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62 EASTERN HORIZON | BOOKS EXCERPT

BOOK EXCERPT

things, but maybe one moment was spectacular. Maybe
it was spectacularly bad or it could be spectacularly
good. Which one are you going to choose? Moments,
or repetitions, or unconsciousness, or dullness? It’s
just arbitrary. There’s nothing to grasp. The past is
incomprehensible. The future’s unpredictable. This is
the way it is. The Buddha is saying that this complex
human mind that can understand the ideas of future
and past can also have some unfortunate effects if not
Bloom: Buddhist Reflections On Serenity And Love handled well. We’re not given the proper instruction.
By Ajahn Sona
Neither at the time of the Buddha, nor certainly to
Ajahn Sona, abbot of Birken Forest Monastery in British this day, is it ever fully explained to us how to manage
Columbia, Canada, offers Buddhist wisdom about how being alive as a human. We’re trained to do jobs;
we work with some of the identities and priorities that we’re scheduled for this and that. We have arbitrary
can take up so much space and energy in our lives. In information. We read all kinds of books about people’s
particular, he suggests, anger and hostility can play an lives. You read a book about somebody you really know
outsized role in our mind in this age of polarized politics and you think, “Well, maybe it went that way.” Or you

and high-speed communication. In his book Bloom: read an article where someone writes something about
Buddhist Reflections on Serenity and Love (Sumeru you. It’s very fascinating, but that’s not the way it was.
Books, 2020) he reminds us: “you don’t have to have an The Buddha is summarizing it for you because this is
opinion about everything.” the most important information you’re going to have
in your life: how to manage this thing called “time”
Ajahn Sona. From birken.ca which is a product of your mind. Your life is a product of
your mind. When we talk about your life we’re actually
When I ask you to tell me your story, who you are, you talking about the thought processes. Your life is nothing
will only pick out one tenth of one per cent of your life, but the thought processes. We can manipulate them; we
and you might arrange that as the representation of can do incredible things with those thought processes
who you are, what you’ve done, and so forth. But it’s with very simple technology. The Buddha gives you the
only a tiny percentage of the thousands, the billions of technologies. Try this: try watching your breath. Notice
thoughts that you’ve had, of all the motions of the body. the breathing; notice the lovely, light airy quality of this.
When people describe their life, they choose things like, Ride away into that airy quality. Allow the sense of the
“I owned a motorcycle store. I’m a businessman.” That’s body to drift away.
just one of the things you do. Others might describe
themselves as sleepers.” I’m a sleeper. I sleep eight Do you start to see that your body is really a product of
hours a day.” There was a French artist who was asked, the mind? You see that as you change your mind, your
“What do you do?” He said, “I’m a breather. I do a lot of whole experience of your body changes. As you change
breathing. Mostly breathing.” your mind, your whole experience of your relationships
to others changes. As you change your mind, as you do
It’s true. Of all the activities that we do, we could these techniques, how you regard your past changes.
certainly say we mostly breathe. How we choose to The future changes. You start to understand that from a
define ourselves in the past is just arbitrary; it’s a certain point of view, you can transform the very world
story emphasizing one thing, not another. Why this you live in: the very structure of reality depends on the
and not that? Maybe you repeated a whole series of careful use of the mind. The Buddha is saying, “Don’t