The most important is often the most simple
I am happy to see scientists voting sanitation as the most important medical advance since the mid-1800s (although probably ever.)
Especially today, it is easy to be blinded by the flashy new discoveries and technological advances, which are important in their own way, and overlook the simple - such as clean water, food and air.
It seems that life is set up so that the most important is also often the most simple... although this doesn't mean we always find it easy to actually do it on an individual or collective level (1.5 million people died as a consequence of poor sanitation in 2001, and in most of these cases, I assume these deaths could have been prevented by actions at the collective level, either nationally or internationally, but wasn't.)
For our individual health, and if we have the means available, then what has most impact is the most simple: stay fit, get some exercise, eat simple clean food, get enough clean water to drink, maintain good relationships with people around you, and learn some ways to reduce stress.
To reduce stress, be with your experiences instead of trying to push them away. The pushing away is in itself a large part of the stress and discomfort (actually all of it.)
And it is the same with awakening, which has been made into something often very obscure and complex in the different traditions, but again is very simple, and available, in its essence.
Examine the content of what is alive right now. It is all coming coming and going... Sensations, thoughts, choosing, actions... all coming and going. Finite in time & space. Are you coming and going with either of these? What is not coming and going? Are you the awakeness that the content comes and goes within? And where is the boundary between this content and the awakeness? Is the content anything else than awakeness itself?
Or just be with what is, as it is (including any resistance), and the sense of I and Other will fade, revealing this awakeness to itself... as that which arises, and inherently absent of a separate I.
Or even simpler, and if it works for you, just notice yourself as already headless.
Or shift into being Big Mind, and explore your formless and form aspects (with guidance from someone already familiar with it.)
Labels: simplicity