A retreat day at Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. A hard day with lots of swirling down into tiredness, scraps of deep-seated arguments with myself. With the open awareness, open acceptance that is asked for in this tradition, comes the past in all its unresolved glory. There are so many ways to feed the frustrations of the past; connect them with other things from the past or present, fight with them, imagine better endings (while believing that they can't come true except in dream), despair, and on and on. Why such feeding? Because it is feared that what is left is a rocket of neutrality to a stark lonely dead planet.
Not really, of course, but there are the two sides... As Narayan said when quoting Ajahn Chah; "these two things remain, practice and torment, right until the end." Practice only feels like torment because it brings it into the light. Feed it and it stays in the dark, promises to go away, lies through its teeth.
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