Hakuin: Zen Master Hakuin
From 365 Buddha
Compiled by: Jeff Schmidt
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I suppose that spiritual values and meditation always attracted me but my perceptions were off a bit. I’d always held back because I couldn’t think of going without alcohol or tobacco and still consider myself “pure” enough for a real shot at achieving anything at all along those lines. I would have had to escape to a mountain cave to do that… even then I couldn’t imagine meditating without some help from a toke of this or that. I looked at, and tried a few disciplines, but my lack of purity on these two counts lent themselves to an arrogant denial of any path that would require such abstinence. Still, my hunger increased as I found myself in the grip of alcoholism and I could see no way out. I was driven, not so much by any aspiration for purity as I was compelled by circumstance, to escape the bondage of what turned out to be revealed as self-centered obsessions. Since then I have discovered that it was this intense aspiration of this kind of purity that put my feet squarely on the path and led me to wise conduct. Today I am encouraged by the miraculous intervention of Spirit that lifted the obsession to drink, once I got the point that I… I George… was completely powerless to do anything about anything on my own... including my addictions. It was a hard pill to swallow because I had been misguided to think I could pull myself up by the bootstraps. Maybe others could stop drinking, or smoking, or over-eating, and so on and on, anytime they wished but I found that I could not; at least not with any stability of mind or lasting affect. It turned out that my purity of aspiration hadn’t come about because I had quit drinking and smoking but that it was the purity of intention… the intense desire to be free… that does the trick on all accounts.
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