Gate Thirty-two
Read the following, place it in your heart and sleep on it. Then, tomorrow, live it until evening when you can leave a brief comment on what you may have received during the process.
To work for the Dharma is a gate of Dharma illumination; for we act in conformity with the Dharma.
A “Dharma Gate” is a teaching or practice we can study to gain insights into the deepening our practice. It's a way to integrate our understanding of approaching reality.
Look to the Dharma
There are reasons why your spiritual path may not have unfolded as fully as you’d like. If you’re like most people who care about the planet and growing your self-awareness, you may have tried yoga or other bodywork, read a lot of books, taken courses on personal development, and have done some meditation. Maybe you even tried just living with – or ignoring – the fact that it hasn’t worked for you as well as you thought it would. If you find that, after all these sincere efforts, your daily life still isn’t working as well as you’d like, there are reasons for this. Firstly, most spiritual paths are based on contemplative practices which, to put it bluntly, require sitting silently for long periods of time, preferably more than two hours/day. These arose in cultures that value those practices. Our modern culture does need contemplative practices, but is much more action-oriented, and if you try to transplant yourself from your culture into a foreign culture, it doesn’t often “take.” Or even if it does take, it may not last. Secondly, our lives are guided by habitual patterns and familiar desires that don’t really work for true spiritual unfoldment. This is because these patterns and preferences are rooted in early childhood conditioning that is built to keep you from ever changing, no matter how hard you push at them. What’s needed in our modern, Western culture are spiritual awakening practices that really work by embracing both who you are and the culture in which you live.
Koan:
If you want the present, you have to open the box.
Most note worthy replies :
Many layers of many pieces of many colors, textures, and conditions
Stacked one on another in an endless void, unfolding
And as we unfold we see that all this is
One worn and stained bit of cloth.
Conforming to the Dharma, we are merely the Dharma Dharma-ing, no?
When we give ourselves
To Dharma
Dharma gives to all
合掌 仁道 生開 - gassho, Jindo Shokai
Read the following, place it in your heart and sleep on it. Then, tomorrow, live it until evening when you can leave a brief comment on what you may have received during the process.
To work for the Dharma is a gate of Dharma illumination; for we act in conformity with the Dharma.
A “Dharma Gate” is a teaching or practice we can study to gain insights into the deepening our practice. It's a way to integrate our understanding of approaching reality.
Look to the Dharma
There are reasons why your spiritual path may not have unfolded as fully as you’d like. If you’re like most people who care about the planet and growing your self-awareness, you may have tried yoga or other bodywork, read a lot of books, taken courses on personal development, and have done some meditation. Maybe you even tried just living with – or ignoring – the fact that it hasn’t worked for you as well as you thought it would. If you find that, after all these sincere efforts, your daily life still isn’t working as well as you’d like, there are reasons for this. Firstly, most spiritual paths are based on contemplative practices which, to put it bluntly, require sitting silently for long periods of time, preferably more than two hours/day. These arose in cultures that value those practices. Our modern culture does need contemplative practices, but is much more action-oriented, and if you try to transplant yourself from your culture into a foreign culture, it doesn’t often “take.” Or even if it does take, it may not last. Secondly, our lives are guided by habitual patterns and familiar desires that don’t really work for true spiritual unfoldment. This is because these patterns and preferences are rooted in early childhood conditioning that is built to keep you from ever changing, no matter how hard you push at them. What’s needed in our modern, Western culture are spiritual awakening practices that really work by embracing both who you are and the culture in which you live.
Koan:
If you want the present, you have to open the box.
Most note worthy replies :
Many layers of many pieces of many colors, textures, and conditions
Stacked one on another in an endless void, unfolding
And as we unfold we see that all this is
One worn and stained bit of cloth.
Conforming to the Dharma, we are merely the Dharma Dharma-ing, no?
When we give ourselves
To Dharma
Dharma gives to all
合掌 仁道 生開 - gassho, Jindo Shokai
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