Our home-grown tomato plants were flourishing. Abundant lush green leaves were after a few weeks joined by flower buds. Upon opening, the clustered yellow blossoms attracted bees and other pollinating insects. A bumper crop of tasty cherry tomatoes was seemingly in the offing.
One day, we noticed that some of the leaves at the bottom of the tomato plants were turning yellow. We thought that maybe if we prune the yellowing leaves, the rest of the plant will continue to flourish. But nothing changed. In fact, more leaves began losing colour and some were wilting and then drying up. We wondered if more water would stop the problem as we had had a few very warm days. Again, nothing changed!
Within three or four weeks, our thriving tomato plants looked like they were near the end of a harvest – most of the leaves were yellowy-brown, some were drying up, and some were practically dead. While a few tomatoes started to form and ripen and the plants bravely tried to grow new leaves, the promising abundant crop was in question. Yet, we couldn’t figure out what was causing the devastation. Our close inspections revealed only two or three caterpillars – nothing in proportion to what was happening.
One day, Eva placed some of the brown, dying leaves in a glass jar with a cloth on top – just for observation. To our amazement, 24 hours later, the jar was teeming with tiny mites! Yet, on the plants, they had remained invisible to our eyes.
The Reality of Suffering in Life
This scenario again made me ponder life. All of us desire to be well and happy, as well as healthy and peaceful. We yearn to be safe and secure, and long to live joyfully and with ease. And yet, the reality is so different. We experience illness, unhappiness, suffering and distress. We have fears and worries, and seem to be surrounded by misery and conflict.
Why is it that we find ourselves, more often than not, being separated from the joy that is beyond sorrow? What causes are perpetuating our suffering? Why do peace, harmony, and happiness escape us? I believe that just like the swarms of nearly invisible mites that were destroying our lush tomato plants, hidden causes of suffering are preventing us from joyfully thriving.
For our tomato plants to recover, the mite infestation would have to be eradicated. Similarly, for us to break free from the cycle of suffering, discontentment, and unhappiness, we must come to recognize and understand the causes for our misery and dissatisfaction. And then, with determined effort, break free from our self-inflicted bondage and prison. This is something that each one of us must personally undertake. No one can do this for us.
In Being Nobody, Going Nowhere, Ayya Khema writes that “human beings have this wonderful opportunity because of suffering. Instead of constantly resisting dissatisfaction, trying to sweep it under the carpet or lament and grieve about it and be pained by it, we should be grateful for it. It’s our very best teacher.”
Awareness
A natural starting place for us is awareness. If we can become more aware, more mindful, or just pay more attention in our daily lives, understanding will emerge – with new insights and a peace of mind. Being mindful is the ability to stay focused on what is happening in the present moment.
However, it is not enough to just be casually aware. Marshall Glickman in Beyond the Breath gives us the way forward: “We should try to be aware of everything we feel, regardless of what it is; nothing should be considered too familiar or ordinary or painful for even-handed observation. To see things as they really are and to change our unhealthy habits of mind is a full-time, moment-to-moment job. We have to keep at it and keep at it, until there are not just instants of clear awareness, but only awareness itself.”
With increased awareness, hidden habit patterns of thinking, speaking, and acting will be seen anew – including the habits that had been causing us our misery. Now they will become openly exposed, just as we found the exposed mites in the glass jar.
Picture a cat sitting on a fence post. It sits still and silently, but fully watchful. The slightest movement, and its mind, ears and eyes are on high alert.
Mindfulness
Perhaps these words sum it up best: “Try to practise everywhere. Be ever mindful. Test yourself daily. All the time. Make mindfulness first in your life . . . everything will naturally follow. Mindfulness is the only protection in the world. Insight is the special understanding which will transform your life” (Thai monk, Ven. Sobin S. Namto).
In other words, we need to constantly remain observant and attentive in our mind. Visiting forces will definitely come to the door of our mind. These are torments of the mind which lead to our unhappiness – visitors such as anger, jealousy, greed, lust, envy, denial, and fantasies. Why not see them as Halloween visitors and recognize that they all will come and also go – like clouds moving across a sky. Remember, too, that you are the owner of your home (the mind) and that you do not need to entertain your visitors or spend time with them – simply gently acknowledge their presence but then let them take their leave.
With such mindfulness, we will indeed be happier and at peace, as well as healthier and at ease.
Written by Alexander Peck; edited by Eva Peck (2014)
Note: The above article is intended for day-to-day living and is not intended for major mental issues which are severe and complex, needing professional healthcare guidance.
The Fundamental Nature of Awareness
Meditation is the path of investigating and reflecting on our direct experience persistently, systematically, and deeply, integrating the fruits of those reflections into our lives.
By doing this we gradually come to discover our true nature, and move forward on the path of fully Awakening to it. As our understanding and awareness deepens, our confidence in this, the profound nature of our being, grows.
Whatever we are experiencing, however disturbing or frightening, however good or bad, we become better able to turn towards it with equanimity rather than trying to escape.
This is the inner confidence that expresses itself as fearlessness in the face of both life and death. …
Meditation can help us understand the nature of life and death. Through the meditation process we come to understand how, in a sense, we undergo birth and death over and over again during our lives, even from moment to moment, as we enter and emerge from thoughts and dreams.
The death of the body will be a more dramatic version of something we are experiencing all the time. From the Buddhist point of view, the main difference is that at our physical death, instead of being reborn in a different moment of this life, we will leave this life and find ourselves in another life altogether.
(Hookham, Lama Shenpen. There’s More to Dying than Death: A Buddhist Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Windhorse Publications, 2006)
