You Are IT

Buddhas are perfected by becoming resigned to observing one’s own persistent delusions, until this practice no longer has any basis (Self).

– unknown

In separateness lies the world’s greatest misery; in compassion lies the world’s true strength.

— Siddhārtha

Letting go of fixation is effectively a process of learning to be free, because every time we let go of something, we become free of it. Whatever we fixate upon limits us because fixation makes us dependent upon something other than ourselves. Each time we let go of something, we experience another level of freedom.

– Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, “Letting Go of Spiritual Experience”

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.

– Hafez of Persia

Gratitude, the simple and profound feeling of being thankful, is the foundation of all generosity. I am generous when I believe that right now, right here, in this form and this place, I am myself being given what I need. Generosity requires that we relinquish something, and this is impossible if we are not glad for what we have. Otherwise the giving hand closes into a fist and won’t let go.

– Sallie Jiko Tisdale, “As If There is Nothing to Lose”

Jesus said to them, “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter the kingdom.”

– The Gospel of Thomas

Comparing good and bad is just deluded thinking. As long as you are immersed in these wandering thoughts, you will not enter the proper conditions for practice.

Do not concern yourself with anything going on around you. Nor should you be concerned with anything going on inside yourself.

Focus fully on the method and do not make external or internal comparisons. If you can do that, your practice will be effective.

– Ch’an Master Sheng Yen, “Incomparable You”

If views of delusion and awakening are done away with and interpretations of turning toward and turning away are cut off, then this mind is as lucid and clear as the bright sun and this nature is vast and open as empty space; right where the person stands, he emits light and moves the earth, shining throughout the ten directions.

Those who see this light fully realize the absolute truth that all things are unborn. When you arrive at such a time, naturally you are in tacit accord with this mind and this nature.

– Ta-hui

To look for total satisfaction in oneself is a futile endeavor.  Neither satisfaction nor self really exist.  Since everything changes from moment to moment, where can self and where can satisfaction be found?

Yet these are two things that the whole world is looking for and it sounds quite reasonable, doesn’t it?  But since these are impossible to find, everybody is unhappy.  Not necessarily because of tragedies, poverty, sickness, or death: simply because of unfilled desire.

Everybody is looking for something that isn’t available.  It’s worse than looking for a needle in a haystack; at least the needle is there, even though it is hard to find.  But satisfaction and self are both delusions, so how can they ever be found?

– Ayya Khema, “No Satisfaction”

It is self-evident that we are all perfectly born.  Yet upon our birth, a delusional world immediately sets out to wrap a superfluous ego around our perfection.  Like a gauze, year-after-year it wraps around our true mind, binding us SO TIGHT, that by the time we are adults, we have no idea who we really are.

Regardless of who we are or what tradition we follow, our faith and our practice, and our seeking, are merely manifestations of an “unwrapping” of that ego-gauze.  A hopeful attempt to find the original and perfect YOU.

That perfection, that light and spirit, simply got covered up and hidden under all the worldly, delusional wrapping.  The “eternal you” that has no beginning and never dies, has been “right here” the whole time.

The Perennial Philosophy — the core and ground of all of the world’s great seeking traditions — points consistently and continuously to the concept of, “becoming once again as a little child”.  Returning to our childhood-state is a base prerequisite for reclaiming our true selves.

Therefore, laughing as a child laughs — large, open, truthful — is one of the purest, most critical components of anyone’s path to reality.

– Scott Kinnaird, 9/3/10