Right Mindfulness

In Buddhism one aspect of the Fourth Noble Truth (MAGGA “The Path”) that encompasses the Eighth Fold Path.  One of the eight paths to enlightenment is RIGHT MINDFULNESS.

 

Right Mindfulness is being diligently aware of our thoughts, feelings and the activities of our mind.   The mind being the center that sets the stage of all our relationships human and non-human in the world.   When we are in control of our actions and thoughts we are Right Minded, when we allow our emotions to control our lives and what we do we are not walking the path towards a higher consciousness.  

 

Let us imagine a path in front of us made of stones with each stone representing a day in our life.  When we walk the path of stones (The Eightfold Path) we are walking towards enlightenment, when we deviate off the path we step into the realms of self or ego.  Here the ego often time leads us to the mental state of self importance and destructive behavior.  When we walk the stones on the Eightfold Path our daily life’s activities lead us to self discipline, self control.and self fullfillment.

 

As with anything in our life the choice is ours as to which path to walk. It is easy to justify our actions, our gossiping, our, our , our everything our to the world.   The Eightfold Path is eternal it will remain whether we choose to walk it or not.  Our mindfulness will continue as long as we breathe on this earth, whether it is Right Mindfulness is of no real importance to universe’s existence-  for it will continue with or without us.  Right Mindfulness becomes important if we choose to live our life well - with self respect and respecting all life around us as being as sacred as our own.

 

One may conquer in battle a thousand times a thousand men, yet he is the best of conquerors who conquers himself.

The DHAMMAPADA (The Words Of Truth) - #103

 

Creating Life’s Tapestry

 

The Reverse Side of the Tapestry

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All goes well when God is, so speak, both the author and the object of our faith, the one complementing and augmenting the other.  In is like the right side of a beautiful tapestry being worked stitch by stitch on the reverse side.   Neither the stitches nor the needle are visible, but, one by one, those stitches make a magnificent pattern that only becomes apparent when the work is completed and the right side exposed to the light of day; although while it is in progress there is no sign of its beauty and wonder.

————Jean-Pierre de Caussade  1675-1751

From: The Sacrament of the Present Moment

 

 

 

Many spiritual writers speak to us about our life as being a work in progress, analogies from the clay on potters wheel molded by the hand of God, to the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly ready to take flight.   Jean-Pierre de Caussade’s ,a Jesuit priest in the 1700’s, compares life to a tapestry in the making as another way of viewing  life as the handwork of God’s love. 

Tapestries though today  mass-produced by machine, in de Caussade’s time were framed and stitched one stitch at a time.   He notes that neither stitch nor needle is visible until the pattern is complete and the reverse side exposed to the light of day.   Jean-Pierre speaks to the reader poignantly that we as the tapestries in the process of creation can only truly be completed to perfection through self-surrender to the will of the creator.   It is the hand of our creator that knows and holds the pattern of our soul’s intention.   Should we choose to fervently clutch to our own version of the pattern we often stumble and lose site of what the true finished picture on the reverse side of life’s tapestry is meant to picture and represent.   It is only through the surrendering of self  to that universal artist of life - that the masterpiece of our life will be completed to its intended beauty.   Each years threads stitched exactly where they were designed to be; the colors and magnificence once finished is exposed to the light of day revealing the handwork of a life lived to its fullest and finest potential. 

It is much easier said then done this - surrendering to the hands we can not see.  For myself it is a daily reminder that my life carries not the importance of my self-importance but the ultimate significance that my completed tapestry will represent in the universal good of all.

 

Who Killed Him? Fear?

At the American Magazine Conference (AMC) the American Society of Magazine Editor’s unveiled its selection of the top magazine covers from the prior four decades 1965-2005.  Out of the thousands of covers reviewed  in 2005, forty were selected and ranked from 1-40 respectively.

 

Awarded number one cover was Rolling Stone’s,   January 21,1981 issue exposing a vulnerable, naked John Lennon being reborn from the side of Yoko Ono.  Ironically this photo was taken by Annie Leibovitz just hours before Lennon was shot and killed on December 8th, 1980 as he left his New York apartment.  

 

Go back in time December 8th, 1980; in my time travels I remember exactly where I was, what I was doing and even wearing when the news of Lennon’s death hit the airways.  Like all moments of passionate significance the memory was etched in my brain for later total recall.  Really, does anyone care where I was or what I was wearing when the news came, I doubt it seriously.  But to the generation that grew up with John Lennon the impact of his tragic death made him an iconic god.   A god now immortalized by the Leibovitz photo on the Rolling Stone cover.

 

Magazine art has become a powerful medium expressing the heart and pulse of modern culture.  Though it may be a relatively new form of art, it carries the same significance as its predecessors from Gothic to Renaissance and Realism.   Art is a recorder of history, culture and the moments we as a society find important enough to be passed on to our children. 

 

Let us travel back in time even further, to a place and a young artist as passionate about his work and subject as Annie Liebovitz .    1498, Rome, Italy a 22-year-old Michelangelo  commissioned to sculpt a life size figure of the crucified Christ in the arms of his mother.   Placed before him a large block of marble uncut, untouched by time for millions of years  waiting for the right moment and hands to reveal the secrets of the god hidden in the stone.  With clear vision Michelangelo methodically brought to life what was hidden from the rest of the world.  Being heralded throughout Italy within weeks of its unveiling as a masterpiece, the Pieta has been viewed by many at as his greatest work.  It records for those not present at the crucifixion of Christ the emotion of the ultimate sacrifice - that  of  God in human form. 

 

Art, be it marble or a magazine cover tells the world what humanity values, it truths at that moment in time.   And when those truths are challenged or cut down by a bullet, a cross or act terrorism it is the artist who baptizes them into immortality.  Each generation has or will have its own significant moments of “I remember” etched within the vortexes of their brain, from Pearl Harbor to September 11^th, 2001 and beyond.   Some have already been recorded in the listing top 40 magazine covers.   One symbolizing the loss of someone the world held dear, another an  iconic symbol of freedom, both having been placed in the pretext of god or goddess, (i.e. Princess Diana, People, September 15, 1997  and the blacked out shadow of the World Trade Centers , The New Yorker, September 24^th, 2001.)    The one cover that went so far as to ask, Is God Dead?, Time’s April 8^th 1966 cover, this was the only cover out of the 40 where the probability of God was questioned.

 

Whatever your beliefs or non-beliefs may be or not be there will be a page recording them somewhere in history.   If one is a true iconoclast or self proclaimed atheist this iconic history may have little or no place of value, because belief is commitment.   And with that belief in someone or something there is always that underlying fear that someone will kill that which we believe in.  Maybe that is where faith steps in.

 

 

 

The Soul’s Storm

O Life, life, where canst thou find thy sustenance when thou art absent from thy Life?  In such great loneliness, how dost thou occupy thyself?  What dost thou do, since all thy actions are faulty and imperfect?  Wherein dost thou find comfort, O my soul, in this stormy sea?

St.Teresa of Avila 1515-1582

 

 ”Where in dost thou find comfort, O my soul…”  These words do not belong solely to  Teresa, she cries here not for herself but for the world. She knows that life has no fullfillment without the true wellspring of  sustenance that feeds it –which is Life itself.   It is the ebb and tide of the universal wheel that moves us forward through the storm, searching for comfort in the light of the Creator.  All to often it is instead the fog of our concealed fears, which we label imperfection, that prevents us from stirring clear of life’s unkind shorelines. Should we accept the pure light of Love - the fog clears; faults and imperfections are no longer visible to our eyes they are rendered powerless by Gods love.  It is this love that allows the compass of the heart to lead us directly to the safe harbor of the eternal World Soul. 

 

 

The sum of the parts of our nature are exemplified best when consumed as the whole; Teresa describes her vision of the mind, spirit and soul to her confessors:

 

They all seem the same to me, though the soul sometimes issues from itself, like a fire that is burning and has become wholly flame.  This flame rises very high above the fire, but that does not make it a different thing;  it is the same flame, which is in the fire.     

In 1962 – Teresa of Avila was made of Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church – her writings and mystical experiences are studied extensively by Catholic’s and non-Catholic’s alike.