POSTCARD#313: Bangkok: Getting into town from the airport is okay to start with, gliding along the elevated highway in a huge open landscape, and all the good-looking 21st Century buildings pointing up into the evening sky like some futuristic sci-fi heaven realm. Then, as we get near the exit, the traffic slowly starts to fuse together in a mass of end-to-end steel/chrome-plated metal units, creaking along like the glacier I visited a long time ago in Switzerland moving so slowly, the end of its 133 kilometer length is four hundred years older than its beginning.
Struggling with the thought that the reason I’m here is that I have to have eye surgery on both eyes for cataracts. I don’t want it to be like this, causes and conditions, waiting for the traffic is like the changes in nature, the ocean, the weather.
Reminded of the Ajahn Chah image of leaves in the trees blowing in the wind in a rising and falling motion for as long as the winds last. It’s just the mind blowing like the wind that can cause the restless, uneasy feeling. In its original state, the mind is still and calm.
‘To be mindful means to have metta towards the fear in your mind, or the anger, or the jealousy. Metta means not creating problems around existing conditions, allowing them to fade away, to cease. For example, when fear comes up in your mind, you can have metta for the fear — meaning that you don’t build up aversion to it, you can just accept its presence and allow it to cease. You can also minimize the fear by recognizing that it is the same kind of fear that everyone has, that animals have. It’s not my fear, it’s not a person’s, it’s an impersonal fear.’ [“Mindfulness: The Path to Deathlessness: The Meditation Teaching of Venerable Ajahn Sumedho.”]
dhamma footsteps 
Teachings of metta, mindfulness, of and for emotions; fear, anxiety, sadness, bring clarity to my mental vision.
Thoughts with you as you attain a different kind of “clarity” of vision.
Take care,
Paz
Thanks Paz, I had it done and the fear of it gone. At the time mindfulness was a necessity…
A wonderful post, T! Best of luck with the cataracts. I had mine done a few years ago. It was a breeze. ❤️🙏
Speaking in the past tense here, future in the past, isn't it? Anyway I had it done some time ago and reflecting on that and yes it was a breeze. I was astonished how clear and bright the colours were - not so much now but it was a clarity maybe I haven't experienced for all these years back to when I was a teenager and seeing the world in its freshness and vitality...METTA
Abandoning this
Constant creating of some
Other than it is
And letting go of proliferation upon proliferation…
Yes. So easy to drop/drift into infinite regression and paradox. 🙂
stories upon stories and the fear of no escape – metta for that fear…
Et cetera et cetera et cetera … 🙂
Glad to hear it was in the past and now no longer a problem. Especially important for you as not only a writer but, more importantly, as an artist!
Reflecting on a time now past. I couldn’t believe the difference in brilliance of color, first one eye then the other – I remember that, but now things have shifted back to the ordinary. The body is repairable, I’m seeing the world through two pieces of finely tuned plastic…
A wonderful insight T. Embrace the metta … and step mindfully and gently into this procedure. We all experience it in a different way. May yours be one of openness and allowing the healing energy to flow. 💛🙏💛
Thanks Val, the good thing about being here in Thailand is, this is a Buddhist country. People speak gently, allowing events to take place in the context of mindfulness.
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I’m singing the song to myself while reading this…
“Have metta for the fear” is what I know, in some version, in every moment or so it seems. In fact, it has occupied all this morning probably yesterday’s, too. Now I have the phrase of having metta for fear. As always, thank you, Tiramit.
Karen
Thanks Karen, it’s good to hear from you. We know this is completely possible, moving away every day, from the unthinking attachment to the fear.
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