Already One
We are already one. But
we imagine that we are
not. And what we have
to recover is our original
unity. What we have to
be is what we are.
~ Thomas Merton
Already One
Author: Gill Washington
Spiritual Friendship
Spiritual Friendship
Friendship has
always belonged
to the core of my
spiritual journey.
~ Henri Nouwen
Self-consciousness
From: Buddhism without Beliefs
by Stephen Batchelor
Self-consciousness is at once the most obvious and central fact of my life and the most elusive. If I search for my self in meditation, I find it is like trying to catch my own shadow. I reach for it, but there’s nothing there. Then it reappears elsewhere. I glimpse it from the corner of my mind’s eye, turn to face it, and it’s gone. Each time I think I’ve pinned it down, it turns out to be something else: a bodily sensation, a mood, a perception, an impulse, or simply awareness itself.
I cannot find the self by pointing my finger at any physical or mental trait and saying: “Yes, that’s me.” For such traits come and go, whereas the sense of “I” remains constant. But neither can I put my finger on something other than these traits that-however ephemeral and contingent they may be-nonetheless define me.
The self may not be something, but neither is it nothing. It is simply ungraspable, unfindable. I am who I am not because of an essential self hidden away in the core of my being but because of the unprecedented and unrepeatable matrix of conditions that have formed me. The more I delve into this mystery of who I am (or what anything is), the more I just keep going. There is no end to it, only an infinite trajectory that avoids falling into the extremes of being and nonbeing. This trajectory is not only the center, which is free from this duality, but the central path itself.
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Doing
From sayings of Ancestor Lu, quoted in:
Vitality, Energy, Spirit: A Taoist Sourcebook (Shambhala Classics)
Translated & edited by Thomas Cleary
How is doing applied? To study its application, one must ask the autonomous mind. The autonomous mind is imbued with great understanding; it observes the changes of movement and stillness of yin and yang, looks to absolute yang and emulates its firm action, looks to absolute yin and communes with its process. The autonomous mind also studies the four seasons and models itself on their cycle. Silently comprehending the ultimate, it plumbs the original source.
Thus extensively observing all processes of creation and evolution, sitting calmly with the mind in trance, the energy of trance exists alone, calm sitting exists alone. Now there is nothing whatsoever in the autonomous mind, and the infant resembling the self that was previously cultivated and crystallized by the alchemical elixir communes with heaven and earth.
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Observing Mindfulness
Observing Mindfulness
Again and again, examine
Every aspect of your mental and physical activities.
In brief, that is the very way of observing mindfulness.
~Shantideva
Right Answer
From: Awakening The Buddha Within
by: Lama Surya Das
In life we may keep looking for the right answer, but there is no right answer. Everything is relative rather than absolute. That’s the answer. In meditating we strive to keep going deeper and deeper, peeling off layers of the onion until we find the center of the onion, called sunyata, the Sanskrit term for emptiness.
As we keep peeling and peeling, we begin the process of unmasking our personas. First we unmask the body, then the mind. Then we go deeper and unmask the psyche, continuously letting go and unmasking all the layers. We all have so many masks it’s as though every day in our life has been Halloween. When we remove the masks, we are shedding our fantasies about ourselves, others, and the world. We can see
and be seen. We know and are known. We are.
More from Lama Surya Das
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Bird in Flight
Bird in Flight
Be like the bird that, passing on her flight
awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give
way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that
she hath wings.
~ Victor Hugo