“I want to be awake… I want enlightenment… I want understanding… I want freedom and peace of mind… I want… I want… I want…”: It’s like an itch in your mind, yet you’re left with no hand to scratch it with. Be a light unto yourself; betake yourselves to no external refuge. _ Buddha Why? Because there is no such refuge. Nor is any needed. The thing you want to reach for to sustain you and help you is merely a construct of your own imagination. Ultimately, it will only hinder you, perpetuating your feeling of vulnerability. It’s better to instead to just look at the situation you’re in and see immediately and directly what’s going on. If you do this honestly, you’ll see that you’re already sustained, complete, and whole and that everything you’ll ever truly need is at hand. “What I call liberation, the world calls resignation.” _ Buddha The reason the Buddha’s message sounds like resignation to us is because we still presume a self “here” and something else “out there.” But the Buddha pointed out that there isn’t any world “out there” apart from you. That is, true separation between you and other things simply cannot be found. This is liberation. It’s the very opposite of resignation; it’s the dissolution of the desire to get everything you want or to do whatever you please. What the awakened see is Reality – Truth – before anything is made of it. Dharma can’t be solidified or conceptualized. It can’t be captured in a particular phrase or word; it can’t be laid out in a theory, a diagram, or a book. Any teaching that points to Truth must ultimately erase itself. And in erasing itself, such teaching – Dharma – is ncessarily self-referential. Like someone writing on a chalkboard with the right hand while the left hand follows, erasing what has been written. As a result, it may appear paradoxical or contradictory. Yet it is not. Thus do not desire “enlightenment”: What you are truly after neither has form nor is without form. It cannot be grasped or attained or obtained or conceptualized or even described.
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 10:08:31 +0000
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