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Venerable Ajahn Medhanandi -
The Guests Come and
Go
Reflections from a retreat in Wellington, New Zealand
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival, a joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes because each
has been sent as a guide from beyond.
~Jelaluddin Rumi: The Guest House
(translation by Coleman Barks with John Moyne)
Stress is the price we pay for the happiness we seek. Driven by busy
schedules, obligations, needs, and ambitions, or caught up with worry,
even while on holiday, we hardly leave our cares behind. Hurling
ourselves into work, entertainment, or physical distraction brings only
temporary relief for the root of our suffering is within us. What
exhausts us more than the hectic regime of daily life is our
constant thrashing in the rapids of thought, mood, and memory.
How then do we find peace? Even at the centre stage of life, whether we
are reeling from personal misfortune or coping with ill-health, the
practice is always the same. Internal and invisible, it requires that we
train ourselves. We learn to let go the past and future, and grow calm
by taming our troubled thoughts.
Meditation helps us fine-tune this process. The Buddha likened the mind
to a guest house. [agara sutta, sn 36.14]. Whatever is happening around
us, be it in a condo or bungalow, alone or in community, our dwelling
place is teeming one moment, tranquil the next. Likewise, the pleasant,
painful, worldly, and unworldly feelings passing through the mind are to
be treated like guests.
Sitting quietly, we practise being more mindful and observant. With
sharpened attention, we monitor every sense experience and thought, and
begin to see more precisely how the mind is influenced. Are we aware of
old disturbances and reactions that continue to echo long after the
people or situations that created them have gone?
Brooding over the conflicts and careers of long ago words left unsaid,
family or former friends still unforgiven, or skewed perceptions frozen
in time the tapes of the past play on while the future is dimmed by
anxiety. Taking these thoughts to be real, we circle helplessly under
long suppressed burdens and fret about what will be. Though the guests
have come and vanished, we tenaciously wait on them for months, years,
even decades.
Is it not time to let them go and move beyond the isolation of
bitterness, regret, and fear? Having faced loss or hardship, we know
what it is to grieve. Just as we know the past is dead and the next
moment beyond our grasp, until we can trust surrendering to this
reality, the peace we yearn for remains elusive.
Security is here in the dark night, in the centre of our grief. Ready to
be with what we feel, no matter how terrible, we touch a primordial
stillness. We know that what passes through the mind sometimes a
raging storm, sometimes a protracted longing is all fleeting,
stressful, and not who or what we really are.
In the small silent oasis of one moment, practise turning inward for
rest and refuge. Realising how the events of life harden our attitudes
and thoughts, tend to your emotional baggage and discard assumptions
that have exceeded their expiry date. Receive all the guests even the
poisonous feelings of disappointment or outrage with courage,
curiosity, and fresh awareness. Gradually they will change or fall away
for that is their nature.
We mature with each moment of compassion and forgiveness towards
ourselves and others because we have let go. We have given the guests
of the mind all the space they need, here and now trusting enough to
feel authentically what we have been denying for years. This true
connection to the present moment reclaims the energy dissipated in our
pursuit of worldly happiness. Now it is ours to tap, and it becomes for
us the very fount of our awakening.
Last year, at the start of my three-month retreat, I woke up deaf one
morning. Prescribed steroids, it would be six weeks before I could have
an MRI to confirm whether there was a tumour. For years, I had been the
one to counsel and encourage others during illness and loss. Now, alone
and in silence, could I walk my talk?
I fought to maintain the simple rhythm of each day, cleaning,
meditating, chanting, feeding the birds, and going for walks. But this
time, the waiting without knowing had an edge that caught me by
surprise. Fractious thoughts defeated every effort to coach myself with
scriptural readings or reflections on karma. All too soon, an insistent
restlessness wrung the last vestige of calm from me.
I could only watch the guests come and go and feel all that I was
feeling. Even as my faith shrivelled, I knew there was no other way to
be no escape but to face things as they were and persevere. I
determined to make this waiting time part of my meditation practice, not
separate from it, prevailing with as much patience and candour as I
could muster. So I prepared myself to befriend, unconditionally, every
guest that came to my door.
We have to practise being present no matter how excruciating. In our
fury or fear, we want to scream, "Enough!" But can we bear the pain a
little longer? Without wishing it to subside and disappear, or demanding
that it change, are we able to accept it? Can we prepare a generous
space for it in the heart and make peace with it just as it is?
Consciously letting in difficult feelings and keeping watch in this way,
we empty the heart and allow truth to preside as we meet each new guest.
No longer do we need to defend ourselves, defying them or locking them
out. We know that they will change or depart just as they came of
their own accord leaving us in the still silence of pure knowing. This
is an eternal law. Each time we clear the rubbish, set out the mats, sit
down and wait delving into the darkest corridors of the heart is a
gift to ourselves.
Let the guests of the mind come and go. Know the generosity of welcoming
them instead of chasing them away. But like any guest who outstays his
welcome, show him the door. To the heart shrunken with fear or
preoccupied with its own misery, these dark moments are the very
intruders we would have run from. Now we can greet them and let them go
without judgment, for they may carry hidden blessings.
We rejoice not because they have gone but because we are at peace. And,
letting them be, we sample the exquisite freedom that takes us beyond
the confines of this narrow house to the vast frontier of an open heart.
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