Happiness IS within

Been home a couple of weeks now, and its the longest I think since I left college in 1996. Yesterday while walking and feeling less than perfect about things, I opened my eyes to the beauty which we have in the fields opposite our house in 7oaks and I though wow compared with London and where I am in Reading we are very lucky here. Then I realised better than ever before that of course our circumstance is NOT what defines our experience, but our mind, or more accurately our brain. It is the brain which experiences after all. It is a perfect world already, it is just that we can't see it because of the clouds of negativity.

Last night in that asleep but cogent state I am getting of late, I was able to see that thought right through. Reality has NO form. We don't say of something that it is "hot" until we experience a sudden "increase" in temperature. But increase from what? Normality doesn't look or feel like anything! we just don't think about it but it doesn't mean it isn't there. When we are absorbed into a world of thoughts we don't notice the formless world all around. When absorbed into our thoughts we even try to do mad things like "be normal" as though normal was something discrete and identifiable. Bad scientists are always trying to quantify the "normal".

Good scientists however simply quantify the abnormal, and the abnormal is quantified. The abnormal like negativity can be quantified and thought about. The abnormal like unenlightenment and suffereing can be thought about and analysed. The normal, the positive and the enlightened cannot be thought about, they are what remains when we have let go of the abnormal, the negative and the suffering. At least last night I understood the nature of enlightenment and why it cannot be found directly. It is found simply by ridding oneself of the "not-enlightened" aspects of ourself.

"Being Good" which is an important part of ridding oneself of negativity is not strictly meaningful. We can never be good, because what does good look like? Goodness is normal. It is rather as Buddha described it "doing no evil, ever!".

Likewise the bliss of enlightenment is not a state of mind to chase away the blues. Rather it is what remains when we have let go of the things which give us blues. It occurs behind us and it's light shines forth into the world we see ahead of us.

This is what I "understood" but its damn hard getting all this into reality! What I'm looking for I guess is that I do no evil, and that I seek the welfare of others. Jonny Wilkinson says it perfectly...this is the goal, what the light of enlightenment looks like when it falls on the thinking mind...

“My motivation today has nothing to do with status, money or ego. Before, I wanted to be the best in the world and I would watch other players to see how I measured up. Now, when I do something great on the rugby pitch, it is not about being better than others but about exploring my talent.
“My fulfilment is no longer about self-gratification. It is about seeing the happiness of others.”