the first matilijas

the first matilijas
Originally uploaded by emdot.

One of the things I like about hanging out with my friend Tom is that we are both Buddhists at about the same level, so we think and wonder about many of the same things. And we both love talking about the dharma.

Note: I promise you, oh friends I have not met yet in real life, if you were to meet me I would not proselytize in front of you. I am not here to convert anybody. In fact, it's almost embarrassing to talk about this stuff with people who aren't interested. So I typically don't. I believe that people should believe what feels right and true for them, even if that includes "nothing."

Tom and I went on a great evening hike on Monday and driving back he stuck a Sogyal Rinpoche tape into his car's cassette deck. We only listened to maybe five minutes of it. It's kind of amazing how much meat can be gleamed from five minutes of listening to a heavyweight lama.

Sogyal Rinpoche talked about the mind -- the mind is always clear. Now it may feel cloudy or heavy or happy or scattered -- but those are just your thoughts decorating your mind.

Think of it, he illustrated, like the sky. The sky is always clear. It may be raining where you are, but the sky is clear and calm. If you were to be in an airplane looking down, you would see -- oh yes, the sky is perfectly clear. Only the rainclouds are marring its perfection.

And I realized... well, I had a split second of wanting /grasping where I told myself, "ah, yes, try to attain that always-clear-sky-feeling." But even faster I realized that that is not the answer.

The answer is to not take the weather personally and instead to just be in the weather. In other words, you can complain about the rain, but that is not going to change the weather forecast or the fact that you have to go out in it and drive or run errands or whatever. Best practice is to just grin and bear it and drive carefully.

Same as life. Things may be barrelling down on you. Obstacles may be littering your path. But way up there? The sky is still perfect. Things are just as they should be. Grin. Bear it. And drive carefully.

This may sound like a bunch of gobbledygoo to you (and if it does, I seriously doubt you have read this far), but for me... man, it still makes me smile. It's just the weather. No need to take it personally. Just drive carefully.