Trust your self.

Trust your self. Your hidden self, the self that knows how you can show up in the world. 

How we show up in the world is not one self, for each of us plays many roles in this single lifetime. How you show up for your child is different than how you show up for your partner or friend. How you show up at work changes depending on if you are interacting with your coworker, your client, or your boss. 

We would like to think that we can be the same person for all of these roles, that we can bring our authentic self to each of these interactions. But we can't. Each person is asking and expecting something different from us. 

So which of these is your true, authentic self? Which is these is the self that we should trust?

The simple answer is none of these, and all of these.

Chogyam Trungpa says: 

The bad news is you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. 
The good news is, there's no ground.

We are constantly searching for an identity to hold onto to prevent that feeling of falling (and failing). We are searching for a form that suits us and the image in our heads of who we can be. There is comfort and reassurance in knowing we have a ground to stand on and a position to stand by. 

But there is no ground. Those titles that we have and those roles that we play are not truly who we are or what we do, because we are not one-thing. 

And yet, in the process of discovering who we are, we generously meet people where they are at, helping them in some way. In Seth Godin's new book The Practice, he says:

Generosity is the most direct way to find the practice.

That's the good news. In the process (practice) of discovering who we are and our place in the world, we can get comfortable with the fact that there is no ground, and no fatal crash at the end that is going to be the end of us. When you no longer need to worry about hitting the ground, falling starts to look like flying, and you can direct your attention to starting to learn how to navigate that new space. 

Learning how to navigate life with openness, responsiveness and availability is itself a worthwhile practice, regardless of the results of your endeavor. As Seth says: 

Do you trust yourself enough to commit to engaging with a [practice] regardless of the chances of success?

Two perspectives on mind.

I've been playing with two perspectives on mind that are interesting to think about and examine. One is an inside-out perspective (which you will probably recognize to some extent) and the other is outside-in.

Both of these are modeled after the Buddha's understanding of the development of mind. Some of these concepts might be new, but they are all easily recognized once you get used to the layout.

First, let's consider the inside-out perspective.

We start with the (1) nature of mind, non-dual awareness and emptiness, luminous emptiness, the very ground of all. Not recognizing the empty aspect of the nature of mind, we mistake the apparent aspect as the ground of being (alaya), thus establishing the (2) alaya consciousness, or the foundational consciousness in which we conceive of a subjective self. This foundational consciousness becomes the stream of our mental continuum, in which the seeds of all our actions are planted. The alaya consciousness is accompanied by the five universal mental factors that operate in every mind (contact, sensation, perception, intention, attention).

From this alaya consciousness, we start to complete the development of the (3) eight consciousnesses. From the alaya consciousness develops the narrative or afflicted consciousness, which orients everything around 'me' and 'mine', consciousness becoming the narrator of its own experience. From this narrative consciousness comes the development of the mental thinking consciousness and the five sense consciousnesses (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch). This marks the complete development of the mind, with its division into the eight consciousnesses (alaya, narrative, mental, and five sense).

From the development of consciousness, we have the development of the (4) five skandhas or aggregates of the self. The aggregate of consciousness gives rise to the aggregate of feeling, interpreting the contact between consciousness and its object as either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. From the feeling skandha we have the aggregate of perception, discerning the qualities of the object. From perception we have the aggregate of mental formations, involving our particular concepts, beliefs, or philosophical views about the object. Finally, we have the aggregate of form, what we see, hear and experience appearing to us through the filter of our own consciousness and all of the layers that we have added on through our processing of that experience.

It is important to understand that the five skandhas or aggregates of the self are the way that we experience the world. Our everyday experience of interacting with the world is through consciousness, feeling, perception, mental formations and forms. This is the reality that we take to exist day in and day out.

This inside-out model of the mind leaves us feeling rather stuck. Our ordinary perceptions and experiences seem very concrete and real. The subtle layers of the mind seem very remote and distant compared to the ever present challenges we face day to day. We are in a sense 'caught' at the outer layers of the mind and our experience of the world.

Let's compare this to the outside-in perspective.

The process of development is the same in this perspective, but we are orienting ourselves differently. Here everything is contained within the (1) non-dual nature of mind, luminous emptiness that is the ground of all that appears and exists. Not recognizing the empty aspect of the nature of mind, we mistake the apparent aspect of the nature of mind as the ground of being (alaya), thus establishing the (2) alaya consciousness. From the alaya consciousness develops the narrative or afflicted consciousness, along with the rest of the (3) eight consciousnesses. All of this are included within the nature of mind and are inseparable from it.

From the development of consciousness, we have the development of the (4) five skandhas or aggregates of the self. These five aggregates are all contained within the aggregate of consciousness, such that there is nothing that we experience that is outside of mind. The outer world that we are experiencing is not separate from us, but we are entangled in a web of dependent origination in which interconnected phenomena are mistakenly taken to exist separately and individually. This is not to say that there is no outer reality at all, but that reality does not exist as we think or believe it to exist.

This perspective actually makes a lot of sense. We know that some people in our life have very different perspectives on what they think is real. Which of those perspective is more correct? Is it yours? Are you sure? I think we could all agree that a child's perspective about what is real in the world is probably a little bit mistaken. But are we so much more wise than a child?

The outside-in perspective opens up doorways to fundamentally challenge and change your perspective about who you are and the world in which you live. You are what you think, as is the world. Your view, or vision, shapes your experience of reality. When you start to appreciate that all of this is the expression of the true nature of mind and the very nature of reality, you can also appreciate the potential and capacity this perspective presents.

Contemplate. Meditate. See what you discover.

The opposite of egotism.

When we move away from rigid notions of who we are and our preoccupation with the self, we start to appreciate our interconnectedness and our lack of a truly existing, independent self. Realizing selflessness eliminates our sense of separateness and loneliness and replaces it with a sense of awe and connection.

Living out the wisdom of selflessness is what we call living a spiritual life. The opposite is to live a focused on me and mine.

There is nothing magical about living a spiritual life. Nothing to believe or imagine. Living a spiritual life means to be more humble and down to earth, more human.

A life of egotism revolves around a fabrication and a fantasy of the self. A life of selflessness requires that we are authentic and true.

.   .   .   .   .  

Still time to register for the upcoming meditation workshop on Exploring the Mind. See you this Sunday at 10am in Capital Hill!

Forging the path ahead.

The path starts right where you are.

You can follow the footsteps of those who have gone before you, but your path is not going to look exactly like theirs. You'll meet your own problems and challenges. You'll enjoy ease and contentment, as well as difficult times.

The journey of self-discovery and awakening is forged based on your own experience.

You'll share that journey with others. You'll travel with others who have a shared kindred purpose. You meet a variety of travelers on the path- teachers, spiritual friends, partners, mentors, students. Some of these travelers will walk with you for a lifetime, some for just a short way.

There is no end to the journey ahead. No accomplishment, and no non-accomplishment. The result is the path. Continue with confidence in liberation.

Clarify your path. Let your path clarify you.

Trying to find your self?

Have you ever lost your car keys? You know they are somewhere, but everywhere you look you don't find them. The act of not finding your keys perpetuates the cycle of looking, until eventually, hopefully, you find your keys.

What about when we look for a self?

When you look for the self as an independent, truly existing identity, you don't find it. The self is dependent and conditioned by the world around us. Keep looking.

When you look for the self as an agent or actor, you don't find it. Every intention and choice is predicated on something else, there is no agent who functions autonomously independent of the environment or situations. Keep looking.

When you look for the self as the experiencer or witness behind the continuum of your life, you don't find it. The subjective experiencer must experience some thing, so by its very nature experience is compounded and dependent. Keep looking.

When you look for the self as the awareness that knows oneself, you don't find it. Awareness isn't a thing, there is no location, no essential beingness, nothing to hold onto. Self-knowing awareness doesn't find a self, what it finds is selflessness. There is no ground of awareness, awareness is empty yet luminous cognizance.

Search for the self until you don't find it. When you don't find the self, you discover selflessness.  Stabilize that experience of finding empty but luminous cognizance, which opens the door to the path of meditation.

.   .   .   .   .

Still time to register for the Meditation Workshop this weekend.

Hope to see you on the cushion!

"You can be anything you want to be."

I call bullshit.

This idea that you can be anything or do anything descends from our social theory of individualism and the American Dream. Basically, if you work hard enough or want it bad enough, you can have or be anything. Many parts of this social theory hold to be true in our experience. If you work hard, you can accomplish many of your hopes and dreams. And of course, life may get in the way and you may not.

The fundamental belief of this theory is that where you are is not where you ought to be, or where you want to be or need to be. At this moment in time, you recognize the value and worth of your future self and your future contributions, without seeing the value and worth of your present self and contributions. This idea is further conflated with ideas of gaining wealth, power and prestige. When we can "become the person we want to be," we will have the most to give and live our most meaningful life.

Of course, this day rarely comes.

Our idea of who we are going to be is just a projection. Undoubtedly, it creates a picture of where we want to go, and this picture shapes our actions and choices. We move closer to the projection, but the projection itself always shifts and changes. The result is that we are exhausted and after all this work, we feel unfulfilled.

The alternative is to wake up in the world in which you are currently living. You choose to embody the person that you are, in the world as it is. When we can embody this genuine presence, we discover that right now we have the resourcefulness and initiative necessary to meaningfully contribute to the world around us. We begin to engage and participate with the problems and tension of our present day.

Through our presence and contribution, we discover that we continually shape and create the world, that the world around us is not "some thing" that we simply experience as a bystander, but that it is continually unfolding and undergoing creation and destruction.

Our world doesn't need more people who are going to be the best versions of themselves in ten or twenty years. We need you now. We need you to be the beacon of light in the space in which you are living.

The work that we need is not the outer work of doing, but the inner work of being.

An important life lesson.

The question of where to start is ever more challenging today. We live in a world where climate change is out of control, where we face tremendous ideological divides, and our society is plagued by anxiety, despair and addiction. None of the problems that we face are easy. None of them have a clear starting point.

There is an important lesson that we are trying to learn in life. It is a hard fought lesson and one that we should teach our children as they move out into the world:

The world is more free when we are free in it. 

As we transform ourselves, we transform the world. As we learn to resolve our own limiting fear, uncertainty and doubt, we learn to participate and contribute to the well being of the community around us. As we learn to work with our own tight knots of attachment, aversion and ignorance, we also learn how to be more present, understanding and kind in the world. 

The individual and collective are inseparable. We are the culture. Know that each of us has this capacity to wake up to a deeper sense of self and that doing so benefits not only ourselves, but the whole world. Knowing this shifts our posture. It changes who we are and how we move through the world. It shapes our values and our choices. 

In times like these when all seems lost, perhaps the greatest gift we can share with the world is to be more true to who we are and our unique way of seeing the world. There is so much to be done to solve the problems of our times. The solution that we need isn't going to come from rushing headlong into the wasteland and hoping for the best. The solution starts by being committed to the inner work of freeing our own heart and mind. 

Freeing ourselves from our own inner constraints, we are more freely available to share the naturally present abundance that is the ground of our being.

You are the work.

Farmers direct the stream;

archers straighten the arrow's shaft;

carpenters shape the wood; 

the spiritual work on themselves.

Buddha

from the Dhammapada 10:17

The farmer knows his fields, the condition of his crops and how the seasons affect his harvest. He knows when water is plentiful and when it needs to be used judiciously. The farmer understands his medium. 

The archer knows her bow and arrow. She knows when the arrow is true and when it is must be straightened. Her craft is mastered by knowing the subtle nuances and conditions of her medium so that she can reliably hit her mark. 

The carpenter knows wood. He knows how it will split, which wood is soft and which is hard. He knows how the grain will appear and how to use the inherent qualities of the wood to produce a work of art. 

To practice the dharma we need to understand our medium. We are the medium, our own body, speech and mind. We are the wood to be shaped and the arrow to be straightened. We must understand the human condition in order for our practice to take root. Mastering our practice means understanding the human condition, and that starts by understanding dukkha.

Primary occupation.

We live in a culture of accomplishment and becoming. We strive for success and recognition. We are told that your title is important and that moving up is a good thing. Each day we try to move more and more to done.

As Dharma practitioners, our primary work is the inner work of coming undone.

We work to loosen the tight knot of rigid beliefs and limiting concepts.
We work to let go of grasping onto our notion of self and our experience.
We work to undo the conditioning of biased perceptions and mistaken notions.
We work to untie the restricting fetters of negative emotions and mental states.
We work to undo the effects of ignorance and dualistic perception.
We work to let go of anger and attachment.
We work to escape from the confines of anxiety and feelings of helplessness.

We peel back layer after layer of our conception of self.
Layer after layer, we come undone.

The result of this work is that we become more open and honest about ourselves and who we are. Being more open and honest with ourselves, we can be more understanding and receptive to others.

Inner work, outer benefit. By doing the work, you benefit yourself. By doing the work, you empower yourself to benefit others. Bringing benefit to others, as a matter of fact, is part of your job description.

Self-loathing.

We all have negative self talk. We all beat up on ourselves more than we should. We are our greatest critic, and we don't mince words with ourselves.

This is a really deep seated aversion and guilt about who we are and who we should be. The root of the problem lies in our conception of who we are, but it is not enough to simply see that ego is the problem. If anything, seeing that ego is the problem can further inflame our self hatred, because we should know better and even do know better.

But what can we do about it?

Recognize for a moment that there is a part of you that knows what you did, what you said, or how you screwed up isn't you. That moment in time isn't you. It was just a sentence, or conversation, or an action.

Let's call that moment of confusion, ignorance or stupidity your smaller self. Then, the knowing aspect that recognizes the actions of the smaller self, but also recognizes that is not who you are, let's call that your wisdom self. 

Your smaller self screwed up. You acted inappropriately, or lost your cool, or said something stupid. It happens.

Your wisdom self sees how you embody many different facets and roles in this life. Your wisdom self sees the bigger picture, knows that you care, that you try to do the right thing and strive to meaningfully contribute. Most importantly, your wisdom self knows that your past affects who you are today, but it doesn't define who you are. You get to decide that. Let your wisdom self decide that.

When your stuck in your head, beating yourself up about what you said or did, take a moment to notice that smaller self and then step back and notice the wisdom self. Smile and even laugh at the actions of the smaller self. Don't take yourself to seriously. With love and kindness, look at that smaller self and reflect on how far you have come, and how much further you have yet to go.

Then, taking a moment to acknowledge the pain and frustration of the smaller self, thank them for the lesson. Finally, set your intention with wisdom, and get back to work.

Crossing the chasm.

Vipasyana is the practice of looking at the mind and the nature of the self. Once we have cultivated a mind that is calm and clear, we use it to look at the nature of mind and the nature of reality. Since birth we have taken this self to be truly existing. Our bodies change over time, our ideas and beliefs might fluctuate and change, but there is a conscious aspect of the mind that seems to continue throughout our whole life, that seems to be permanent and true.

This minds existence is never really challenged, we simply know it experientially to be true.

There is a great chasm that we need to cross in our practice of vipasyana. We need to cross over the threshold of believing and apprehending of the self as being permanent, real, unchanging and true. On the other side of that chasm is the conception of a self that is impermanent, interconnected, constantly changing and flexible. Those two seem irreconcilable.

Our conception of the self as being real and unchanging leads to us feeling stuck and powerless in situations. We often find ourselves searching for external relief and trying to manipulate external conditions. We languish in our efforts to prop up the self by controlling outer circumstances. Reifying the self, we simultaneously invest great importance in our material conditions and our experience of the world around us. We believe deep down that if we can just get everything right, that our sense of self and our place in the world will all be secured.

When a gap opens up in our meditation, look at that gap. 

Look at our habitual perception and our ingrained conception of the self. Is it true? Who are we? What is the nature of this self that we hold so dear?

If we look at the self through the lens of the first turning of the wheel of Dharma, we can start to appreciate how the self truly abides. We can start to see that the self is composed of many facets- our body, emotions, perceptions, thoughts and beliefs, and of course our consciousness- all those are connected. We can start to appreciate how our consciousness itself is composed of many facets. We have emotions and experience them in our mind, but we are not our emotions. We have thoughts and ideas, but we are not our thoughts and ideas. We experience various sense appearances like sights, sounds and smells, but none of those are who we are.

Simply looking at the mind through this lens of the Dharma, we start to see our false notions and beliefs in who we think we are. We start to see our limiting conceptions and how our emotional imbalance limits our capacity to act as we intend. Simply looking at the present condition of our mind and self, we can see all of the factors that brought us to the here and now.

Simply see. Witness this appearance of the self free from judgement or bias. This is the essence of self-awareness.

Having this insight into the self, we start to see more truly. We still conceive of a self, but that is interconnected with a larger whole. The outer world still exists, but we can see that it is constantly changing and dynamic. We can appreciate this newfound perspective of mindful awareness, but it also carries with it a deep and profound sense of responsibility. We see how much we contribute to our own suffering and the suffering of others. We see how we perpetuate negative mental states and unwanted emotions. We also see the potential for freedom and a path forward.

We see all of that. We see ourselves standing on both sides of the chasm, not quite embodying either.

We don't just cross the chasm in a single leap. We cross it, and then we fall back into habitual patterns of conception. We leap over it, only to realize we landed back where we started. We stand on the other side, enjoy the view, only to be pulled back once again.

The path of seeing is the start of a long path ahead. It doesn't happen all at once, and yet it does time and time again.

Crossing the chasm might just require that you turn awareness back on itself.

Questions to my self.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, 

 that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, 

that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Such a simple statement, it seems as though we couldn't go astray with those words as our compass. And yet we have. We do. We have since that statement was committed to paper.

When we contemplate these rights, we might start to think about deeper questions like who are we? what do we stand for? what makes our life meaningful?

So much of the rhetoric that we see and hear is the shouting of the false self. It is the cries of the self-righteous, the small disconnected self that occupies a small world, the self that divides and exploits. The mind is a powerful thing, it has the potential to create change. Ignorance has an effect, and it is not pretty.

It is important to examine the self. The Buddha taught the examination of self as the foundation for understanding not only ourselves, but also the world around us.

The Buddha taught that the self was an aggregate. It was a heap of consciousness, a body, perceptions, feelings and mental formations. Each of those aggregates was furthermore composed of smaller aggregates. There is no autonomous self, it is connected, a network of parts and pieces that makes what we perceive as a whole.

The self arises from causes and conditions. It is not a single entity, self-manifest and self-created. We are created from our parents, communities, social and spiritual backgrounds. There is no independent self, we are connected, a network of causes and conditions that enable us to occupy a moment in space and time.

The false self feels isolated, lonely, rejected and powerless. The true self is connected, dependent, bigger than you, malleable, changing, dynamic. The false self builds walls, the true self embraces its diversity.

It is important to examine the self, who are we? Who are the we that hold these truths to be self-evident?

Of course the true self is also no self. Everything is connected as it were. When we realize this simple truth, that we are all connected, then there is a potential that we can respect and fulfill those inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Idolatry.

The Dharma was taught to make our minds more flexible, to liberate ourselves from selfishness and bad habits, and to allow us to be of service to others.

Our practice of the Dharma must be free from concerns of gain, praise, status or position. Correctly practicing the Dharma means that you do what you say, that you strive to live according to the teachings. Your actions, practice and lifestyle are emphasized, not your words, ideas or opinions.

When we start searching out positions, contriving situations for recognition, or using the Dharma to serve ourselves, our practice has missed its mark and becomes a source of bondage.

If we wrap the Dharma around our self, our mistaken practice becomes the source of idolatry. 

A better version of yourself.

You are an individual.  You are a father, a mother, a son or daughter.  You are a partner, a friend, a student and a teacher.  You have a profession, hobbies, passions and curiosities.  You might be young or old, beautiful or well worn, trendy or old-fashioned. 

You are all of those things, and none of those things are you.

You've ridden on the highest of highs, sailed through the lowest of lows.  You have hopes and fears, ideas and aspirations.  You have stories you tell yourself when you are in a slump, and stories you tell yourself when you are basking in the limelight.

You are all of those things, and none of those things are you.

You are a mosaic.

You are millions of pieces of broken bits, shards of glass and shattered pieces gathered over lifetimes of moments, actions and interactions.    

You are an aggregate of stones, some white, some black, amassed over mountaintops and rolling hills, through dense forests and sandy beaches, across good times and bad in cities and villages that have come and gone.  Tiny pieces brought together from your youth, through aging and sickness, pain and suffering, opportunity and loss. 

People will want to take pieces of you, pieces to call their own.  Let them.  Those shards are not your own and scars and imperfections enhance your beauty. 

You will be judged and you will judge yourself.  Judged for your form, for how you come together, criticized for your proportions and the depth of your character.  It's okay to listen to judgement, for it voices what is real to what is the ideal.  Not necessarily your ideal, but an ideal not yet embodied and probably not found. 

You are dynamic, constantly changing.  A continuous process of transformation, gain and loss, old and new, death and birth.

You will likely spend years, maybe even a lifetime, trying to piece together the broken shards into a picture that makes sense.  You'll try as you might to figure it out, to make it more beautiful or more meaningful, all in the search of a better self. 

It is my hope, indeed my greatest aspiration,
that someday before you are lying on your deathbed,
that you will not suffer from grief or regret. 
That you will simply rest.
The continuum of time and space embodied in the present
as a collection of millions of broken bits,
bits that don't make sense and some that do,
all of them coming together in a beautiful moment,
a moment of joy, rapture, tenderness and forgiveness.
A moment of gratitude and appreciation, wonder and awe. 
Where you discover a better version of your self.

Confusion and dishonesty.

Bad habits.  Poor choices.  Careless deeds. 

Confusion permeates so much of what we think, say and do.  We often find ourselves acting out of impulse, our behavior not driven by intention as much as it is driven by what we did yesterday and the day before. 

Amidst all of this confusion we find moments when discerning wisdom dawns.  We have moments when we can see clearly.  There are times we find ourselves in a gap between the clouds.  We are able to see our shortcomings, see where we have strayed, see what we could have done better. 

There are moments when the truth reveals itself.

In that moment, we have an opportunity to be honest with ourselves.  We have a moment of clarity to reflect, to examine and to change.  Our own discerning wisdom creates a gap in which we can leave behind confused habit patterns and neurotic behavior.

But often in that moment we lie to ourselves.

We shift the blame.  We minimize the damage to our self-image.  We protect ourselves from failure, from being wrong.  We do our best to avoid the irritation of whatever our wisdom is revealing to us.

We preserve our dignity out of dishonesty.  And the wheel of confusion turns...

What is truly beneficial.

The Buddha's teachings are not self-help,
they are self-liberation.
They are not meant to save your self,
nor to improve your self.
They are meant to liberate your self.
That is truly helpful.
Truly protecting.
Truly beneficial. 

Blank Slate

Clear you space, your table or desk.
Sit down with a blank piece of paper in front of you and a pen.
Don't do anything else, just sit with that piece of paper.
Sit in the moment with presence, with openness.

After awhile you'll find that the paper starts to fill itself up.
To-dos, ideas, poems, notations, sketches, reminders.

The to-dos come with schedules and deadlines, the poems are tweaked, the notations are expanded upon and clarified, the sketches are refined, the reminders have names and times and the ideas snowball into projects.  All of that comes with their attendants of work and effort, a calendar of events and short and long-term goals.

The list goes on. Your page is full.

So much of the Buddha's teachings focus on the way we exist, on what is the true 'self'.  The Buddha taught that we do not have a truly existing, independent self.  Much can be said about this, but it really comes down to the fact that we do not exist the way we think we do.

We associate ourselves with what we do, how we appear, with our thoughts and ideas.
We associate ourselves with our culture, our credentials, what we like and dislike, with our name.

But that is not our true nature.  That is all writing on the paper.

It is not that we don't exist at all, that we are nothing and nothing matters- that's nihilism.

Our true nature is like the blank piece of paper.  The blank paper is pure potential.  Not being any thing at all, it can appear in any way whatsoever.  It is all-accommodating, completely open and unobstructed, and its nature is to arise in various forms.  Actually, the arising is unceasing, but therein lies the problem.

In the manner of arising we cling to the forms that it takes.  We associate with the content.  We fixate on the to-dos, the ideas and sketches; on what we do, what we think and how we feel.  Then we need to maintain and elaborate those until we are all filled up and there is no more room to doodle.

And it sucks.  We are too busy, overworked, have few moments of opportunity and too many responsibilities and demands to take the time to rest.  Unless resting is passing out in mindlessness.

That is why you meditate.  That is why you need a daily practice.

Meditation is a space to sit and abide in our potentiality, our true nature.  We can wipe the slate clean, rest in its nakedness.  Rest in openness.

And yet there is still arising.

Stuff continues to come up, to appear on our page.  But we don't need to fixate on that, it simply arises, does its thing, and exhausts itself back into our pure potential.  Our whole life is like that, it arises in various forms, does its thing and then exhausts itself and takes a new form.  The problem is that we are usually so bound up to the forms that we hate to see them go, and when they do exhaust themselves and depart we often don't recognize or abide in our pure potential but rather end up just feeling exhausted ourselves.  That is why we need to recognize our true nature.    

Not being anything at all, appearing as anything whatsoever.

ps. the Buddha described this pure potential as our buddhanature.  We all have it, it is fully manifest, right there.  We just need to recognize and abide in it to let it blossom.  Cheers!