Soulful Sadhak

My mind is an ocean To her all the world does flow On the surface that may cause motion But she is still deep down below There is nothing she doesn't embrace She encompasses all Whatever she may face She faces and stands tall The ocean does not discriminate It takes in all you give It's always in the same state just live and let live The ocean does not go anywhere It has no future and no past It has always been there And forever it will last Come and sit by my side, my dear And watch the waves roll in And when you've overcome your fear You can begin to swim

There was a man whose name was loneliness. He was kind of an ordinary man, the one you would not really notice when you were sitting opposite him on the metro, grey nondescript suit, glasses, nondescript haircut, nondescript leather suitcase. Everyday he got home from work, Mister Loneliness would sit at his window and look outside, contemplating the world, looking at cars driving by, people passing, falling rain lit up by on orange streetlight on a cold an dreary evening. Sometimes he would see people stopping and saying hello to each other, but never for long. Sometimes he would see couples passing by holding hands, but not often. He never really understood what that meant, in fact, that is still saying too much, his mind would not even register it as special. They were just like the cars passing by. He could feel quite comfortable at times, sitting there in his warm and cosy sofa. Sometimes you might even say he felt something like – really? – happiness. But still, there was somethi...

I live simply I have enough I am enough Ik stootte onlangs op dit citaat. De eerste twee zinnen zijn altijd relatief makkelijk voor mij geweest, de derde veel minder. Eerst wou ik hier een zenmeester worden, die altijd alles onder controle had en altijd zijn rust bewaarde. Toen ik erachter kwam dat dat nastreven veeleer een averechts effect had en ik juist de dingen op me af moest laten komen, begon ik eindelijk meer rust te ervaren. Maar toen ik die rust dan had, dacht ik dat het tijd was om mij op iets anders te richten, meer bepaald op ‘de ander’ en dat ik meer mijn best doen om sociaal te zijn en er te zijn voor anderen. Maar ook daar, hoe meer ik het probeerde, hoe meer moeite het me kostte en hoe verder ik van mijn doel verwijderd leek (Hoe doe je dat, ‘er volledig voor een ander zijn’, klinkt vrij onmogelijk eens je erover begint na te denken.) Tot ik las: I am enough. Gijs, je bent zoals je bent en je bent genoeg, sociaal genoeg, empathisch genoeg. En dat is niet perfect, maar...

Sometimes I sit and look at all the stupid things I’ve done So many years it took and only so far I have come Sometimes I want to let go sit back and let it all be If I just would not struggle so maybe one day I’d be free Sometimes I really feel sore but also feel great relief as if I will suffer no more Those times great grace I receive     For as long as I will fight and struggle to change God’s plan I know I’ll not sit down and write: I live my life as a free man

There was a master who was renowned for his rather unorthodox techniques. They said he would often submit his students to the most extreme trainings. Many of his students dropped out of his classes completely bewildered or just went mad. One day a young man went up to the master and asked him to become his student. The master replied he would only take him on as a student if he would be willing to accept anything that would come. At this the young man became insecure, because he had heard of the master's reputation, and left, asking for some time to think about it. A long time the young man pondered over his decision, and finally he was able to gather all his courage. He went back to the master and told him he was ready to become his student, he was willing to accept anything that would come. "Then, I have nothing more to teach you," replied the master. At that moment the young man became enlightened.

"How did you find the practice of mindfulness?" someone asked me recently. I answered him: "I found it when I stopped looking for something." He was confused: "When did that happen?" "Oh, only very recently, long after I arrived here." You see, what I had been doing was whenever an unpleasant feeling would arise, I would just try to become very 'mindful' in order to make it go away, and I would tell myself that I would have to practice even harder in the future to prevent this from happening. But now matter how hard I tried, unpleasant feelings would still arise, which after a couple of months, made me quite desperate. It was only then that I realized that this was not what the practice was about at all. I was just running away from things I did not like (unpleasant feelings) and holding on to things I liked (pleasant feelings). In the end, this was not different from what I had been doing before whole my life. In fact, it is how most peo...

I surrender. Today 23th of November shall henceforth be known as the day of Armistice, the day I stopped fighting. I have been fighting so long. So long I have been building walls and fortresses. And everyday I kept making the walls thicker, hiding deeper and deeper inside, until nothing could touch me anymore. But still, no matter how hard I tried, the fortress was never untakable. Each time I increased the defenses, something was still able to creep in and I had to increase defenses again. On and on it went, until... Until I realized that this was a battle I could never win, in fact, there was no point in fighting it at all. Why was I hiding there in my fortress, while life was going out there? So I decided to abandon my fortress and just go out. I decided I would no longer hide away from anything, but would accept whatever would come, surrendering completely to whatever was coming my way. And you know what is funny? Never when I was crouching behind my thick walls in my tightly cont...