(no subject)
Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not.
And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.
I am impermanence itself in a rapidly changing human form that appears solid. I fear to see what I am: an ever-changing energy field...
So good practice is about fear. Fear takes the form of constantly thinking, speculating, analyzing, fantasizing. With all that activity we create a cloud cover to keep ourselves safe in make-believe practice. True practice is not safe; it's anything but safe. But we don't like that, so we obsess with our feverish efforts to achieve our version of the personal dream. Such obsessive practice is itself just another cloud between ourselves and reality.
The only thing that matters is seeing with an impersonal searchlight: seeing things as they are. When the personal barrier drops away, why do we have to call it anything? We just live our lives. And when we die, we just die. No problem anywhere.
--Charlotte Joko Beck
"I am breathing in and liberating my mind. I am breathing out and liberating my mind." One practices like this.
-The Sutra on Full Awareness of Breathing, translated by Thich Nhat Hanh
"Here I'll stay for the rains.
Here, for the summer and winter."
So imagines the fool,
unaware of obstructions.
That drunk-on-his-sons-and-cattle man,
all tangled up in the mind:
death sweeps him away -
as a great flood,
a village asleep.
-Dhammapada, 286-287, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
"The Buddha dwells within our hearts. For example, flint has the potential to produce fire, and gems have intrinsic value. We ordinary people can see neither our own eyelashes, which are so close, nor the heavens in the distance. Likewise, we do not see that the Buddha exists in our own hearts."
~Nichiren Diashonin, Written to Lady Omosu on 5 January from Minobu
And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.
I am impermanence itself in a rapidly changing human form that appears solid. I fear to see what I am: an ever-changing energy field...
So good practice is about fear. Fear takes the form of constantly thinking, speculating, analyzing, fantasizing. With all that activity we create a cloud cover to keep ourselves safe in make-believe practice. True practice is not safe; it's anything but safe. But we don't like that, so we obsess with our feverish efforts to achieve our version of the personal dream. Such obsessive practice is itself just another cloud between ourselves and reality.
The only thing that matters is seeing with an impersonal searchlight: seeing things as they are. When the personal barrier drops away, why do we have to call it anything? We just live our lives. And when we die, we just die. No problem anywhere.
--Charlotte Joko Beck
"I am breathing in and liberating my mind. I am breathing out and liberating my mind." One practices like this.
-The Sutra on Full Awareness of Breathing, translated by Thich Nhat Hanh
"Here I'll stay for the rains.
Here, for the summer and winter."
So imagines the fool,
unaware of obstructions.
That drunk-on-his-sons-and-cattle man,
all tangled up in the mind:
death sweeps him away -
as a great flood,
a village asleep.
-Dhammapada, 286-287, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
"The Buddha dwells within our hearts. For example, flint has the potential to produce fire, and gems have intrinsic value. We ordinary people can see neither our own eyelashes, which are so close, nor the heavens in the distance. Likewise, we do not see that the Buddha exists in our own hearts."
~Nichiren Diashonin, Written to Lady Omosu on 5 January from Minobu