Temporary Nirvana

What I read.....

Interludes of natural or purposeful pausing "temporary Nirvana."

We touch the freedom that is possible in any moment when we are not grasping after our experience or resisting it. Ajahn Buddhadasa writes that without such moments of pausing, "... living things would either die or become insane. Instead, we survive because there are natural periods of coolness, of wholeness and ease. In fact, they last longer than the fires of our grasping and fear. It is this that sustains us."
Pausing is the gateway to Radical Acceptance. In the midst of a pause we are giving room and attention to the life that is always streaming through us, the life that is habitually overlooked.
Like the Buddha, rather than running away, we need only commit ourselves to arriving, here and now, with wholehearted presence.

My thoughts....

I have died and have become insane quite often throughout my life. My life especially before sobriety I was dead. I never wanted to pause, I was constantly grasping and chasing what I thought at that time, I guess you could call it my Nirvana, I was always looking for a way to escape the feelings, and once I felt something of what I thought was a good feeling, I needed more and more. There was just never enough.

In sobriety I thought I had lost my mind for a while. In fact I did. My first years of being sober were not wanting to feel, and so then when feelings came up I needed to do something about them, fix them, so I had to have something wrong with me besides alcoholism so diagnos me with a chemical balance, oh yes that is it I am insane, fix it hurry and fix it. So at least 7 years of my sobriety I spent trying to fix it with major chemicals to my system and hospitals and institutions. Wow what a ride for Nirvana was that!!
The last 3 years since my father passed on, I have been on a different path, I remember now in retrospect that when I watched my father pass from this life to the next, I paused.... I felt the sadness, the pain that unfortunately he was feeling, the loss of losing him, the joy of being there with him at that moment, and the relief of he is in a better place, and I also pause and remember how much I miss him.
I dont think I am saying that my father dying is what started this new path, I just know today after my readings this morning that something changed in me, I no longer want to be in a grasping of life, fearing the after life state of mind.
This reading just helped me remember I was grasping and fearing life, not pausing to feel the present moment. I still today dont like the feelings when things are happening to me and around me, but for me a pause is just after getting off the phone with like Jerricas dad yesterday, and wanting to go and just hurt him so bad, and just sitting in my car and pausing and saying to my self it is going to be ok, I am getting to observe my granddaughters life, just not the way I want to, sat there for a moment and breathed and then went into the gym and had a great workout. I love that I am not having to react harshly or hurtful anymore, or at least a lot less.

The natural periods of coolness, of wholeness and ease!! Wow what a feeling, to know that I am alive in this life, alive in this life!! To know what it is like to be dead and amongst the living, that is what I feel today is alive in this life!