This morning I read an article on meditation practice from the Shambhala Sun archives. In it, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche compares the beginner's mind to hard, dry ground:
In meditation, we begin to learn about ourselves as basic human beings, and when we learn about ourselves, we learn how to change. Our mind is like hard ground that has not seen water for a long time. That ground is not capable of giving nourishment to anything. Whatever is planted in it dies. Nothing grows. As meditation practitioners, we begin to till our mind so that we can grow something, the mind of enlightenment. We’re trying to change.
So we start to till this hard, thirsty ground. If our mind is like a wide open field on a farm that must be tilled and planted and harvested, we must train like the farmer. The farmer has a routine that must be approached with diligence and each step must be accomplished in its turn at its time. If the farmer decided not to plant, there would be no harvest.
Food for thought.
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