Ripples on your mental lakes
Learn to make peace with the ripples on your mental lakes. And there will be nothing or no one to throw you off balance.
(Suan Mokkh, Thailand. 10-days-of-silence)
Nature can teach us a lot. We, humans, have a tendency to seek for an absolute perfection. Meticulously built and polished vehicle, flawless appearance, ideal relationship. Though still remaining to be the children of nature, isn't it wise to address our mother to explain a lesson?
If you ever watched a perfectly still surface of a lake on a sunrise of a new day, from afar the water looks surrealistically still, too smooth to be true. But try approaching it closer. You'll see that perceived stillness is, in fact, an interlaced relationship of complex rippling effects. Some of them come from the wind. Others from the funny insects measuring the water with their legs. There are also occasional gasps of fish or flips of their tails that radiate vibrating circles around the epicentres. Countless causes and effects only partially recognized by our attention.
(Dependent origination mandala feels just right here. We can talk about this profoundness some other time.)
What I meant to say is the perceived stillness is actually the ability to see it amidst the inevitable abundance of subtlest activities. Not all of them were created by you. Most of them certainly weren't.
Then why do we assume we have the right and power to struggle it down into non-existence?
Learn to make peace with the ripples on your mental lakes. The moment is Now. And all the possible Nibbanas are right here.