Unexpected Freedom

Profoundly Simplegave it with such kindness and wisdom; he wasn’t just beingnice to me. He was so aware of the nature of this path. He said,“Be careful.” I still remember this vividly. He said, “The placeyou are at within yourself is very vulnerable – take care.”I often begin our evening meditation at Ratanagiri byguiding us together into our inner settling by saying,“Carefully paying attention…” I think in many cases wecould substitute the word ‘carefulness’ for ‘mindfulness.’ Inthe poor condition that I was in when I saw Ajahn Tate, hiswords were just what was needed. I was so unhappy that Icould very easily have been unkind to myself, or heedless.You know what it’s like when you get a little miserable; youstart blaming, thinking, ‘Well, someone has done somethingwrong.’ It’s very difficult to feel unhappy without feelingthat somebody, probably including oneself, has donesomething wrong.If we are feeling unhappy, what is called for is awillingness to simply be with that unhappiness. If we’re notcareful, we say something’s wrong, though it doesn’t reallyhelp to say that. We say it either inwardly or outwardly. Thisprojecting of blame is a consequence of having made aninner mistake of misperceiving our unhappiness, sadness orsuffering as being something wrong. We don’t receive it justas it is. We don’t acknowledge it and feel it, allowing it tohappen; we don’t have the ‘knowingness’ to see it as activitytaking place in awareness. Because we don’t have thatperspective, we struggle to do something about oursuffering, to deal with it in some way. To say that somethinghas gone wrong and that it’s somebody’s fault is a heedlessway of dealing with our unpleasant experiences. The habit ofconsistently doing this is a symptom of what I call thecompulsive judging mind. Ajahn Tate’s parting gift to me,‘be careful,’ alerted me to this, intuitively if not conceptually.11