16/05/2016
In praise of doing Nothing:
"So why are we not constantly experiencing serenity, inner silence, bliss, an extraordinary luminosity, the clarity of awareness? Why isn’t that just our modus operandi for everything we do? Cause that’s our birthright, that’s our heritage, we all have it, more than we are our bodies or our minds…or anything outside – family, possessions, reputation, all that - it’s concentric rings, they just fall off even during a lifetime. Your substrate consciousness – that’s a keeper. As long as you’re in samsara, that’s a keeper. Minds, bodies, come and go come and go, but that’s your birth-right, that’s what you’re born with…that’s your home, what nobody can take away from you. They can take away your mind, if you have sufficient brain damage, you lose your mind. Someone kills you, they take away your body…But there’s no gun big enough, no damage severe enough, to enable somebody to take away your substrate consciousness…all the maras in the universe couldn’t take away your substrate consciousness. That’s your heritage, your birthright, that’s really yours if anything’s yours, and it’s pretty nuclear. So why is it that we’re not just experiencing this ongoing flow, this sense of well-being, luminosity, serenity, non-conceptuality? Because it’s obscured, obscured by the five obscurations – the first one being sensual craving for all the bounties of the desire realm. And there’s a lot of them! That’s what keeps business going, that’s why cell phones get better and better. Desires of the desiring. What’s the natural antidote to the attractions of the desire realm? Single-pointed attention. Natural attitude. Still. Not fluctuating, agitated, etc. “Where there is stillness, there is no craving.” Padmasana says, “leaving your body, speech and mind in a state of inactivity is the unsurpassed supreme technique for inserting the energy mind into the central channel.”
--Alan Wallace, Shamata Retreat 2014