My chair by the window, upstairs, is my teacher. It is my pondering place... my coffee place... my early morning tea place. All I have to do is arrive, and choose to sit and watch. And from my teacher, I have learned about clouds.
Siddhārtha Gautama chose a common tree and had no use for altars, meditation cushions or temples. He never learned to meditate and had never been on a meditation retreat. He certainly never joined an online global meditation group.
He did not own a statue of the Buddha. He simply sat under his favourite cool, shady tree, and just watched. Detached. Allowed. Often.
The clouds come and go. They release sometimes light healing rain, and sometimes destructive deluges which wash away my seeds.
Sometimes they give me delight in their shade from blistering heat, and sometimes my washing molds on the line as I wait for them to pass.
But they always pass.
Meditation does not require closed eyes or breath technique. It asks only the willingness to do 3 things: to arrive, to wait and to watch. Whatever comes. Inside and out.
I am earth and mountain and cloud.
Cloud is rain is cloud.
Cycles within cycles, cycles creating cycles.
My thoughts are clouds.
My body is a cloud.
Events are clouds.
People are clouds.
My feelings are clouds.
Real, but not real. Eternal and fleeting.
To witness the outer clouds, and my inner clouds, is easy. It requires no teacher. Only the desire to do those 3 things: to arrive, to wait and to watch.
The longer I watch clouds, the more I am the mountain, soaked by rain, gratefully yielding the damp steam from my own soggy and tangled undergrowth, and creating more clouds.
The longer I watch clouds, the more I understand that I create the clouds.
It becomes more difficult to say which are good clouds and bad clouds, and it no longer matters. They are all enriching, transient and eternally changing. The good pretty cloud just after dawn can be an ominous threatening deluge by 4pm. All that changed was her intensity, not her nature. So is she good, or bad? In April after the dry season, the deluge is very good. In September, as the rivers threaten to flood and kill with their destruction, they are very bad. Yet the nature of the clouds has not changed. We have.
I am earth and mountain and cloud.
Cloud is rain is cloud.
Cycles within cycles, cycles creating cycles.
Today I am grateful for clouds, and my teacher. My faithful teacher - the teak chair. Who was once a magnificent Teak tree, and now, like a cloud, has changed from being one kind of teacher to another. A different form, but still essentially a tree spirit guru. The teacher in my teak chair and the teacher in the clouds are one.
One day when my teak tree teacher chair is reduced to ash, she will begin again to become the mountain, which creates the very clouds which nourish her enough to support the growth of a new young teak tree.
And so the cycles and seasons turn. Like clouds. Ever changing. Like me.
One Love.
The view from my upstairs living room window from our Thai home in Baan Rim Tai, Mae Rim, Chiang Mai. The Thai mountain I watch each day is Thailand's "holy, mystic mountain", Doi Suthep.
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Oh what a beautiful place and view to have some quiet meditative moments! Nature has much to teach us - lovely lesson from the clouds!
It IS juts such a lovely tranquil spot to sit and be. Clouds are such phenomenal teachers about the nature of existence! 😍
!ENGAGE 15
ENGAGEtokens.Lovetheclouds contest! Spot on!
Some people saw UFOs up north!
The mountains and clouds are magnificent!
The stars are magnificent between rain deluges and yes, I'm quite sure UFOs are zooming around up there. The odd earth-magnetic energies right now are drawing many strange things to us.
I never tire of looking at Doi Suthep.
!ENGAGE 15
Please try to talk to those UFOs, ask them to give us a few nuggets of gold!! LoL
ENGAGEtokens.Thank you for the tip!
A beautifully poetic piece. We could all do with more cloud watching. Lessons in nature, our greatest teacher of all. Your words rise like clouds. Still, it is also valid to seek teachers and perhaps a sangha, even if it is in virtual form, to help guide us, reassure and support us on our journey, just as we look to Buddha's life and teaching as an inspiration for living. Whilst the truth is within our knowing, sometimes we need help to uncloud and demist the lens that looks onto clearer fields of perceptiom. Many teachers, one path. 🕉
It's a personal choice to seek out all those extras. Are they needed? No. Original teachings of the Buddha? LOL. Arguably no. Change your experience of meditation? Peripherally yes, intrinsically no. There are many paths and only one true teacher, which is our higher self. The rest are mere signposts and guides along the way.
I'm still humming that song tho... 🤣 "I really don't know clouds, at all."
!ENGAGE 25
Our inner teacher is absolutely the truest teacher, agreed. If our teacher told us to kill or steal, our inner self must be listened to if they find something inherently wrong. So much religious or spiritual instruction is in surplus to the basics we need to connect to the divine (I am sure you know what I mean by this). I couldn't agree more. Yet even Buddha had a teacher to help him on the path until he was no longer needed, and he found his own way, and became teacher of many. I am infinitely grateful to the allys who helped me reveal the truths obscured by conditioning/illusion. Once learnt, they cannot be unlearnt. I had intellectually understood a lot from reading ancient texts and interpretations thereof, but it wasn't until I sat vipassana that I truly understood impermance, metta and other concepts experientally, on a cellular level. Whilst I thought I had understood meditation, I appreciated deeply the pull to further instruction to guide me and still do not presume to know all, though the simple stuff is enough to live contentedly. Guides are valid allies on the path and I am deeply grateful to those who have been my allies along the way, in the many shapes and forms they have taken, and continue to take.
I am thinking of the Orbs sampling of the interview with Rickie Lee Jones, Little Fluffy Clouds!! You might not like the whole song, but you'll understand what I mean from the beginning! ☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️
Haven't listened to Ricki Lee Jones in EONS. Look fwd to enjoying this later.
#POSH
A huge hug 🤗 and a little bit of !BEER 🍻 from @amico!
Un caro abbraccio 🤗 e un po' di BEER 🍻 da @amico!
View or trade
BEER.Hey @artemislives, here is a little bit of
BEERfrom @amico for you. Enjoy it!Learn how to earn FREE BEER each day by staking your
BEER.I was thinking of giving you some feedback about the Buddha’s life. Actually he studied meditation techniques with the two best meditation teachers in those days. He could master all the meditation techniques; each teacher was famous for their skills of meditation schools. So the Buddha could achieve all the stages of meditation with one-pointedness concentration.
According to Buddhism there are two major approaches to meditation, the Samatha and Vipassana approaches. The former will naturally give meditators several psychic abilities. That’s why most Thai meditators choose this path. Buddhist scriptures mentioned 44 techniques of meditation. People will choose techniques according to their inclinations.
But these psychic abilities didn’t answer any of the Buddha’s questions about life and sufferings. So, he went off to find his own method of meditation.
The point is that meditation is hard work for most people especially for those who never meditated in their past lives. Most meditation courses here are Samatha meditation which helps people to achieve ‘one pointed concentration’ and a stage of calmness. But these techniques will not involve ‘intelligence’ or ‘panya’ so it will not lead to ‘enlightenment’.
I met several people who were serious meditators in the past, but they chose the wrong path. Those two famous Indian meditation teachers were like rock stars in the meditation world in the past. Their students boasted about the wonderful results of their methods. The Buddha was top student in both schools and was persuaded to become instructors in both camps.
I found it amazing that psychic abilities were common practice in those days! People didn’t need the cinemas or video games! What they could do in meditation was much more exciting! So they became attached to new gratifications! No way to become enlightened!
Cheers.
Loved this, Marieke ( both the message, your writing and the pictures ), as you can see in the mindful life curation that I just posted.
I thought my view was great but this beats them all ;>)
Knuffel,
Vincent
I am in love with your photos !!
I have always liked clouds, where I live there are always many.
That place looks great to relax and imagine
Nature has ever been my temple. Whether i sit on the water's edge, or take a walk through the forest, or lay upon the earth to watch the clouds or the stars ~ I am at peace.
Great post @artemislives
Yes,.the world - reality itself speaks to us...
Because it's not words
We cannot listen...