All of life’s ups and downs are opportunities to realize your true
nature.
You are already free. But knowing that is not enough. You have to
live it.
Ordinary people’s thinking is a form of self-grasping.
The problem is the tendency to take the concept of a thing to be the
thing itself.
The sense of not-knowing is most precious.
Your self-image, core values, and feelings come from many people,
things, and interconnecting experiences.
This self is the source of grief.
Why is it in this natural world, with its natural order of things,
you accumulate suffering? When you have
something, you’re satisfied. When you
lose it, you are sad. The gaining and
losing seem natural. Yet do you really gain anything?
This is like the play-doh person mistaking other play-doh things as
something else.
Success or failure, having or lacking, are relevant only in the game
of play-doh.
Deeply experiencing that you are impermanent, inseparable, and
connected to everything and everyone around you in this world of play-doh is
the wisdom of no losing and no gaining.
The small wave became the ocean – yet when there’s only the ocean,
there’s no longer the need for the idea of ocean.
All situations in life are opportunities that point to peace. Your practice is not to attain peace but to
recognize that all are already at peace.
The key to practice is to recognize the sheer, remarkable amazement
of all the manifold appearances, personalities, problems, and to be able to
flow with them freely, without attachment.
You may scorn the idea of mountain deities, but
there are all kinds of sentient beings in this world, and just because you
don’t see them does not mean they don’t exist.
Buddhadharma poses questions such as: Who are you? Are you your
thoughts, your emotions? Are you the body? What is awakening? What is your full
potential? At the threshold of your death, are you at peace? Have you lived a
blameless life without regret?
The
practice is to recognize that and not create problems where there are none.
Not being at peace comes from attachment to self. You want to defend, to protect, to justify
yourself. Is there a need?
Of all the ways you could respond to the world, why do you choose
frustration or anger? You choose this because you want to defend something that
is not there.
This true nature that flows freely is the reality that, in all
situations and at all time, your heart-mind is at peace. If for some reason you’ve strayed from this
truth, then ask yourself, “Why am I not at peace?”.
Sitting meditation is an appointment with yourself to be honest with
yourself…. How you respond to all the thoughts that come up in sitting
meditation actually mirrors how you usually deal with your problems in daily
life. Recognizing this pattern is
necessary because only when you take this first step in facing yourself on a
regular basis will you become more honest with that you have to work with.
You are a foreigner to yourself.
What is it to live unbound? It is not living without rules, like a
free spirit. Rather, it is to be free
from the shackles of vexations and deluded thinking – “things” that bind you
wherever you are, whatever you do.
You are clouded by everything that makes you not a Buddha.
Any situation is an opportunity to practice, even people who
pesecure you. The wonderful thing is to
live freely in all situations. People provide you with opportunities to
cultivate patience and compassion.
You need not worry about other people deceiving you; your own
thoughts do this just fine.
In
daily life it is important to examine yourself: when you meet difficult
situations, is your light shining outwardly or inwardly? Do you still have the
urgency to try to explain yourself, justify your view, and get the last word?
Do you see the mechanisms of your own vexations when they arise, or do you
justify them?
When you encounter a difficulty in your life, an
impasse, solve it. If you can solve it, it’s good. If you can’t solve it, it’s still good, as
it’s no longer your problem if you can’t solve it. It’s only a problem when you solve it.
Why
are you busying yourself living in somebody else’s projected dream of you?
All of your difficulties, anxieties, vexations, and challenges are
created by the mind. Yet you are wired
up in such a way that you completely give in to your own construct. In life you paint a tiger and become
frightened by it.
Your
responses reveal who you are, what you need to work on in practice.
When you don’t inject a self where there is none, every activity is
like lightning—natural and free – and everywhere a path opens as soon as you
take a step.
A path is only a path when you start walking.
Duality and opposition is how you live your life.
In
your own life, please do not seek out answers from your teacher. If you are uncertain about who you are or what
the mind is, ask only to find it within yourself. Question your own being.
Awakening is neither knowledge nor an experience.
The next time you have vexations, when someone presents you with a
challenge or scolds you or wrongly blames you, in the moment, how will you
react? … That’s practice.
When you say, “I’m this type of person, what prevents you from being
that type of person? Words and ideas shape identities, self-image, and thereby
limit your potential. Yet following
words and concepts, you make yourself into this or that. The more you grasp them, the more you become
bound by them.
Words are not the problem – they are just vibrations to your
ears. What makes them meaningful,
personal, is your attachments.
People
don’t need more doctrine or theories – they just need to remove all the props
in their lives and come alive to all this.
People project their ideas on you, and you do the same to them. You live in each other’s dream and don’t even
realize it.
In life, you often create your own defeat. If you have a fixed image of yourself, you
ruin everything; you defeat yourself. …
Inevitably, you insert self-referentiality into the panoply of life – ruining
everything.
Put down your own ideals and expectations; these are the props of
self-attachment.
The fact is, if you grab a cheap cup, you cry poverty. If you grab expensive things, you brag about
being wealthy. These constructs and
narratives are not you.
You discover who you are in the midst of interaction.
It is true that you are already awakened…. But just knowing this is
not enough. You have to realize it
personally.
All of life’s ups and downs are opportunities to realize your true
nature.
You are already free. But knowing that is not enough. You have to
live it.
They are a mirror reflecting your true nature. The greater the obstacle, the clearer the
reflection.
