IT IS NEVER TOO LATE.
Daily Practice
Zen is famous for setting out the teachings in simple, memorable phrases. One in particular consists of three words…begin and continue. Yet, even these three simple words are misconstrued.
The best way to clarify what this teaching means is to imagine you are all alone in the desert. It is beginning to get dark, and the air begins to get cold. You realize you must find a way to start a fire for a little warmth against the desert chill. You manage to find some dry sticks and begin to rub them together. The rubbing meets friction and the friction between the two sticks starts the fire.
But as you might imagine if you keep stopping and putting the sticks down before they heat up and flame you continuously begin again never actually heating up and flaming. You remain cold and in the dark.
To get some actual heat you’ll need patience (an austere virtue) and consistent commitment. Every Day.
The daily practice is weighted by consistent commitment and patience. The practice needs to rub against the self delusion in the mind creating enough friction for it to dissipate the self delusion and illuminate the mind.
The future is a fabrication. It is something we make up. We tend to make the future up as good or bad. The past is already past. It is gone. We cannot reclaim it. The present is constantly changing. Go with the flow.
Consider it. The material future has not yet come, and never will. It is just right now again and again. Myriad things come and go. The self delusion is full of suffering, and relates to the myriad things with suffering.
We all worry. We all anticipate. Our human tendency is to fabricate. As Hongzhi tells us, before realizing non-mind we still will have great hardship.
Non-mind is empty mind. We have gone beyond the attachment ot the intellect.
We know on some level what the future holds for each one of us. We will age, get sick and die. We will lose everything. And we are the heir to our actions. We are all in the same boat.
In the ever-changing moment, we do the best we can right in the middle of what shows up.
We practice.
We purify the mind.
We practice.
We study our tendency to make up a story about the future and brush it away.
We sip some tea.
We grind down the worry.
We go for a walk.
We relinquish the worry.
We take a nap.
BUT….BUT…BUT what about the future? The future has not yet come and leaves us open for all kinds of fabricated stories.
How do we purify the mind when everything seems up in the air?
STOP! Breathe. Stop again. Purify, grind down and brush away all the thoughts and stories you make up into a fabricated mess in the mind; stop being a know-it-all about.
And…GO BEYOND THINKING. DO NOT GRASP THOUGHTS.
Take refuge in self-sufficient mind, like Christ, like Buddha, like enlightened beings. Take refuge in the true nature of things. Look to saints who point towards wisdom.
The main practice is to sit silently in empty, wide open mind. When you know that there is nothing to get here, nothing to salvage or take away, nothing to become you begin to enter the wide open field of just this.
You do not become a partner with even a speck of dust, nor pair-up with treetops crashing through a fence.
Let go thy hold…and go beyond the mental formations - and accept whatever shows up as your life.
Don’t give up. Keep going.
OM
🙏
Thanks for reading ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.
www.asinglethread.net ————- www.zatma.org
Thanks for reading ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.
***Unknown artist of Avalokiteshvara