Meditations on the 40 Tenets of Plum Village
Breathing in, I am aware that space is a conditioned dharma. Breathing out, I know that it manifests with time, matter and consciousness. Space is conditioned; Manifesting with other dharmas.
Equanimity and Letting Go
“When I was a child, I had a toy called a Weeble. It was shaped like an egg and made of plastic. There was some kind of weight in the bottom that kept it balanced and centered. You could tip it over and it seemed like it would fall, but then it wouldn’t. It rocked back and forth, and always came back upright to stillness. What is it that allows us to come back to balance when the transitions and challenges of our life knock us off center? What is that inner weight at our core? Equanimity is a fundamental practice that can help us to center and balance ourselves.”
Calmly Facing the Eight Worldly Winds
“In many countries across Asia, in Buddhist temples you find a common symbol of a wheel with eight spokes, with a hole in the center for the axle. I learned that this represents the Dharma, or the teachings of the Buddha, which are like a wheel being set in motion, and the eight spokes represent the Noble Eightfold Path taught by the Buddha.While living in Sri Lanka, I was offered an additional meaning of this symbol: the eight spokes represent the eight worldly winds. They are four pairs of opposites—pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, and fame and disrepute. They are the four things we hope for and the four things we fear.”
Embracing Strong Emotions
“Buddhist psychology offers a model of the mind that divides our consciousness into two layers: the upper layer is ‘mind consciousness,’ our waking mind, and the lower layer is ‘store consciousness,’ similar to the concept of the unconscious in Western psychology. It is called ‘store consciousness’ because it stores the potentialities of our mental states, which are described as seeds, sleeping in the depths of our mind. There are many kinds of seeds in our store consciousness, some wholesome, like mindfulness, generosity, and forgiveness, and some unwholesome, like greed, ignorance, and hatred. All of us have all of these many types of seeds.”
Strong Back, Soft Front—Equanimity and Compassion
”All too often, our so-called strength comes from fear, not love. Instead of having a strong back, many of us have a defended front, shielding a weak spine. In other words, we walk around brittle and defensive, trying to conceal our lack of confidence. If we strengthen our backs, metaphorically speaking, and develop a spine that’s flexible but sturdy, then we can risk having a front that’s soft and open.”
Strong Back, Soft Front—PV style
(bow) Take a few moments to get settled into the meditation posture that would best support you in the present moment, whether seated, lying down, or standing. You might like to close your eyes gently or lower your unfocused gaze to the floor.