Awake and Asleep

Friday, August 23, 2013:

The dharma that is taught and the dharma that is experienced are descriptions of how to live, how to use your life to wake you up rather than to put you to sleep. And if you choose to spend the rest of your life trying to find out what awake means and what asleep means, I think you might achieve enlightenment.

Wisdom of No Escape:

Pema Chödrön

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When I was in the hospital this week the social worker asked me my religious preference. I have thought about it a few times and I have concluded that my background (the spiritual foundation of my faith) is Roman Catholic practiced within the structure of Buddhist methods to fulfill those principles. That makes me a Christian/Buddhist. However, as the Twelve Steps and Traditions of AA is the dharma that presented itself to me, I don’t pretend to be a Buddhist or anything else. The word, dharma, describes the path… the whole path within the context of our faith. A complete understanding of this concept is portrayed in the Gospel of Matthew (after the beatitudes from what is called the Sermon on the Mount) where the Carpenter asserted: Think not that I came to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am come not to destroy, but to fulfill. Christianity has taken its share of blows for the misuses of its basic premise based on “the Law” Christ was speaking of. That “Law”, described in the preceding sermon, is not only dear to Christians but is revered by many of those outside of the fold. To know and understand The Sermon on the Mount is the Christian dharma and to know and understand the meaning of it is to know and understand the meaning of awake and asleep. Later, in the same Gospel, it is written: Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the laws and the prophets.

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