blue sky, storms, clouds, and our minds

In the 19 years that I have been a student of Buddhism and have practiced meditation, the most common way I have listened to teachers describe the nature of our minds is that it is like a vast blue sky.

Thoughts and emotions (really intense thoughts), they teach, are like clouds or storms passing across the vast blue sky.

When a storm front or clouds are passing through, the blue sky is still there, its essential nature remains the same, but it is covered over for a time.

In the same way, the essential nature of the mind doesn’t ever change, but sometimes, our thoughts and feelings can make us feel less than clear and calm.

My sister, @jillwiles, took this photo this morning from her house and the caption read:”A front was moving in this morning”

It reminded me how we experience our relationship with our own minds.

Sometimes we can see things coming on the horizon, sometimes things hit us out of the clear blue, sometimes we feel foggy, sometimes we experience our minds as open, vast blue yonder, not a cloud for miles.

Our minds are a lot like the weather.

And like we are looking at this photograph right now, we can watch what arises in our minds and simply notice it.

In a culture of do, do, do, it really is a very powerful thing to simply notice what arises within you and simply be present with it and watch it.

Things are always moving. Each thought and emotion, like clouds and storm fronts, has its own timing for how long it will stay around before finally moving on.

This is a photo from a meditation retreat that I was on a few years ago in Colorado and it reminds me of the sense of internal space we have available to us in blue sky mind.

Keep the vision of the vast blue sky alive within you.