A Journey That Can No Longer Wait
Have you ever experienced catching a mouse that has come visiting your home? It can be quite a frustrating ordeal and may even leave you feeling defeated if nothing comes out of the catch. This situation reminds me of learning to observe my mind. At the beginning of the journey, it can be quite a frustrating ordeal and even disheartening when I can’t exactly, so to speak, put a finger on my mind or how to go about observing it objectively. Often than not, I am totally identified with it instead of being aware of it.
We all knew we have the mind to deal with. But somehow, as an adept to the mind, we have mistakenly taken the mind as “ourselves”. Instead of seeing the mind objectively as a nature of its own, we identified the mind as “me” or “myself”. In this error of personalized state, being aware of the mind becomes difficult and thus it is not uncommon for one to struggle at the beginning of the journey.
Many have entered the door of WISE and have learned a thing or two about their minds. The information they have gotten in the initial course can either leave them joyful or shocked. Joyful because they finally understood why their mind is such. Shocked because it didn’t dawn upon them that the mind needed to be cared for, just like the body, and that there is so much they are not aware of what the mind is doing.
Getting to know the mind is not a pleasant thing, to begin with, but its end fruit is very fulfilling and enlightening, only if we can pass through the initial stage of the difficulties. Strictly, we all have to pass through this door one day, like it or not. Why is it so? Because it will soon dawn upon us that our mind is the only thing that makes us happy or sad, peaceful or discontented, free or bonded. The many materials we have do not make us happy or sad, but our own minds. The relationship we are in does not make us trapped or loved except by our mental attitude towards it. It all concerns our minds. But so long as we do not realize this truth, we will still look outward to fulfill our needs. We will change from getting this or that, run away from one and entering another, only to find its unfulfilling state — as the cause of the issue is at our very mind that needed our understanding.
As the year comes to its end, I pray that those who have tasted the fruit of finding out a little more of their mind will not stop at their laurels but continue exploring as there is so much more to know and so much more to be free from. And for those who are still struggling with what they have just gained, be a little more patient and do reach out to those who have walked along the path. They will be there to reach out to you since they, too have passed your way before.
As we come close to the end of the year, let us reflect wisely on our shortcomings and find new vigor and creativity in transcending them as we become more and more mindful and wiser of the mind’s habitual patterns. May we one day find the end of this journey and understood finally what awaits as Beyond, that many have spoken of.
The Great Wagon
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”
~ Rumi
In grace,
Tuck Loon
21 December 2021