So whether my dog that is doing other than I would desire, or rabbits have just severely damaged half the trees in my young orange orchard, or drought is tightening its grip on the land... or any aspect of the farm is other than I would wish, I am practicing viewing it all with equanimity.
This presents some major practical challenges for me. It also presents a major philosophical challenge - how to make things different in future without wanting for things to be other than they are right now. I both want to be here, but also want the future to be different from now in particular ways.
I want... and in that wanting there is attachment, and in that attachment there is investment, and in that investment there develops the preconditions for loss, anger, frustration and depression - preconditions for suffering.
How can wanting and attachment be decoupled?
Aspiration is the term I use to express the possibility of 'wanting without attachment'. I aspire to changing the way I farm. That aspiration guides my behaviour now. I aspire to awakening. That aspiration guides my behaviour now. So there is a guide - expressed as an aspiration.
I accept what I am now, what the farm now is. I accept tomorrow's conditions are partly the result of today's behaviour - but not wholly. My aspiration may be realised tomorrow. It may not. Something completely unexpected may happen. This is not under my control. The result is empty, whatever it may be.
Aspiration can inform my actions now. but if it creates expectations that provide a yard-stick against which I measure myself tomorrow, then it will perpetuate suffering.
My current practice is to meditate on dissolving the expectations that build around any actions undertaken in pursuit of aspiration. If aspiration can be decoupled from such expectations, I suspect there is an opportunity for equanimity.
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