Oftentimes the true significance of my pursuits are obscure even to me. But it is clearer than ever that the calling that comes so strongly from my pursuit of Eastern Philosophy is the attraction of Balance. Balance that is only possible if it comes first from within!
Everything comes from within! From within the deepest recesses of our thought patterns, our motivations, and our desires. circumstances of our birth were beyond our control, but nearly everything that comes after is determined, in large part, by us.
The thoughts and understandings of the great Buddhist, and Taoist, masters seems to confirm this phenomena. If you want change, be it as profound as the cessation of suffering, or as mundane as a few more dollars in cash flow, the answer is always found within ourselves. No wonder those who understand, when they meditate, contemplate their own navel! What we find at our core, our center,determines the circumstances of our external world, and our interaction with it.
Consider the example of someone minding their own business, meditating perhaps, being struck from behind by someone to whom they had done no wrong, no harm. The mundane or conventional (i.e. normal) person would react very strongly, perhaps even with violence.
“Who is this person, and why are they striking me?”
But the person of superior understanding would immediately realize the offender struck out of underlying ignorance, which in turn generated hatred, having no understanding of the hegative Karma they had just created. The enlightened person would view the incident as a wonderful oportunity to apply one of the fundamental principles of Dharma practice: Patience. This philosophy is exemplified in the meditation “Be Like Water”.
Just because the sensations of want and desire arise within our point of view or experience, does not mean we have to act upon them. We are not required to “be” that emotion. Acknowledge and observe the emotion, take note of it, and remain centered, serene, balanced!
Remember: Events and conditions arise, continue briefly, and then pass away, constantlyand continually, without interruption. They do this because all conventional exsistence is in motion. Motion changes each phenomena in relation to the other phenomena around it. This in turn creates new conditions which then create new phenomena.
The chicken or the egg?
Even our very atoms vibrate, nothing stands still, or can remain motionless in this conventional, conditional reality.
The only way we can remove ourselves from the suffering of change is to detach ourselves from the events, emotions, and other phenomena that surround us.
How do we become so attached to various people, places, events, and other things around us?
It all begins when we enter reality, soon after conception. But it really takes hold after birth as we begin to explore the world around us with our newly aqquired senses. Like all new observers, we become obsessed with the five sense factors to the point where we become convinced of our own reality.
It should be observed here that this is a reality only in the sense that we can observe it, yet at the same time, it is a dependent reality in that whatever “reality” we are observing, it is dependent on other conditions and states of being that are changing moment by moment. And as conditions change, so does this conditional reality we are observing.
…. to be continued.
