Thursday, January 08, 2009

Who is on First?

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

What is the point, exactly, of being awake? If we say we wake up for ourselves to be one with the Infinite, we are revealing we are not bodhisattvas, and will never be awake.

It is similar to the Teacher trick of asking, "who are you sitting for?"

Whack!

Zen is never about ourselves. Its about the Universe. Each moment on the cushion opens this truth to us: there is no us. We do not come to the cushion; the cushion comes to us.

Last night in class at the Temple we were talking about revelation in terms of giving and receiving Torah. An author points out that the Torah was given at Sinai and we are perpetually receiving, as if these can be at all separated. The Torah, like the Dharma, lives in constant, eternal flow.

Giving and receiving are incorrect from a Zen point of view: nothing was given, nothing received: everything is already One. We come to our practice to attain this understanding. So, we practice to let the boundaries of what we, in delusion call a self, fall away. And there it is.
God, like Buddha Nature, is, has been, and always will be, one with us.

Sometimes it takes a long walk in the desert to understand this.

May we each continue our walk.

Be well.

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