You Are IT

In order to communicate very openly with the world, you need to develop fundamental trust. This kind of trust is not trusting "in" something, but simply trusting. It is very much like your breath. You do not consciously hold on to your breath, or trust in your breath, yet breathing is your very nature.

In the same way, to be trusting is your very nature. To be trusting means you are fundamentally free from doubt about your goodness and about the goodness of others.

– Dr. Jeremy Hayward

All methods aiming at the realization of awakening have their origin in your true nature. The true nature of everything is in your mind. Mind and matter are one, not two different things. Conditioning, servitude, and error do not truly exist. True and false, merit and sin, are illusory images.

So is the law of cause and effect. As long as your activity is based on conceptual discrimination, it is not free. The free person sees all, because he knows that there is nothing to be seen. He perceives all, not being deceived by concepts. When he looks at things, he sees their true nature. When he perceives things, he penetrates their nature of interbeing.

Thus, while living in the world he possesses the secret of the arising and manifestation of phenomena. This is the only way to arrive at awakening. Free of errors caused by concepts, he lives in peace and freedom, even in the world of karma. Using skillful means, he realizes his calling of awakening in this conditioned world, without thinking whether the world is conditioned or unconditioned.

– Cuu Chi, an eleventh-century Vietnamese monk of the Vo Ngon Thong sect

Frequently we discover that our minds do not rest in radiant contentment for our entire meditation session. Why not? Because we have been training for years in desiring, reaching, grasping, getting, and then wanting more, and then, of course, more—all reinforcing the underlying feeling that this moment is not enough.

– Gaylon Ferguson, "Fruitless Labor"

Meditation, simply defined, is a way of being aware. It is the happy marriage of doing and being. It lifts the fog of our ordinary lives to reveal what is hidden; it loosens the knot of self-centeredness and opens the heart; it moves us beyond mere concepts to allow for a direct experience of reality.

– Lama Surya Das

The Buddha didn’t describe his awakening as an awakening to some absolute truth or absolute reality, perhaps comparable to God as we would find in other religious traditions. Instead, what he woke up to is the unfolding of the phenomenal world itself.

This I think is what is so radical in the Buddha’s understanding of spiritual experience. It doesn’t have to do with gaining some privileged access to a higher truth that somehow transcends the messiness of everyday life. Rather, his awakening is an awakening to the flux and the flow, the pain, the beauty, the tragedy, the joy of life itself.

Stephen Batchelor, “Awakening to Life, Awakening to Death”

Causality is a concept both western and eastern philosophers have referred to for thousands of years. Simply put, causality is the relationship between an event and the results of that event.

Behavior and the consequences of that behavior have been on my mind a lot lately and it occurred to me this morning that there is a causality chain between our silence and the singularity from which we came and to which we will all eventually return.

I subscribe to the concept that God is Love. And, I strongly believe that one must have compassion to experience true Universal Love. The link or bridge to that critical compassion is empathy. Compassion is impossible without empathy.

Empathy shouldn’t be confused with sympathy or pity. Empathy is a vicarious experience which wires one’s heart and mind to another. Empathy cannot occur without deep listening. True listening as opposed to just hearing.

Finally, we simply cannot listen while we are talking. We must be silent. Silence is the only space within which deep listening can occur.

Of course, all of this takes practice. Practice sitting in silence. It’s not easy, especially in modern society. But, sitting in silence prepares you to listen to others on a level that creates a bridge of empathy over which compassion is transmitted to cultivate and experience and share the Love of God.

~ DSK

If we only react with self-interest to whatever circumstances appear, we will make choices based on trying to find temporary satisfaction. But this effort is always ultimately hopeless, since everything within samsara is uncertain because it is changing. Through the shortsightedness of our habit, we do not even notice that we are missing what is meaningful, like someone who eagerly chooses to eat a cow’s red meat instead of continuously drinking its white milk.

If we believe that mind is continuous, our love for others becomes continuous. If we recognize this continuity, we do not trust temporary, tangible circumstances or take them too seriously. Since it is tiring to switch between changing uncertainties, which are inherently impermanent and unimportant, we become less easily influenced by any circumstance. This creates the habit of stability so that our minds are less erratic, our lives are less chaotic, and our feelings for others are less changeable, which causes love to become increasingly deep and loyal.

– Thinley Norbu Rinpoche

Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian traditions of the West have embedded certain notions within our DNA, the most basic of which is that God is a Monarchical Judge in a courtroom located in the sky and Heaven is a goodie we get if we’re good enough, but only after we die.  Second only to this myth is the notion that some outsider “created” us like some sort of alien creature and plopped us down in a place we really don’t deserve and where we sense, because of this brainwashing, we don’t belong.

But, we weren’t built like a table or clay pot and stuck in this world like an outsider.  We came FROM this world like fruit from a tree and the energy of God (Love and Compassion) is nothing less than all of us manifested in a billion unique ways.  The Kingdom of God, therefore is quite simply YOU, and me, right here, right now.

Buddha and Jesus told their friends to not concern themselves with the non-existent past or future and to be fully present in the eternal Now with love and compassion for themselves and their neighbors.  They were specific when they taught us all THAT is where God resides in Nirvana, Heaven, the Kingdom.

But, neither Buddha or Jesus got what they really wanted. In the East contrary to his instructions, they started following Buddha like a God.  In the West, they killed Jesus for what he taught others, then stuck him up on a pedestal where no one could ever reach him or his teachings.  Jesus taught us that we’re ALL the children of God, not just him. Buddha taught us he was just the finger pointing at the moon and to pay attention to the moon and not the finger.  But, people are still shaving their heads and wearing robes even today.

~ Scott Kinnaird

What if the nirvana experienced by the Buddha in Bodhgaya turns out to be something considerably less magnificent than that of later mythic tradition, yet at the same time, by virtue of its being actually attainable by ordinary folk, something of unparalleled value? The Buddha spoke of learning how to be deeply happy right here and now, no matter what circumstances we are facing. Even the existential challenges of our own impending illness, aging, and death can be encompassed with the wisdom to acknowledge that all things change, to accept that there is no essence underlying it all, and nevertheless to be able to meet each moment without clinging to anything in the world.

– Andrew Olendzki

Do not be dualistic. Truly be one with your life as the subtle mind of nirvana. That is what subtle means. Something is subtle not because it is hidden, nor because it is elusive, but because it is right here. We don’t see it precisely because it is right in front of us. In fact, we are living it.

When we live it we don’t think about it. The minute we think about it, we are functioning in the dualistic state and don’t see our life as the subtle mind of nirvana.

– Maezumi Roshi