We lose the meaning of the way to the goal. We need a strong confidence in our teaching which says that originally we have Buddha nature, our practice is based on this faith. Whatever it is that I teach, it is important that I point out that no faith at all in anything is necessary. You dont need to believe in original nature, you only need to suspect that others have discovered this truth, and the question is, how will you go about attempting to discover this truth? The further away this truth is from your apprehension, the more work that there is ahead of you. Some people can see the evidence of this fact everywhere. If you cannot see what happens to so many children in their development, if you cannot see how so many children lose touch with their own inner beauty, then you have a great deal of work ahead of you. The easiest way is to never have lost this insight. The next hardest is to have lost it, but to have an inkling that it is true. But if you are here wondering if the premise of original nature is fantasy, then you are walking around under a cloud of darkness which you are the architect of, and your work is to discover why you need to believe that something that is real and essential needs to be neutralized through your cynicism. Isnt it enough to assume that you lost it, why would you need to believe that you never had it? Sitting is not a guarantee of anything. Many people can sit and discover nothing. Most people who sit will discover nothing significant. Even if you believe you have an original nature and you sit, you can spend months and discover nothing significant. I know a woman, a poet, who sits in silence once a year for two weeks, and when she returns you can see that she is in awareness, and this lasts about two weeks and then she is herself again. Her persona always brings her back to her contracted self. To arrive to your original nature is to undo all that has been done to take you out of your original nature. To arrive to your original nature is to negotiate every trauma that took you out of your original nature. More important than any stage you will attain is your sincerity, your right effort. If our practice is only a means to attain enlightenment, there is actually no way to attain it. We lose the meaning of the way to the goal. When you believe in your way, enlightenment is there. but if you cannot believe in the meaning of the practice which you are doing in this moment, you cannot do anything. I remember the first time I sat. It was outside and I sat on the grass in the sun with my eyes closed. Sitting in the sun is very important. The sun can help you center into the experience. I sat in the sun, without any belief in anything. My purpose was to sit and find out if there was any truth to the rumours. That is all the certainty you need. You are sitting, and you are wondering if there is any truth to the rumours regarding meditation. That is all and that is enough. Even during that first sitting, I was shocked to discover the slightest evidence of an autonomous process in my mind. I was shocked that there was an aspect of myself that was in there that I had not identified before. Over the next few years, here and there, I would sit again and investigate further. Eventually I was convinced that there was a place of awareness inside my conscious experience that was faint, yet recognizable. And that faint stream of information, that became my confidence. My confidence was evidence. My confidence grew out of evidence. I doubt there is any other true way. The only true way is the way through evidence. All reliance on faith is a mistake. If the world is as I suggest it is, then it is just a question of time, unless you have serious mental problems, then it is just a question of time before you discover some evidence. The practice of sitting is a way to confront the gaining idea. You have to defy all gaining ideas. When you are free of the tyranny of the gaining idea, then there is a chance that you will discover subtle things. So long as the gaining idea has dominion over you, you will be a slave. People will discover your gaining idea and use it to have dominion over you. To be free of all gaining ideas is a powerful place, but also a dangerous one. Enlightenment is an adventure, a dangerous adventure. It is more dangerous partly because there is so little awareness in the world. The more aware you become, the more threatening it is to others. This is why more compassion is needed, it has to be clear that you are aware and compassionate to others. Otherwise your awareness will be just a source of fear. But if you take this theme too far, then you will be tempted to surrender awareness in order to help others be less afraid, and often, that is how the contraction begins. Good people become unconscious this way. There are a thousand games that people play in order to seduce you to come down from awareness. If you are listening carefully, you will see that my whole model of the world is based on the notion that others are aware, but they have sold that awareness for a pittance. When you become aware, others are envious that you have it and they do not. When you become aware, you are helping people remember that they sold their awareness, and this becomes a source of anxiety for them. The natural pattern of consciousness is to repress it. No matter who you are, consciousness always appears as an inhibitor of freedom. So long as your thinking has a compulsive relationship to your acting, then you will be afraid to think, because you will know that if you know, you will have to do this or that, and then the genius of the persona realizes that the simplest way to avoid compulsion is to inhibit awareness. Part of the teaching is to learn to act only when a pattern repeats so consistently there is no way to ignore the meaning. This means that everything that happens and is said goes into a reservoir. There is no need to act on it. The action, when it comes from the creativity of the reservoir, is an action that actually transforms the true state of affairs. To act on the compulsion of your recognition, is to be a slave to your recognition. As you may be understanding, the first goal is to end the master slave relationship within you first. It is the master slave relationship inside you that others make use of when they use you. https://youtube/watch?v=m-cfqB76b7s&list=PLF531ECC48E34FCA6&index=20
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 16:59:40 +0000
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