Up here now
”… when we meet somebody we don’t see them as they actually are. We see them in relationship to what we’re thinking about them – how much we like or dislike them, how they remind us of somebody else, what sort of qualities they have. We’re not experiencing them in themselves. Everything we perceive is like that – everything we see, eat, hear, touch. It’s immediately interpreted back to ourselves in conformity with our thoughts and experiences.
We might think, “So what?” It’s not important. But what happens is that we’re living several paces back from the experience itself and therefore we become more and more conditioned, more and more robotic. We become increasingly computer-like. Someone “pushes our buttons” as they so aptly put it and out comes the conditioned response.
What we have to do is bring everything into sharp focus, to see things as they truly are as if for the first time – like a small baby looking at the murals in a shrine room, (…) without judgement, its mind is fresh. That’s the state of mind we have to bring into our everyday life. If we can learn to do that, without doing anything else, it will transform the situation automatically”…
– Tenzin Palmo (Diane Perry)
Down here now
It’s not out there.
”The ultimate source of happiness is within us.”
– Dalai Lama
chameleonian times 