Acceptance is the difference between neurosis and nirvana.  A single u-turn covers the entire journey from neurosis to nirvana.  What u-turn?  A choice to accept what is, one moment at a time.

Resources: Present Perfect/Lotus Effect

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Being – if already in progress – needs no doing. 

It (being) already is. 

Whatever is, is already accomplished since it already exists. 

You already are. 

There is nothing else to accomplish for you to be you. 

So, rest in your suchness.

Now, of course, not later.

Did you enjoy your mind the last time you used it?  I hope so.

Mind – in its dichotomous*, dualistic** nature – is a prehistoric reality-cutting tool.  Mind is archaic cutlery, a primitive reality-sorting utensil.  That’s all.

But it’s a tool that cuts itself.  So, use it appropriately, only when necessary, and keep safe.  Clean it when done. 

How?  Wash it down with mindfulness, i.e. empty your mind of its own self.

Remember: Mindfulness is not fullness of mind but emptiness/openness of mind.  As such, mindfulness is mental hygiene.

*Dichotomous, from Greek dichotomia which means ”a cutting in two”

**Dualistic, from Latin “dualis” meaning two (a dualistic view sees the one and only Oneness of Reality as “this” and “that,” i.e. as manifold***)

***Manifold: many in number

Cleaning Resources: Lotus Effect

Edward De Bono, a paradigm-shifting thinker, introduced a verbal device designed to provoke original (“lateral”) thought processes.  This word is “po.” 

Po is a kind of signal to open your mind and consider a seemingly crazy idea with the hope that doing so will help you turn off your conceptual autopilots.  In De Bono’s own words, po is a kind “laxative” for the mind, and its function is to facilitate “rearrangement of information to create new patterns” (1990, 226-227).

So, I’ve got a po for you.

Po: there is no potential.

Indeed, show me your potential now.  Where is this potential you identify with?  There’s you, on a chair, on a couch, in a recliner, on your bed, standing on a subway train, reading this post.  But where’s this potential you talk about?  Step away from the computer (put your smart phone aside) and show yourself your potential right now. 

How old are you?  Not to the year, but to the day, to the minute, to the second, to the time zone?  Age tells you nothing about the essential you.  Sure, age says something about your body, but you are not your body.  Your age is a time stamp on the envelope of your body.  You aren’t the envelope, you are the letter inside.

Set a precedent: skip your birthday.  If you want to have a party, have a party.  Instead of celebrating your age, celebrate the present moment.

Or set a precedent of dating yourself as older than you are.  Recognize that nothing changes about you when you do that. 

Chained to Approval

Let’s say that after months of unemployment I finally landed a nice job. You are my new boss, and you just bought a new car.  You ask me: “What do you think?  Like it?”  Not wanting to get on your bad side, I say yes.  You like my response.  You decide to mentor me.  I tolerate that.

Over time, however, I lose myself.   I get conditioned or programmed to look at the world as you do, to value what you value.  I become dependent on the subjectivity of your approval.  What started out as adaptive approval-seeking led to a partial loss of self.  In seeking your approval, I got carried away by the currents of your subjectivity.

Lesson learned: to seek approval is to seek dependence; to seek dependence is to lose your sense of self. 

We often seek identity in our circumstance.  The word circumstance stems from Latin proposition word circum, which means “around,” and the verb stare, which means “to stand.”  A circumstance is that which stands around you, your surroundings, your context.

Look around you for a moment.  Notice what’s around you.  Perhaps you’re at home with a laptop on your knees, a cup of tea at your side.  Or maybe you are at work, looking at a computer screen with this very text on it.  Or maybe you’re in a subway car reading this post on your smart phone…

No matter where you are, remember that you are not this physical context—you are that which it surrounds.  That’s obvious.  What’s less obvious is that you are not your cultural, ethnic, sociological, or racial circumstance either.  Whatever your situational context, you are not your situation.

Been “playing” with Eastern concepts for ten or so years  – passively and academically (through reading and writing), and actively and experientially (through meditative practice and day-to-day application).  I feel I am finally (!) at a place to make the following mini-pronouncement: Nirvana is Meta-cognition (rigpa). That’s right: not a heaven-type place (to go to when you die), not a parallel reality, just a state of consciousness.

Ta-da!  Self-evident in fewer ways than one…

But don’t just take my word for it.  Here’s Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, one of the greatest Tibetan masters:

“Enlightenment, or nirvana, is nothing other than the state beyond all obstacle […] Nirvana is not a paradise or some special place of happiness, but is in fact the condition beyond all dualistic concepts, including those of happiness and suffering.” (Dzogchen: the Self-Perfected State, 1994, p.73).

Nirvana, thus, is not a geographical coordinate or a spiritual destination but a psychological state – a state of non-judgment, a state of passive awareness of whatever is, a meta-cognitive distance from the transient and fleeting mind-forms, – i.e. a state of consciousness.

When I tell my clients that “thoughts are fleeting, transient events that come and go” and that “there’s never been a thought that didn’t go away,” they initially really like the idea, but they invariably ask: “If these thoughts are so impermanent, then why do I keep thinking some of them?  Why, for example, do I keep having same thoughts about myself?”

Let’s see if I can explain.  I’m sure you’ve had the experience of having a song stuck in your head. “There it is,” you think to yourself, noting the intrusion into your consciousness.  Author David Harp’s concept of “recycled” consciousness can help make sense of these repetitive thought patterns (1996).