auspicious coincidence

...Our capacity to receive the compassion and blessings of the teacher and the Three Jewels, therefore, depends entirely on devotion and faith.

Once, a disciple called out to the master Jowo Atisha, "Jowo, give me your blessings!"

"Lax disciple," Atisha replied, "give me your devotion..."

So absolute unwavering trust, arising from extraordinary faith and devotion, is indispensable. It opens the door to taking refuge.--Patrul Rinpoche

Although I wholeheartedly believe in the teachings, I stumble into the trap of doubt over and over and over again. I am trapped by my dualistic thinking, my belief that the trap is somewhere outside of me, separate from me. I am cornered by my poverty mentality, my belief that richness too is outside of me.

My mind and my body are divided, out of sync...I am not even sure that they are living the same life, they having chosen to go their own separate ways so long ago. When the body is present the mind dissolves, which, paradoxically, allows the mind to be present, too. Mind and body have to re-integrate in order to disintegrate...mind and body travel outward on the breath a certain distance--the same distance every time--and then I am rebuilt, which is to say re-formed. Someday, maybe soon, I may not be re-formed but reborn.

Ideally, we should take refuge every day. We should practice meditation; we should try to understand the teachings; and we should try to live in accordance with them. ...with refuge we are born every day. We should take refuge every single day to clarify what that means. Why? Because taking refuge is really about how we are going to lead our lives.--Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Is it ironic to say that my mind believes and that my body doubts? That my mind trusts in this thing called basic goodness or sugatagarbha or bodhicitta, but that my body doesn't believe?

I remember driving down a particular street in my hometown. Every day I would find myself approaching this one stoplight, and every day I would notice that I was in fourth gear. I could remember the point in which I moved from first to second, and sometimes second to third, but how I made it from third to fourth was always a mystery. The process had become fully automated--completely habitual. The habit of driving was so deeply ingrained within my being that I was no longer aware of my choice to shift up. This metaphor is also paradoxical, for I mean it to demonstrate on the one hand that our habits--or maybe just my habits?--are so much a part of our physical being that they seem to just happen automatically, especially in someone like me who's mind races so fast that the wind feels challenged to outrun it. On the other hand, however, this metaphor alludes to an experience of doubtlessness. At a certain point of realization you no longer need to process and dissect each moment of your experience in order to act appropriately in a given situation. You just do what needs to be done, no questions asked. In either case, however, there was a bit of a problem in that my mind and my body weren't united. Although I was acting appropriately, even expertly, I wasn't at all mindful or aware of what I was doing.

I was interupted while writing this and have lost my train of thought as well as my attachment to expanding on these thoughts, so what you see is what you get.