Isn’t it amazing now that this extraordinary academic year has come to an end? Wow. With the days getting longer and warmer, is summer on your mind? I’m not going anywhere or doing any vacationing this year, but the circumstances still remind me how important it is to relax. Unfortunately, it is easier said than done to relax fully.
For a long time, especially when I was at school or applying for jobs, I had this feeling that I always had to work extra hard and to become more. I know a lot of my friends have this feeling too. It as if what we own or have done is never enough, but that’s not true. Just look around you, there is abundance in every corner even at this time of rapid changes. Yet, for whatever reason, it’s just not enough. Sometimes it can feel like there are these “little hands” reaching out of us, grasping for more.
On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with wanting to improve. On the other hand, feeling propelled to become more all the time is exhausting. I guess this is the two sides of the coin of being driven. As you can imagine, this “grasping mind” makes it very tiresome, as least for me. It also comes times when it starts to impact my health and the quality of my work, the one thing I’m grasping to get better. To get some rest, I must get to the bottom of the problem. What is pushing me on like this? The easy answer will be stress from school, our culture, and stress at work, so and so forth. But there is more to it.
Have you had experiences like this? You are on vacation at some beautiful place, and you want to see it all and do it all. You spent the vacation doing just that and ended up being more tired than before. It can happen with spiritual practice too. For example, sometimes you go to a meditation session you’ve wanted to go forever. When you get there, you are determined to be the best meditator you can be and get the most out of this session. More often than not, you have problems popping up left and right during the entire period.
I admit. I’m a frequent practitioner of all of the above, and I’m determined not to get trapped by them. To start, I know that it’s the “grasping mind” that’s causing the real problem, but what’s causing the “grasping mind”? One of the tricks I’ve learned to bring more clarity to this kind of question is meditation, so I meditated on this and found out a little something about it. Let me tell you what it is. My “grasping mind” is fueled by a feeling of scarcity, a deep-rooted fear that there is not enough. There is not going to be enough jobs out there, there are not enough people who want to buy my art, or spiritual enlightenment is this rare thing. You name it. A logical next step of this is that we have to be better than the best and always to be doing something to survive. Is this true? It’s not.
I’m sure you are talented in your unique way. Besides, you have a roof over your head, food on the table, and clothing on your backs. Let me know if you don’t. We can figure something out together. We live in a society of abundance, so let’s acknowledge that and cultivate gratitude. Let’s take a moment and reflect on how grateful we are to have the material comfort around us, to have an education, and to have a spiritual practice as our guide.
How does that feel? I bet it feels pretty restful, right? The truth is, no matter how little you have, you have more than the Buddha. He lived most of his life without shoes, and some scholars even speculate that he didn’t know how to read or write. You are doing better than that. My teacher, Sunim Yangil, often says to his students, “You are already a Buddha. You are already enlightened.” He is right; every single one of us already lives with the perfect enlightenment. It eats when you eat and breathe when you breathe. It is with you all the time, and all you need to do is to go home to it and rest with it. That is the Big Abundance Mind and full restfulness.
I know it can be hard to be in touch with the Big Abundance Mind because we are so used to the grasping and the scarcity mind. Well, why don’t we start by taking small steps? Let’s begin with cultivating an abundance mindset through gratitude. We can be grateful for having clean water, for knowing how to read and write, and for having ones who love and care for us. We can rest in the feeling of gratitude. One trick I find helpful is that during sitting meditation, sometimes you’ll get scarcity-based distractions. They usually take form like planning or wanting stuff. When you notice that, gently say to yourself, “I don’t need to do this right now.” or “It’s lucky to be with what I have.”
We can use these two phrases off the meditation cushion too when we feel overwhelmed by the to-do-list or troubled by all the stuff coming to our way. Give it a try, and let me know how it goes.