Just Relax

I opened last night’s dhamma talk with a quote from the eighteenth century Tibetan master Shabkar:

“One must remain in the vastness, alert and lucid, letting one’s gaze encompass the infinity of the sky, as though seated on the summit of a mountain open to all the horizons.”

This simple instruction invites a spacious, non fixated awareness of anything, everything, and nothing. You do not need to try to find something, accomplish something, or do anything in this relaxed and open meditation. Just release the delusion that distorts experience through incessant conceptualization and attachment. Remain open, relaxed, alert, and lucid as empty experience arises and passes away, moment by moment.

Relaxing may sometimes seem to be a most difficult task. People do so many things to try to relax—vacations, alcohol, drugs, entertainments, relaxation workshops, hypnosis, etc. But most things that people do to relax are not actually relaxing, often they are just dulling. Dulling the chronic pains of attachment just enough to get through the next event.

The relaxation that supports spiritual realization and meditation is a deep release—a release of clinging and fixation. The clinging may be to physical or emotional experiences and feelings, or to a sense of being the experiencer (the I formation). Whenever we are attached to impermanent experiences of mind or matter, we have set up the stage for suffering.

I invite you to just relax. Relax all fixation. Relax the sense of being the one who own experience. Let life happen today, without fussing too much. Aware, awake, alert, lucid….. but not grasping. This way of living may be deeply relaxing.