An invitation to consider the following. A powerful tension — almost like holding up two mirrors to the mind and asking which one you’re actually living in.
One mirror shows the mind as a bandit:
- grabbing at experiences,
- stuffing concepts into a mental rucksack,
- trying to “get” something from Dharma, from life, from others.
That image is sharp because it’s true: the grasping mind does behave like a thief in the night. It sneaks around, collecting identities, opinions, spiritual ideas, even “insights,” as if they were valuables. Tibetan teachers often call this “spiritual materialism” — turning the path itself into another possession.
The other mirror described is the opposite movement:
- thoughts allowed to arise and dissolve in clear awareness,
- the inner room cared for rather than ransacked,
- compassion emerging not as a performance but as a natural warmth.
That’s the Dharma when it’s lived rather than collected.
Here then, what we’re pointing to is a choice that happens moment by moment. Not a dramatic, once‑and‑for‑all decision, but a subtle shift in posture: “Are we tightening around experience, or relaxing into it? Are we hoarding concepts, or letting them illuminate and pass? Are we using Dharma to build a self, or letting Dharma dissolve the need for one?”
The poetic imagery captures something essential: the mind can be a burglar or a caretaker. The difference isn’t in the thoughts themselves but in the quality of awareness holding them.
❤️
An Echo of Contemplative Tension: A Poem
A bandit mind slips through the night,
Grasping thoughts to hold them tight;
It stuffs its bag with every claim,
Then guards the loot and calls it “name.”
But when the lantern of awareness glows,
The thief grows still, the grasping slows;
Concepts soften, drift, and part,
Like clouds released from a quiet heart.
In the inner room where thoughts arise,
A gentler keeper opens his eyes;
He tends the space with patient care,
Letting each moment breathe its air.
From that stillness kindness grows,
A warmth the wandering world soon knows;
Not stolen treasure, clutched and kept,
But open hands where compassion’s swept.
So each new breath becomes the choice:
The bandit’s clutch or wisdom’s voice;
To steal from life in fear and night,
Or walk awake in clear, kind light.
❤️
Are you lost in conceptual jungle or taking steady steps in awareness light (in harmony with the natural law of phenomena in your indoor room?)
IN-MINDFUL LIVING 