That thing you want won’t make you whole. You might think so, but probably not in those terms. You probably think it will make your life better, that it will improve you “somehow,” that it will take you “somewhere,” but those are all just masks for trying to become whole. Because where you are, what you are, is whole already; you just don’t know it. You see, it’s not about the chocolate cake, the girl/boy, the new job, the old neighborhood, or that “thing” you’ve been meaning to get for forever. Nope.
Here’s the thing: You are whole! There is nothing you can acquire to make you any more whole than you are already. I realized this the other day and it has been blowing me away every day since then. Of course, I forget it for a while and start to suffer, but then I remember and I go through the whole blowing away process all over again. Nice, really, nice! So simple, so complete that I thought I was done, but I was wrong.
Here’s the other thing: Your wholeness includes things like desire. We know that desire for what you think is external to you creates separation between you and it, but denying that desire creates separation within you, and that might be worse. So what’s the answer? Accept your desire; embrace it. I would go so far as to say act on it in accordance with the precepts, because being truly one with it means interacting with it. This is the middle way dance, the mystery that we sit with every day, the stillness within the movement of our lives.
I’ll be 53 in a few months and it’s been a really revelatory time recently, truly ground-shifting in terms of who I am and what am I doing here. Stuff that’s been troubling me from “out there” for about as long as I can recall I have come realize is really “right here” and has been all along. But that amazing discovery has not made life any simpler at all. If anything it’s even more complicated, but you know what, complication is not a bad thing. As my burden gets lighter my Path gets curvier, and so I settle in for the ride.
I was walking the dog last night and looked up and stared for a while at the moon shifting in and out of the fast moving clouds. I could just as easily describe it as a chaotic or orderly sky, but what I said out loud was this: “It all fits.”
Words are like bones; they frame the body but are not the body.
I leave this body of words to be bleached in your bright sun.
Gassho….
Here’s the thing: You are whole! There is nothing you can acquire to make you any more whole than you are already. I realized this the other day and it has been blowing me away every day since then. Of course, I forget it for a while and start to suffer, but then I remember and I go through the whole blowing away process all over again. Nice, really, nice! So simple, so complete that I thought I was done, but I was wrong.
Here’s the other thing: Your wholeness includes things like desire. We know that desire for what you think is external to you creates separation between you and it, but denying that desire creates separation within you, and that might be worse. So what’s the answer? Accept your desire; embrace it. I would go so far as to say act on it in accordance with the precepts, because being truly one with it means interacting with it. This is the middle way dance, the mystery that we sit with every day, the stillness within the movement of our lives.
I’ll be 53 in a few months and it’s been a really revelatory time recently, truly ground-shifting in terms of who I am and what am I doing here. Stuff that’s been troubling me from “out there” for about as long as I can recall I have come realize is really “right here” and has been all along. But that amazing discovery has not made life any simpler at all. If anything it’s even more complicated, but you know what, complication is not a bad thing. As my burden gets lighter my Path gets curvier, and so I settle in for the ride.
I was walking the dog last night and looked up and stared for a while at the moon shifting in and out of the fast moving clouds. I could just as easily describe it as a chaotic or orderly sky, but what I said out loud was this: “It all fits.”
Words are like bones; they frame the body but are not the body.
I leave this body of words to be bleached in your bright sun.
Gassho….
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