with the urgency of one feeding a long lost friend – as if in that brief encounter he would offer all the generosity of his lifetime.

That kind of selfless generosity informs the power of my faith and renunciation. It acknowledges the sacrifice I make for what we both know to be true. And it nourishes my body and my heart. In the humbling that comes from walking life’s byways, powerless and content with little, I learn to trust giving myself to the unknown. And mysteriously, kindness provides for me.

Sometimes it is abundant, sometimes not, sometimes pleasant, at other times not. This is a universal predicament. None of us know what will come next and how we will respond – especially in this age of outrageous and unrepentant global violence. Though we may, for the most part, live with calm and confidence, until the mind is trained, sometimes all it takes is one grenade of a bad mood or internal ill-wind to blow before we are inundated by negative feelings.

As a mendicant, my happiness hinges upon the way I am able to bear not just physical rigors, but all the austerities of life. Whether I am praised or criticized, comfortable or challenged, calm or in despair, instead of following the bleak and destructive habits of the mind, I try to remember to be empty like my bowl, accepting whatever tightness of breath or furrowing of the heart may arise. And I use the mantra that everything is there to teach me. So as long as I am able to invoke gratitude for what is, I taste the unexpected benefit of being a beggar in the face of the present moment.

What this means is, whether I live in community or alone, I have to guard the mind constantly. We have all seen how easy it is to get rankled by an unforgiving remark or interaction that can swiftly erupt in reactivity – feeling good enough, not good enough, worthy, unworthy, proud or humiliated; or being disabled by a sense of vulnerability that loses mindfulness, denounces the situation, and broods over what’s lost or could have been.

A weak mind runs to thoughts of blame – outward or inward – instead of to thoughts of blessing. Whether from the crushing feeling of social pressure or the thrashing of the internal critic, the mind habitually retreats from pain, yearning for safety. And that safety is to be found nowhere else but in the silence of being with the way things are.

Again and again, I call on patient acceptance, unruffled resolve and perseverance as my allies in these seemingly irredeemable moments. Staying centered, aware, and clear, a benevolent wind wafts into my sail and calms the inner space enough to navigate my way back to serene and joyful presence. And the stamina to sustain that well-being develops by diligently letting go and not clinging to what is unwholesome and obstructs mental clarity, peace and wisdom.

Ultimately, the trust with which I give myself to the unknown moment comes from a heart that is open and willing to surrender. It is a generosity of spirit that enables me to move out of complacency and take risks. This quality of giving must renounce any trace of selfishness. It can be neither smug nor self-congratulatory. It is asks nothing in return, like the elderly man in the market who so caringly fed me, a complete stranger.  But he recognized the beggar, dressed in the robe of the Buddha.

Such unconditional generosity springs from and feeds a transcendent  joy. For in giving to what we love and respect, we nourish the goodness in ourselves. And it is mutual. I become – for the giver, as well as for myself – the fourth of the Heavenly Messengers, a renunciant.

My aging body and the illnesses of recent years serve to remind me of the first three of these messengers – old age, sickness and death. And in the frailty of his advanced years, my old benefactor also acts as their herald – more potent for the way he overcame even physical dysfunction by the ardour of his faith.

Devoted to this work of emptying and opening the heart, the fruits we taste, like the joy of offering and receiving, are greater than those of the earth. They are indeed heavenly – beyond pain, beyond death.

© Ayyā Medhānandī

Posted in a 2006 series of blogs that appear under ‘Penang’s’ blog on the ‘Teachings’ page.

Study the nature of change
as if your life depends on it.
(It does)
The more you understand impermanence
the lighter your step
the sharper your gaze
on your path
through the fleeting world.

Study uncertainty
as if your life depends on it.
(It does)
the more you understand ‘maybe’
the more ‘maybe not’
the freer your limbs
the more apt you’ll act
more apt respond
on your path
through the ‘mynae’ world.

Study causality
as if your life depends on it
(It does)
The more you understand the conditions
the wiser your heart
the deeper your gratitude
for the guides on your path
through the suffering world.

                                                 Ajahn Jayasāro

                                                    7/8/21

*’mynae’ : Thai word for uncertain

Have you ever watched a full solar eclipse?  When the moon slips mysteriously across the face of the sun and obliterates it from view, the light of day grows pallid, burnishing all the world with its eerie luster. As the air temperature cools, birds and insects react strangely.  Dairy cows suddenly huddle together near their barns while sunflowers and many other kinds of plants turn their heads, leaning towards any residue of light in the sky.

In the premature dusk of a full solar eclipse, all manner of living creatures act as if it were night.  And then light is swiftly restored to them.  However, during an eclipse of the human heart, light may not come so easily.

While day bows to night, like all the creatures, we too are subject to becoming frail and insecure. But for us it might be in a lingering way. When anxiety and depressive states invade the mind, they endanger our equilibrium. Whether we suffer a minor storm of the heart or a full-blown life crisis, we may fail to see that our mental health is at risk. Our world is as if turned on its head and the confidence that once coursed through us plummets.

We may feel broken, lost, blinded, dazed, or disoriented; or a constellation of these disabling emotions, losing all sense of clarity or happiness. We are in danger of harming ourselves or others. Perhaps we try to simulate the way the creatures turn themselves towards the sun but lack the knowledge to do so.

Unlike the swift passing of an eclipse, restoring light and healing to the mind needs time, care, commitment, courage and robust faith in the power of the Dhamma. Are we ready to undertake a life-changing spiritual healing that will transform our suffering into compassionate understanding?  Let’s say yes! If we realize the nature of suffering, it’s origin, and that we do not own it, then we can let it go. Letting go, we no longer suffer. To pursue such a path without giving up – that is the test.

How to begin? First and foremost, brighten the mind with the joys of generosity and moral restraint in our conduct and speech. We set our compass to kindness as our ‘true north’. These are quintessential to stay on course for the long, long journey.

Awareness is certainly key. But when we feel powerless and are swept along by sadness, regret, anger, fear or mistrust, we are often trapped in a cloud of negativity. We can even be rendered dysfunctional when a troublesome incident or affliction plagues the mind and obsesses it for days, months, or even years.

So, we are called upon to develop a deep sense of trust within our own awareness. Can we be like a gardener? We will seed and keep cultivating essential qualities such as resolving to be patient, to be content with little, and to be grateful for the practice itself rather than striving for results. Gradually they will come but, in this project, we need to throw away the yardstick.

As we nurture faith, it develops into an inexhaustible confidence. We know this way of practice is true medicine for our illness. Trusting further, stay with being aware and observing the eclipse process itself. See the feelings arising and falling away again and again. Repeatedly focus on the breath, for example, and be completely present as much as possible. This will be a tonic for us.

It may not be sustainable at first. So we persevere tirelessly, training ourselves to keep noticing these patterns. Learn how to stand back, observe, and stay on healthy ground from which to directly observe our experience. Imperceptibly, we become adept – as with any skill or profession. Again, patience with the process serves us mightily. We are learning to stop, to be still, and to see.

We are also gaining vantage and perspective that inject us with a secure footing. Inwardly stable, we appreciate what is happening at an atomic level.  Now we can do this safely centred in the mind as it learns to rest within itself.

Rooted in trust, mindfulness grows. This, in turn, increases our energy. We focus attention more intensively to investigate the feeling of being afraid. And we begin to see something new, a revelation not previously understood. We see fear for what it really is.

It is no small miracle to realize that awareness of fear is not as enervating as feeling fear itself. We have learned how to attentively observe sensations in the body associated with difficult feelings of anxiety.  Now we use that same way of gaining perspective to sit our ground and observe fear rather than being identified with and enveloped in the fog of fear.

To stand apart from fear and know it empirically from within the heart is groundbreaking. Can we see that we are not that fear? Awareness of fear and the feeling of it are distinct. Continue to observe in this way – not just fear – but all the permutations of feelings, sensations and moods in the mind. Repeating these ways of self-study again and again countless times is restorative. In time, these very insights invite the radiant light of wisdom to be directly experienced.

Through the lens of astute awareness, refine this posture of witnessing our experience. Notice unpleasant feelings and pleasant feelings and how the mind moves out of the grip of either one. That’s when it’s possible to understand them best, to see how we cling and how to detach so that we develop equanimity with the process – rather than spinning or reacting. We are tasting freedom from fear. The heat is buffered. It is cooled.

During a solar eclipse, the moon covers the sun.  We watch and it travels on. The sun reappears and light is restored. So it is when awareness prevails over feeling. Just as a ray of light heralds the dawn, awareness surpasses our fear and invites a reversal of darkness.

By and by, we teach ourselves how to empty the rubbish in the mind more adeptly. And so, we sit in awareness with a greater sense of ease and calm. We must also learn to sustain it in the face of inner or outer storms, painful experiences, or other inclement conditions.

With pure awareness here and now, having observed feelings of fear or pain in their true light, we know what they really are. Directly seeing all that we experience in the body and mind naturally appear and fall away again, we penetrate beyond our individual feeling of fear to realize its three universal characteristics.

The first is impermanence. The ever changing quality of that feeling, and thereby all that we experience, is also understood as intrinsically unsatisfactory.  Like every feeling, it is fleeting – and in the clock of moments, it will arise and pass away again and again – with an indeterminate momentum beyond our control. We have no ownership of either painful or pleasant experience. Once observed in this way, its grip on the mind should ease.

More importantly, we see that it has no owner. It is empty. Extending this insight to all experience teaches us that all is empty. We find no evidence of a self in any experience. Seen for what it is, dissolving in a moment and forever gone – even if it arises again – that will be a new moment, a new feeling, albeit a facsimile of what preceded it.

These aspects of our experience are to be known from the inside. They are as if forged from the core of our core thanks to wise intuitive reflection on what we truly see, and what results from that seeing.  We intuitively understand the difference between what we are aware of and awareness itself.

Stilling the mind more and more, the inner quiet matures. We enter a dimension that fuses all objects of consciousness until we can longer differentiate them.  Gradually, the awareness of the mind emerges to engulf all that we are aware of.  The mind appears vast like the sky – boundless, empty but clear. At this moment, we are aware of awareness itself.

Practising awareness of awareness may seem ambitious and subtle but we can make that step. It is a momentous option that opens the gate. We try it on, develop it, grow it, expand it thoroughly, and sustain it as much as we can. In every waking moment, we bring attention to this new engagement –  the mind knowing the mind.

Incrementally, we are moving beyond the state of eclipse. Alert and aware, the mind grows joyful and at ease. As we let go worry and stress, the present moment becomes our resting place, our recourse from the crush of the world.  And we can continuously return to it. We are free, present, aware and able to sustain that unique clarity of pure awareness – regardless of what objects appear and fade away in the domain of the mind.

To be able to look directly at the solar eclipse, we need UV protection.  To know the truth of the Dhamma directly, we need intuitive awareness of the mind and wise reflection to reveal its inner light. We reverse the darkness of ignorance, just like the moon completing its passage across the face of the sun.

Then we open to a noble dimension of experience, the mind seeing itself – unsullied by worldly concerns and trappings. We see its pure, stainless radiance in the heart of our heart. And in every heart.  Within that interior peace, wisdom ripens. We are on the path. We are truly waking up.

Ayyā Medhānandī