The Path

You have always been one with the Buddha, so do not pretend you can ATTAIN to this oneness by various practices.

HUANG PO:

ZEN TEACHINGS OF HUANG PO

Huang Po:
Zen Teaching of Huang Po

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All the spiritual teachers of humanity have told us the same thing, that the purpose of life on earth is to achieve union with our fundamental, enlightened nature. It says in the Upanishads:
There is the path of wisdom and the path of ignorance. They are far apart and lead to different end…. Abiding in the midst of ignorance, thinking themselves wise and learned, fools go aimlessly hither and thither like the blind led by the blind. What lies beyond life shines not to those who are childish, or careless, or deluded by wealth.

Glimpse After Glimpse

Sogyal Rinpoche

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Bill Wilson said it several times and is quoted in  AA Comes of Age, we are but children in a Spiritual Kindergarten. In fact, there was a time I looked at advice of this sort as merely something for others. It didn’t occur to me that it was my practice that was being spoken of. Am I striving to attain or am I simply accepting the power within me? Is the Heart of Compassion beating outside of my own heartbeat? I am no longer seeking achieve it and I sit with the practice that keeps me aware and awake. Aware and awake I see myself as I am, or, in the words of Joan Osborne, “What if God was one of us?” It wasn’t hard to miss the point when I held my daughter in my arms or when I left myself long enough to be at one with another when I seek to comfort rather than to be comforted; to love than to be loved; to understand than to be understood; to give rather than to demand I receive. To these ends I awaken. These qualities were always there and I don’t have to attain to them if I accept myself as I am, rise up off my cushion, and walk out of my sanctuary with all my flaws and misdemeanors acknowledged.

geo

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