It’s a mix of slight loneliness, sadness, longing, dissatisfaction, insecurity, disappointment, worry, nausea, fed up, maybe a little hunger….. It’s a negative black hole in your heart sucking positive thoughts & contentment.
It strikes at least once a month. At least. Out of nowhere, in the middle of the night, leaving you tired but unable to sleep with a million thoughts running through your mind, with the hole growing bigger and bigger.
Tonight, I wondered is it because of my lacking in Religion practice lately? Obviously, this thought is motivated by a movie that I just finished watching about a family losing their faith in God and fell apart. In addition, I am still settling in my uncomfortable new apartment in an area that still feels strange to me. Hence, I can’t even recall the last time I visited temple. I know, excuses excuses.
A Bhante once told me that visits to temple, Buddha statues, flowers, candles, incents, all those are just symbols. They are simply reminders of Buddha’s teachings, which, can sometimes be easily overlooked and forgotten in the midst of human’s, well, human life. The real temple is in my heart and mind.
To think that, “well, that clears up my Sunday morning! I’ll just think about the teachings constantly, then I’ve done my duty” is easier to say than done. I have been there and thought similarly, in fact, I might even be doing the same thing right now. Humans are so weak, we find reasons that justify our incapabilities. We’ll do anything to go for the seemingly easier route, not knowing that there is no such easy route. And in the end, we just give up or find reasons why that route is not the right one (yet, it would happen over and over again). For your mind to be your temple, diligent practice is needed.
I watched a video about a great Tibetan Monk, MingYur Rinpoche, sharing that our minds are like monkeys. They are so loud and demanding. For these monkey minds to quite down, feeding them food is not enough. We need to give them jobs by practicing our meditation. Tell our monkey minds to focus on our breathing, amplify our inhales and exhales, mute the background thoughts and noise, even for 1 short minute. Then we can meditate anywhere, anytime.
It takes great practice to maintain a happy content state of mind, but we’ll get there. Meanwhile, visiting temples is imperative to remind ourselves how to think & live in a loving, caring, compassionate way as how Buddha taught us.
