Monika's weekly inner voice drawings:
Q: What is today's wisdom?
A: "Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony."
- Thomas Merton
"The world cannot be governed without juggling."
- John Selden
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I’ve always defined happiness as “the awareness of awareness.” It’s a strange definition, indeed, but one that’s to the ultimate point of what we are all striving for. What Merton calls “balance, rhythm, and harmony” is the by-product of awareness of awareness. And the balancing act of Monika’s drawing is a wonderful visual of what I mean. For example, we are all pretty much aware of living experience, though we are not all aware of our awareness of that experience. And it is this awareness, this, not so much Witness but, witnessing of awareness that engenders the balance. If we create a circle in our minds-- and call the inside of the circle awareness—and then step outside the circle, we experience the separating out of awareness from the mind that engages with the world. It is at this point that we begin to feel the balance, because we are stepping outside the drama and complications that mind creates. As Monika’s drawing depicts, the springy movement of world and self doesn’t disappear, we just no longer identify with it; that is, we no longer lose our balance (even when we do!). And so, this is very much like meditation: to experience, not the “intensity,” but the mundane, the ordinary suchness that life is, as it is. And if we’re lucky, we’ll never lose that spring in our step.
ReplyDeleteAs I was just sitting, the green and red rings sitting atop of the springs, were floating in mind. This is such a great image for how reality is and how mind can potentially operate: reality is fundamentally groundless and it is this lack that generates the desire to seek permanence. And what we fundamentally lack is a `self,’ that which grasps and desires, as depicted in the drawing. It’s not that self doesn’t exist—we see it right there in the drawing and in the mirror! It merely means that the self we see is not real as an independent and permanent entity. And it is the constant tension between the constant threats to our grasping of this identity that creates the shakiness (drama!) of life. However, once we come to the radical acceptance (understanding) of impermanence, the balance is achieved. As the drawing shows, the shakiness we know as life still exists, but we intuitively know that it’s not real.
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