Dear Common Ground Friends,
Dharma teacher Shinzen Young teaches, “Subtle is significant.” I find it clarifying to sincerely ask, “What problem am I attempting to resolve in this moment?” It can be heartbreaking and at times shocking to discover how much unnecessary suffering arises from my unhelpful efforts to be happy based on misguided ways of understanding. Often our thoughts construct meaning that confine us to repeated cycles of stress. But thoughts can also support a sincere interest in the more subtle, immediate, and simple truth of our embodied experience. Dharma practice is designed to break the spell that conceptual meaning has on the mind. Let us acknowledge how often our mind takes refuge in, and becomes dependent on the ideas we have about ourselves, others, and our world. With these fixed ideas there is a superficial sense of safety gained, but this tendency also reinforces a deeper pattern of insecurity and misalignment. Conceptual meaning, no matter how sublime or deep, cannot resolve the existential uneasiness deep in our hearts. The resolution the Buddha discovered requires an uncontrived opening to the truth of the way things are, always here and now, not requiring any conceptual articulation. We practice to develop a mind that can have a natural sustained interest in the immediate and subtle nature of present moment experience. This is our training.
Mark Nunberg
Co-Guiding Teacher