Fernando Kaskais posted: " Artwork courtesy University of Pennsylvania Rare Book & Manuscript Library Help in making decisions big and small By Kaira Jewel Lingo Do you have the patience to waittill your mud settles and the water is clear?Can you remain unmovingtill t" WebInvestigator.KK.org - by F. Kaskais
Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?
—Lao-tzu (trans. Stephen Mitchell)
Ispent fifteen years as a nun in the Plum Village community of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh (whom we affectionately call Thay, or "Teacher" in Vietnamese). Often people would ask Thay what to do when facing big life decisions, like which career path to take, whether to separate from or stay with their partner, or whether to ordain as a monastic. Thay would often say, "Don't try to figure out the answer by thinking about it." In thinking over a question again and again, we do not generally arrive at real wisdom, but we easily tire ourselves out and get even more confused or anxious.
These deeper life questions can't be resolved at the level of the mind but must be entrusted to a different, deeper part of our consciousness. Thay suggests we consider this big question as a seed, plant it in the soil of our mind and let it rest there. Our mindfulness practice in our daily lives is the sunshine and water that the seed needs to sprout so that one day it will rise up on its own, in its own time. And then we'll know the answer to our question without a doubt.
But we must leave the seed down in the soil of our mind and not keep digging it up to see if it is growing roots. It won't grow that way! It is the same with a deep and troubling question. We ask our deeper consciousness to take care of it and then let go of our thinking and worrying about it. Then in our daily lives we practice calming, resting, and coming home to ourselves in the present moment, and that will help the seed of our question to ripen naturally and authentically. This process cannot be rushed or forced. It may take weeks, months, or years. But we can trust that the seed is "down there," being tended to by our deeper consciousness, and one day it will sprout into a clear answer.
In Buddhist psychology this part of our mind is called store consciousness. This is because it has the function of storing our memories and all the various mind states we can experience in latent, sleeping form. For example, maybe you've experienced trying to solve a problem or find an answer to something that perplexes you. You think hard and circle round and round in your mind, but you feel you don't get anywhere. Then you let the question go, and suddenly when you least expect it, inspiration or helpful ideas come to you in a time of rest, and you just know what to do. That is store consciousness operating. It is working on the problem for you while your day-to-day consciousness rests. Store consciousness works in a very natural and easeful way and is much more efficient than our thinking mind. When wisdom arises from store consciousness, it feels right in the body and we no longer have doubts.
But waiting for the answer to arise can be challenging at times, because we may really want to know the answer. We may find ourselves feeling deeply insecure and fearful if we don't know what to do, which path to choose. We worry we will make the wrong choice, and we catastrophize about what will happen if we take this or that direction. It's hard to find our way if we continue to feed this worry and fear. We can recognize that we are not helping the situation and stop. Returning to this moment, anchoring ourselves in our body, we will find the solidity of the home inside of us, which is capable of helping us find our way, if only we let it, and if we can let go of trying to figure out the future in our heads.
Some years ago, I was trying to determine whether or not to leave the monastic life after having lived basically all my adult life, from age twenty-five to forty, as a nun. During that time, I attended silent retreats at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Massachusetts for several years in a row that were six weeks or three months long. These retreats were times outside of time, weeks when I could not leave the grounds and take action but just had to "stay home" with myself. Being in silence, with limited social interaction, I had the luxury of time to look closely at myself and do nothing. It was an important time of pausing, to look deeply, to let my own consciousness take its time to find the way...
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