Seeing impermanence
is not to face a kind of nihilism that leads to despair; it is to become
yourself, as you really are, with joyful open eyes.
Saying that nothing
is closed in the universe leads you to touch the core of your life, which is
always present before you try to bring any concept or idea into it.
Spiritual life
originates from direct observation of impermanence.
In the domain of
time in its naked nature, you cannot insert your own ideas or expectations into
a moment, because by the time your mind works, the moment has already gone.
If you want to say
something about what a moment is, say that moment is arising. In Japanese the word for arising is ki. Ki is a kind of energy, always coming up.
Conditioned
origination is a complicated Buddhist idea that is difficult to
understand. But simply speaking, moment
after moment conditions produce "the time has come", and beings
appear. What are conditions? Conditions
consist of many physical and mental elements that become the five aggregates of
worldly existence called Skandhas: form, or matter; sensation, or feeling;
perception, mental impulses; and consciousness, or mind.
How do you handle
yourself in a moment that is beyond your control? When a moment appears, there
is only one thing that controls you: the capability that comes from your
spiritual practice, your ability to face impermanence and deal calmly with the
conditions of every moment.
If you want to live
with spiritual security in the midst of constant change, you have to burn the
flame of your life force in everything you do.
If you try to
examine your life analytically, asking yourself who you are, finally you will
realize that there is something you cannot reach. You don't know what it is,
but you feel the presence of something you want to connect with. This is sometimes called the absolute. Buddha and Dogen Zenji say true self. Christians say God.
Time is identical
with action, motion, or energy. There is
nothing to hold onto, because everything in the universe exists as arising
only.
Buddhism tells us
that if we misunderstand time, life doesn't work: we don't feel happy, we don't
feel comfortable.
In daily life you
experience time because something is always changing.
Emptiness is not
negative; emptiness is letting go of fixed ideas in order to go beyond them.
Freedom from
suffering is not found by looking at our lives from an egoistic point of view;
it is found by seeing our lives from the point of view of moment.
In the realm of pain
and suffering, we have to find the realm of peace and harmony right in the
midst of human pain. That is the purpose
of spiritual life.
Silence is a great
space where you can accept everything.
Prayer is
egolessness supported by deep love for all beings.
The real present is
the full aliveness that exists at the pivot of nothingness before your
conceptual thinking creates an imaginary world through human
consciousness. So, to understand the
present as a pivot of nothingness, your concept of the present must be
negated. It must become no-present; then
you can see the real present.
Life at the pivot of
nothingness is nothing but motion and process.
In daily life we
manifest the past as memory, heredity, or tradition, and the future as plan,
prediction, hope, or perhaps ambition.
Being-time means the
complete oneness of time and space, dynamically functioning from moment to
moment as illumination that is alive in the individual self.
Right in the middle
of the busyness of daily life, you can find tranquility, because you know that
your life is based on the quietness of timelessness.
Time gives
everything the great power to emancipate itself from itself, then step-by-step
we can make our lives mature.
If you deeply
understand the meaning of the precept no killing life, you know that not
killing the life of the table means not handling the table according to an
egoistic view that separates you from the table. No killing life means see the table as it
really is and handle the table as a manifestation of eternal time, where there
is no gap between subject and object.
Practice is like a
filter: on one side is everyday life, and on the other side is direct
experience of reality. This filter is not merely a device -- it must be
functioning.
Real time is the
harmony of the time process -- past, present, and future -- with the source of
time: timelessness.
Everydayness
perfumes the depth of life.
Most people are
completely tossed away by good and bad feelings because they attach to them and
then they suffer. But in terms of
causation, a feeling is just something to accept from your past life. Then a feeling doesn't tie up your life -- it
gives you a chance to deepen yourself.
Turning over a new
leaf is called awakening to awareness.
Even though there is
lots of karma interrupting your daily living, you can be free from your karmic
life anytime, anywhere. From moment to
moment, just return to the source of karma, which is called emptiness. Emptiness
means that the original nature of human existence is nothing but movement. The content of emptiness is interdependent
co-origination.
The purpose of
spiritual life is just to go toward the future with great hope.
Dharma is
inconceivable -- your mind cannot pin down what it is exactly. If you try to explain it objectively, you
cannot do it, but you can experience it and know that it is always with you.
