Disturbances

2025, July, Issue 160

Fixations,

distracting us from this clear light,

this amazing brilliance,

this Enlightenment Mind,

this gem beyond subject and object,

our most precious jewel,

our gift from Source,

this aspiration to awaken

that will liberate us at last;

Through infinitely expanding

beginningless beginnings,

origins without a true beginning,

we have wandered, to our dismay,

we have found no way to liberate ourselves

from this insanity,

despite our best intentions,

despite trying everything in this world,

despite our great yearning to be done

with this insanity without end;

We find, just when we begin to see

with clarity,

BAM! Just like that,

Disturbances come our way to keep us distracted;

So, if you know these obstacles

are coming your way, seemingly

keeping you in darkness,

Why fret about it?

Remain at ease, weary traveler,

Remain undistracted,

Remain with your aspiration

to awaken, just like an old friend

who will never fail you

when they are needed;

Nurture your own

Enlightenment

In all that you do!

A poem by Robert Aho © 2025

Sometimes people get angry when they are disturbed while meditating. This is a common problem that people mention among others who meditate. It can be frustrating at times. It is, perhaps, a very common reason that people move to remote places when they are very serious about awakening and nurturing all the benefits that can be derived from that.

I’m actually one of those people who did this. I started having some difficulty living in the city because of the constant distractions. Even if it was relatively quiet, the activity of many people nearby started to become too much for me. So, I moved out into the sticks. This helped for a little while, up until I no longer needed such quiet with my Spiritual Practice. It can be a good thing at times; but, one should definitely not rely on seclusion for too long. It’s useful for maybe three years at most.

When one aspires to awaken, we need to anticipate distractions. This is life. This is the planet Earth. When you are here, you are under a barrage of distractions. You need to know what to do with those distractions. I have told many people that I spent many years riding the city bus, meditating for a half hour in both the morning and afternoon during my commute, being jostled around by people, potholes and crazy bus drivers. It was glorious, my meditation became very efficient and unaffected by the world around me.

During these years, I would seek out busy places, sitting in meditation on street corners or during public events. People would come up to me, wondering just what I was doing, or thinking that I was a friend they hadn’t seen in a long time. I can’t really explain why I had this sort of attraction to people in these places, other than I obviously didn’t fit expectations. Everybody else was very busy, sometimes quite agitated; and, here I was as an island of calm, just remaining at ease in those chaotic circumstances. This is very good Spiritual Practice.

When we aspire to awaken, we need to be ready to adapt to everything and anything that comes our way. No matter what happens, we train our mind to remain at ease. If we can do this, then we can develop greater insight into mind, we can find ways to awaken. We need to find a way to bring mind into our Real Nature, which is empty cognizant bright clarity, awareness beyond description, beyond what we can conceptualize. The reason we need to remain at ease is because it is too much for us to fathom as mere humans. We need to go beyond our physical constraints, our limitations of mind. We need to go beyond in such a way that we are no longer distracted.

When our lives end, when we enter the death bardo, it is best to be prepared for this. Although aspiring to awaken is the main point of Spiritual Practice, preparing for death is extremely important as well. If we enter the death bardo without preparation and are easily distracted, we will have little chance of having a fortunate rebirth. The death bardo will be entirely too disturbing to us, mainly as the turbulence of the energetic dimension starts to become revealed, and we might not even notice that amazing brilliant bright light that I talk about so often. Our liberation depends upon us being able to realize our Real Nature, that bright condition, and remain within that awareness that has no bounds.

So, if you aspire to awaken, you are actually preparing for death, not just this idea of removing your constraints of cyclic existence. Our eternal suffering, which we may or may not truly understand at first, is dependent upon our eternal distraction, our eternal fixations, our eternal actions that keep us bound, our eternal grasping at meaning itself. When we really look at all appearances of mind, everything we encounter in life, everything we imagine, it becomes rather absurd very quickly. Life has no meaning other than those ideas we fabricate. We create the world in each and every moment.

When all is lost, within empty cognizance, we can still maintain our aspiration. Aspire to awaken!

Blessings in Light,

Robert Aho