Cook: Resting in that Gentle Heart

For Morris Weinberg and Johann.

Twist the hatch off the top of my head and peer down inside, and you’ll find thoughts running like wild rabbits in a field.

Anger. Sadness. Worry-anxiety-fear. Memories scamper by. Something funny may follow.

Far as I can tell, there’s no rhyme nor reason to any of it. It’s called the monkey mind — my thoughts chit-chattering from limb to limb, nearly uncontrollable and wild. Trying to grab them is like grabbing the wind.

This is my confession: Sometimes, oftentimes, my mind causes me great trouble.

Suffering, you might say.

So I fidget and fret, switch the channel and pour another drink. My mind blames the outer world — whatever’s in front of me at that moment — as the cause of my woes, so then on autopilot, I try to fix it. Change it. Grass-is-greener it.

It’s a never-ending, fill-in-the-blank wish-list.

If only _ could happen.

If only _ would stop.

“There is the idea that if we just get the sensation right, the health, the relationship, the bank balance, then we’ve arrived. We’ve reached happiness,” said a man called Kittisaro.

“But we never get there.”

He should know. In 1952, Kittisaro was born Randy Weinberg, son of TVA employee Morris Weinberg and the late Janie May. He was an immaculate student-athlete at Baylor School, winning all-everything wrestling titles before enrolling in Princeton, and then earning the prestigious Rhodes scholarship.

He was on his way up.

But Randy wasn’t happy.

“Nothing was ever enough,” he said. “My mind was criticizing me all the time.”

So Randy Weinberg went down.

Traveling to Thailand, he began to sit at the feet of Buddhist monk Ajahn Chah. A series of spiritual adventures followed: typhoid fever, a year of silence living in a forest hut (“It was one of the happiest years of my life,” he said) and a horrendous run-in with the worst centipede in the land. (The centipede won.)

Soon, Randy Weinberg became Kittisaro, a Buddhist monk.

He began to pay attention to his mind and how it works. Doing so gave him the freedom to choose his response to the world before him, instead of knee-jerk reacting.

“It sounds like not much, but the difference between noticing something that is and blindly reacting to it is a big difference,” Kittisaro said.

Over the years, Kittisaro became one of Buddhism’s finest teachers. In the 1990s, he fell in love with a female monk from London named Thanissara. After much thought, they left the monastery and their vows of celibacy, and married.

Now they lead and teach on multiple continents, especially at their retreat center in South Africa. Earlier this month, they published “Listening to the Heart: A Contemplative Journey to Engaged Buddhism.”

It is one of the most meaningful books I’ve read all year.

See for yourself.

• “We want happiness and stability from that which is unreliable. We want fulfillment from something that is unable to fulfill us. If we aren’t wise about this, we will experience a lot of stress, frustration and disappointment.”

• “Our daily inner litany goes along these lines, I want, I don’t want, I’ve got to have, I’ve got to get rid of, I like, I don’t like, too little, too big, too hot, too cold, I want to be with others, I want to be alone, it’s not fair and what’s more this isn’t how any of it should be. And so it goes on, day after day.”

• “We’re learning to be more fully here, now. Though it sounds simple, this is not so easy to do. Lost in the dream of getting to the place we think we need to be, we generate all sorts of problems for ourselves and others.”

• “To realize unshakable peace is the ultimate purpose of insight meditation.”

• “We are doing the suffering; no one is doing it to us.”

Not long ago, I visited with Kittisaro at his father’s home. He served bowls of raisins, peanuts and pistachios. Outside, the fall wind blew the yellow leaves from the trees.

A bird sat on the windowsill.

Then, it was gone.

“The nature of our experience is ever-changing,” Kittisaro said.

He smiled.

“Bow to the moment, for a moment,” he said.

Then Kittisaro inhaled.

“Take refuge in the truth of the moment,” he said.

He exhaled.

“This is how it is, right now.”

Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter at DavidCookTFP.