#truchas

Truchas Cemetery, Truchas, Río Arriba Co, NM. Photo: James C Wilson (May 2023)   ::  [Robert Scott Horton]

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THE THIRD NOBLE TRUTH

The third noble truth says that the cessation of suffering is letting go of holding on to ourselves. By “cessation” we mean the cessation of hell as opposed to just weather, the cessation of this resistance, this resentment, this feeling of being completely trapped and caught, trying to maintain huge ME at any cost. The teachings about recognizing egolessness sound quite abstract, but the path quality of that, the magic instruction that we have all received, the golden key is that part of the meditation technique where you recognize what’s happening with you and you say to yourself, “Thinking.” 

Then you let go of all the talking and the fabrication and discussion, and you’re left just sitting with the weather—the quality and the energy of the weather itself. Maybe you still have that quaky feeling or that churning feeling or that exploding feeling or that calm feeling or that dull feeling, as if you’d just been buried in the earth. You’re left with that. That’s the key: come to know that.

~ Pema Chodron

Truchas, New Mexico

Photographer: T. Harmon Parkhurst

Date: 1925 - 1945?