Nothing Special

I began this blog with a strong feeling of purpose, knowing that I wanted to share what I have learned with the world, whether anyone read it or not.  The joy was in the writing.

Then after a couple of posts I began to lose forward momentum.  ”What is wrong?” I asked myself.

Finally I have begun to understand.  Reality doesn’t lend itself well to words.  Words are generally used to describe concepts and perceptions.   Ultimate Reality lies outside the boundaries of concepts and perceptions.  What I mean is, we can learn to perceive true reality, but it is very hard to put into words in a way that will accurately describe it.

OK, impossible!

So, I struggled with my dilemma for days, unable to write, until I finally went back to the beginning. “Zen  is like a finger pointing the way to the moon.  Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all the heavenly glory!” (Paraphrase of Bruce Lee in ‘Enter the Dragon’.)

I began to understand.  I can only point to things I have learned.  This is the purpose of the famous Zen “koans” (stories) that make you think.  It’s not the story that is important, merely the thing it is pointing toward.  Reality!

In his wonderful book, “Buddhism Plain & Simple” ( Broadway Books 1999) author Steve Hagen points out that we are like people sitting at a “sumptous banquet” with food piled high before us, but our plates are empty!  We are not eating, not because eating is prohibited, but because we don’t recognize the sharp pangs we are feeling as hunger.  We know that something is amiss because of the general feelings of dissatisfaction that run through our lives, but we are unsure of what is wrong, and what to do about it.

We think; “If I just had _______ I would have it made, I would be satisfied!”

But then, after we have suffered through all the hardships involved in the acquisition of whatever it is we think we are lacking, we find that it doesn’t really satisfy us as we thought it would, and there must be something else ‘out there’ that we need.  So we start all over.

The best definition of insanity is still: Doing the same things over and over, expecting a different result each time! Enough said!

There is no “Out There!”  Everything you sense or experience, either “inwardly” or “outwardly” is all a part of you!

“You” is the entire experience, or phenomena if you will.  The dualistic concept of “me/not me” causes us more suffering than we know. When we differentiate between things that are “me” and things that are “not me”, we only see a small part of the picture.

There is no Yin and Yang, but rather Yin/Yang, two complementary halves of one “whole”!  Without the female, there would be no male.  Without day there would be no night, and so on.  So the Inward, and the Outward together make up You, which is the totality of the whole experience, the whole phenomena.  And how can we experience peace if we are not Whole?

If we don’t see the problem, we are just going to go on and on, perpetuating our misery.

The human organism is wonderfully adaptable.  So much so that we have dominated all other species of life on this planet for thousands of years.  However, there is a darker side to this adaptability, and that is our ability to ignore suffering.  Our own, and that of others.  (It stands to reason that if we can ignore our own suffering, it is relatively easy to ignore that of “others” not “me”.)

Because of this facility to ignore suffering, (ignorance) we continue to follow a direction that does not eliminate suffering.  We continually rush in a direction that leads only to more suffering.

25 years ago I had a revelation; If you don’t like what you see on the “outside”, change what is on the “inside”, and the “outside” will change automatically!

Peace and Serenity