Oh My

With palms Together,
Good Morning Everyone,


Practice is nothing. Without practice, everything.

Hmmm.

Here's what I mean. When we practice we realize no thing ness. When we don't practice, we live in thing ness. On the one hand non-duality, no thing ness. On the other hand, duality and thing ness.

It's the difference between experiencing the world as I-Thou and I-it.

Life is lived most fully in relationship. When we realize our relationships are essentially non-dualistic, that is, based on an interdependent, interconnected oneness, then we will treat the "other" as "me". This understanding opens the door to empathy.

The Zen of everyday life is the Zen of oneness. At a meeting the other day I talked about my renunciation. When a person enters the stream, one renounces self. The work is to see no-self. To see oneness.

This is very challenging because we believe the messages of our brain. From a certain POV, our brain sees itself as the center of the universe, collecting data from a variety of sensory organs. Locating that data in categories, filtering it through memories and experience, it creates the world as we know it.

In truth, it is mistaken. It collects what it perceives and only what it perceives and it collects as if it were a singular entity. There is far more to the universe than our ability to sense and perceive reveals.

We must come to realize the limitations of our brain and its sensory organs. It only knows what it can measure and it will take that data and store it as if the subject were the center of the universe,.

From a Zen POV, we might say, no brain, no universe. No brain, no any thing. Zen teaches us to experience under, over, and around this center of the universe POV. True renunciation of self means beginning in vast emptiness. It means residing in impermanence. Every I a We, every We an expression of the Infinite.

Express your True Self today.

Practice Notes:

This morning at 9:00 AM I will practice streetZen in front of the SW Environmental Center at the Downtown Mall.

Later this afternoon I will be in El Paso at the Both Sides / No Sides Zen Sangha. The service will be at 3:30 PM, at 711 Robinson in the Kern Place neighborhood. The contact person there is Bobby HenShin Byrd. His cell is 915-241-3140.

I will offer Zen at our Clear Mind Zendo on Sunday morning at 9:00 AM.

In addition, I will practice streetZen on Wednesday afternoon at 4:00 PM at the Veteran's Park rotunda.

If you are interested, please join me.