As It Is
By Mingyur Rinpoche • 3 min read
The mind is just like a mountain, just like the sky. No matter what you’re experiencing at present, your mind remains the unchangeable ground, like a mountain. Like the sky, it’s free and pure, and it has the wondrous quality of allowing thoughts, feelings, and perceptions to appear and dissolve like clouds.
To connect with that ground, that sky, you don’t have to do anything special. Just be with everything as it is. Welcome all the clouds, accept the temperature of the air. In this moment, perhaps there’s a nice breeze, and puffy white clouds, and birds flying: pleasant thoughts and emotions, agreeable perceptions. On the other hand, there might be a brisk chilly wind, and gathering storm clouds. The details of the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions don’t matter. The important thing is to be with everything as it is. Whatever occurs, accept any changes. Allow them to come and go. Despite all their coming and going, they exist within awareness. And awareness is completely free.
Awareness has no limitation and no edges. It is nowhere and everywhere. You can see the ocean in the far distance, but that doesn’t mean your awareness goes to the ocean, or that the ocean comes to you; awareness is completely open in the ten directions. Yet it is empty. It has no specific essence that can be held onto, nothing we can cling to. Awareness is completely empty, yet you can see, you can hear, you can think, and you can feel. If you think about it, it’s strange and wonderful. And all we have to do is — nothing. Just be with everything as it is.
“Because your mind in its natural state is infinite, the brilliant light of your own awareness shines everywhere, at all times. It sees all things, knows all things, and understands all things.”
– Mingyur Rinpoche –
In this video, Mingyur Rinpoche discusses the true nature of the mind. No matter what we experience, it always appears within our awareness.
Learn meditation under the skillful guidance of world-renowned teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche at your own pace.
In his approach to teaching meditation, Mingyur Rinpoche integrates traditional Buddhist practice and philosophy with the current scientific understanding of the mind and mental health – making the practice of meditation relevant and accessible to students around the world. Mingyur Rinpoche is the author of the best-selling book The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness, as well as Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom, In Love with the World: A Monk’s Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying, and many others.
This is a very, very difficult time right now. Around the world, people are struggling with conflicts, intolerance and inequity, poverty, and the effects of climate change. The pandemic and other serious illnesses continue to create suffering, too.
When we sit on the cushion and all the circumstances are good, plus the environment is cooperating, then we have some experience of meditation. But when we get off the cushion and move into everyday life, then sometimes — even though we know that, theoretically, we can practice daily meditation anywhere, anytime — we forget what that really means.
Working in a fast-paced corporate environment, Lita Sands applies key Joy of Living principles to not only keep her sanity but find connection and joy.
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