It Is Possible                           It is possible to live with the mind at rest, with emptiness as the default. The mind is available when needed for the sort of task the mind is good at. But not running on its own, going over something that has already been gone over, going over something useless to go over – something finished, something that may never materialize, something that is a foregone conclusion and not to be affected by anything the busy mind might do.             It is possible to move through the day with a quiet mind and yet to be entirely alert, and here what is discovered is the difference between attention and thought. Thought is about something. It is mental effort applied to. Attention is encounter. It has no words. It needs no vocabularies, no constructs, categories, measuring devices. Attention has to do with the immediate. It just sees. It smells, hears. Is with. Thought draws conclusions, gives names to, drops into slots, projects out to the future, revisits. Attending gives a person the sensation of being in the present. Thinking is at a distance from the present. It gives a person the sensation of being in the head. The present is missed while thinking is going on. It is close to impossible to think and attend simultaneously.             It is possible to be constantly in the present and no place else. A day lived that way is an alive day. It is a day when nothing is minded. Not even the idea of dying. It’s a day when everything is enough. What a day it is. Then there is another day like that. And then one more. What a string of days.             But it is unusual for there to be a day like this. Or even an hour. And yet the possibility never goes away. Think about it! Well, don’t think about it.             But what to do? Notice the thinking that is going on. See if you can notice the fact that it’s going on, without getting reabsorbed in the content of the thinking – the content that was until just a moment ago so enthralling. If you keep remembering that it is possible to not be thinking, one fine moment it will just happen: the pointless thinking will just stop. Lose interest in itself.             It is possible to live in such a way that your inner state is not determined by what happens. Not affected by what goes on. Your day is not made by something good happening. Or undone by something not so good. It is possible to live as though the two are disconnected – the what-it-feels-like inside you, and the what-is-going-on outside you. It is possible.             The fact that it hardly ever happens this way is much less significant than the fact that it could. It really could. But don’t think about it.             Also, don’t ask how. How it could happen. How it is possible. You already know the answer. Not in your mind though. Realize that you already know the answer. Not in a way that you could say, maybe. But the knowing is there. Once you live this way, you will see that you always did know it was possible. It will be so obvious to you that you’ll have trouble remembering what it was like when you kept forgetting that it was possible.             Even though it hardly ever happens that your inner life is disconnected from outer things, something good can come of your noticing the unrelenting connection. Notice when it’s happening – when your mood is being made lousy, or being made euphoric, by something out there. Observe the causal relationship between outer and inner. Look at its happening, without completely buying into the resultant mood (lousy, euphoric, bored, anxious, frustrated, gratified). See what it all looks like, how it is operating, without slipping back into the inner state, like into a pool of water you can’t help getting saturated by. See if you can observe the phenomenon without losing track of its being a phenomenon. See how at the mercy of the outer event or circumstance your inner situation seems to be. How the outer is holding a flute to its lips and the inner is dancing exactly to that tune. How your whole life has been like that.             When you observe the phenomenon, realize that it doesn’t have to be this way.  That you can have all the same stuff happen without having it seep into your skin and cause the inside of you to become a matching color. According as to whether you’ve just hung up from a phone call with your irritating mother, or just gotten home from a great performance put on by you, or heard on the news that your candidate just got a bunch more delegates. See how like a chameleon you are, according to the environment.             But see, it is possible to move through it all – whatever it is (good, bad, indifferent) – and inside you it is still and content and not minding. Also not thinking. Unless thinking is in order.             Mostly, though, thinking is not in order. You find out how really very little of it has turned out to be necessary. When the occasion for thinking arises, it happens, and by the way, it shines. It does very well: it is clear and unambiguous, clean and efficient. Runs on very little fuel, producing no carbon or waste or noxious fumes. Then it curls back into a nap, leaving you to just pay attention. Just attend. Attend and attend. The world goes on, doing its world thing, and you are good inside.   - Jan Frazier

Not Supposed to Be This Way                 Vote shouldn’t have gone the way it did, car shouldn’t be stuck in rut, body shouldn’t be fat, traffic shouldn’t be backed up, disease shouldn’t have taken hold, rain shouldn’t be falling, kid shouldn’t be avoiding homework assignment, husband shouldn’t be depressed, gas shouldn’t be so expensive, President shouldn’t be so thick-headed, clothes shouldn’t be so poorly made, Wal-Mart shouldn’t be building another store, chin shouldn’t be growing slack and sprouting hairs. How long a list could there be? People shouldn’t be so self-absorbed, the day shouldn’t be so short, vacation shouldn’t go so fast, the road crews shouldn’t be so stingy with the sand.              Make your own list: _______, _______, _______, _______, _______, _______. (Attach extra paper if necessary.)             It isn’t that we are supposed to be glad of it all. It’s that we double the pain any of it causes by saying it shouldn’t be this way. It’s that the tightening against a thing gives birth to suffering a person could just as well skip. Just by saying okay and okay and okay. Not as in “everything is fine just the way it is.”  Not as in we wouldn’t rather it be some other way. Not as in there is nothing a person can do to work for change. But as in – This is what it is. Okay, here it is, here we are. Okay, the car is stuck. (It isn’t a damn car because it’s stuck.)             The body in soft receptivity becomes a tender, delightful body. Life becomes okay – constantly, truly okay – if there is this recognition of what is. It isn’t about not having preferred things would be otherwise. It is that having wanted them to be otherwise pales in significance next to what actually is. Even if I know full well this isn’t how I’d like things to be, I can accept them one hundred percent. If I push against what is, if I hold it away, resist, get mad, wish it were otherwise, I am inflicting pain on myself. Actual pain.             But it’s kind of surprising, when the softness comes into the picture, when the accustomed resistance drains away like rain into the melting earth. The surprise is this: I always used to think the pain of daily life was caused by those things I didn’t like. The stuck car caused it. The recalcitrant child caused it. The mirror image of middle age caused it. It has turned out it wasn’t those things after all that made me discontent. It was the tightening against them. How soft life becomes, when things are simply allowed to be as they are. When a person becomes softly receptive to what is, life is experienced as soft – even when hard things come along.  Nothing is experienced as a problem, not in the old familiar way. The mind doesn’t make something of it – of anything. The mind has lost its compulsion to weigh, evaluate, categorize, label. If something seems to need to be done in response, then something is done. The car is dug out of the slush. The whole time, there is this unaccustomed softness in the one doing the digging. This delight in the heft of the snow on the blade of the shovel. The pleasure of the body in exertion. The feel of the cool air on the warm face. How can it be that getting out of a rut has become actually pleasurable? Something in us thinks that if action is to be taken to right a wrong, to liberate a car from a rut, to get the right person into office, to heal a body of illness, the action must get its fuel from the gathering of resistance against the present situation. The truth is, resistance is the furnace where hatred and frustration are brewed. It is where pain is compounded. Resistance to what is never caused anything but more pain. It becomes its own terrible fuel – not for healing, not for bringing about lasting change, not for opening minds and hearts, but for keeping the machinery of suffering running smoothly, full speed ahead, right over the horizon and into forever. Action to improve a situation that begins from a soft receptivity to the truth of what presently is – that kind of action is potent. It is fueled by love, by the marshaling of a wisdom that comes not from the scrutinizing mind but from the very ground of our being. That potent action arises from something that is not woundable, that does not get its hackles up, that does not feel fear or the rush of revenge.  That same something will feel no surge of euphoria or deep satisfaction if things go well. It will just say – Okay, so this is what is. This is what is now. The soft receptivity greets all, regardless of whether what comes is what we worked hard for, or worked hard to oppose. This is the place where equanimity is born, where joy arises endlessly, sustained by nothing at all.                                                                                                          - Jan Frazier