Reflections on Dhamma
Ajahn Santacitta ~
“Giving something of yourself is giving something to yourself”
~ from Women's Retreat at Aruna Ratanagiri Monastery,
Norththumberland, UK, May 2009
When we choose to go through a transformation process by actively staying with unpleasant feeling rather than by reacting to things, we give something of ourselves and at the same time we are giving a lot to ourselves. We give up habitual ways, which is painful at first, but what we receive in terms of freedom is just so much better.
If you have been fortunate enough to see the result of being able to withhold reacting, then increasingly, the faith that this is the right path will become stronger and stronger. Then we can take on more and more difficult patterns by holding still and bearing with the pain of transformation—the fire of transformation—which is sometimes really hot and wild. But once the material which is up for transformation has all been burned away, the spaciousness and freedom which result from that is very much worth the pain of standing your ground and not believing in the conceptual mind. Spaciousness and freedom arise from embracing insecurity and the ‘not-knowing.’
The Buddha did just the same. When he was sitting under the bodhi tree, he was assaulted from all sides. He just kept on sitting, not believing that he couldn’t bear it and suddenly the arrows of Mara turned into flowers. That's a very beautiful image to reflect on, if that which we fear the most turns out to actually be a blessing, because it's the cause for wisdom to arise.
When I look back on my own life, to the times when it was really difficult—when there was a lot of fear, anxiety and pain—now I am very glad for that. I did not get my way and so I had to open my mind to that which seemed impossible to open up to. Now it is clear that those were very important lessons in my life where I learned so much, understanding that in those lessons I was able to stretch my heart the most and develop wisdom and compassion; and, if you know yourself, then you basically know other people. You know how it is for yourself to not get what you want or to get what you don't want, and therefore you have an idea how others feel. You develop wisdom and compassion by simply holding steady and not moving into distraction, independent of what life presents to you right now. It's all about how, not so much about what.
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