Taking Care of Our Mind

About every two weeks the lawn needs to be mowed at my house. If left without being taken care of, it feels crowded, unkempt, unfinished, out of place, not done. It can be relationship and a process that doesn't seem to end. Without the care, tending to and nurturing, the harmony with the living space can be broken.

Work at my office is the same way. There can be a great many things that need to be attended too. Each item needs... requires... its own specialized form of attention. Each item has its own shape and size, with some parts of the process seeming small and insignificant, while others are big, important, having the capacity to suck the oxygen out of a room. Big or small, it's best not to skip steps, remembering that each activity is in the end important and of value.

With myself, I have a lot of things that need attending to as well, just like the home, just like the office. The place that I spend a lot of time tending to is my mind. If my head's not on straight and I'm neglecting self-care, I feel off balance, out of sorts, out of sync. When I'm not attending to my mind, the results are often feeling awkward, being moody, sullen, anxiety, distracted, remote, unmeasured, or just plain "off my game" and not mindful. I make far more mistakes than usual.

Getting to a place where we're not attending to our mind can happen in ways too numerous to count. Focusing on how we got stuck or why we strayed from taking care of ourselves may not be important as re-engaging in the process. I am fond of encouraging myself and others to focus on the solution, not problem. What has gone wrong has already gone wrong. There's no need to compound it.

This might be a good time to say, when I'm feeling off course with home-work-self, I've been learning to stop haranguing myself. Beating up on oneself doesn't do a lot of good and can in fact be counter-productive. Developing and offering ourselves positive encouragement... patience... kindness... compassionate determination... can in and of itself be an act of an Awakened Mind. We learn to be our own friend, instead of defeating ourselves, bombarded by our own negative thinking and actions. Should I remind that Gotama Buddha said, "What we think, we become" all day long.

Attending... attention... practicing... working with our mind, making small and incremental improvements. That's okay. It's not just our goals that define us but how we live our journey and what we do with our life-force.

In closing today, there's chapter called, "The Wise," in the Dhammapada (Lamp of the Truth) Eknath Easwaran translation relates that, Gotama Buddha shared, "As interrogators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.

As a solid rock cannot be moved by the wind, the wise are not shaken by praise or blame. When they listen to the words of the Dharma, their mind become calm and clear like the waters of a still lake." This encouragement to take care of our mind can serve us well.

Namaste'

Jaye Seiho Morris, Curator
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