Passing Storm

Yesterday while driving to work I managed to raise a storm in my mind. You can read yesterday's post to see where I ended up. Sad, lonely, confused, all because I started thinking to much on my drive in. This morning when I came up to check my e-mail the first thing on the top of the list was my "Daily Dharma" from Tricycle magazine. The quote is from Sylvia Boorstein who wrote "It's easier than you think", a simple Buddhist text that was one of the first books on Buddhism I read 10 years ago. It is a wonderful book and if you have any interest in Buddhism at all I encourage you to go to your library and check it out! Anyway, I copied the quote. I hope it helps someone else as much as it helped me this morning.


In traditional Buddhist texts the five energies of Lust, Aversion, Torpor, Restlessness, and Doubt are called "Mind Hindrances" ...because they obscure clear seeing, just as sandstorms in the desert or fog on a highway can cause travelers to get lost. They hinder the possibility of us reconnecting with the peaceful self that is our essential nature. They confuse us. We think they are real. We forget that our actual nature is not the passing storm. The passing storm is the passing storm. Our essence remains our essence all the time.



Five different energies seem like a limited menu, but they present themselves in an infinite variety of disguises. Ice cream sundaes are different from pizzas are different from sex, but fundamentally they are all objects of the lustful desire....Grumbly mind is grumbly mind; sleepy mind is sleepy mind; restless mind is restless mind; doubtful mind is doubtful mind.



The fact that it's in the nature of minds for storms to arise and pass away is not a problem....[It] helps in keeping the spirits up to remember that the weather is going to change. Our difficult mind states become a problem only if we believe they are going to go on forever. -- Sylvia Boorstein