Time For Zen

Making Friends

Take today… Consider making friends with all that is. With all that manifests today. No matter what it is.  Share with it, for it is part of you and you of it.  It is given freely by the universe as everything is. There is no struggle to get anything. It is already there! The problems always start with the mind's ability to accept and experience.  Doubts and beliefs can stand in the way. The doubts are fine, but the beliefs really can throw a spanner in the works!

Contemplating Pain

In my Zen practice experience pain can occur.. Often physical pain.  For me, pain more than often holds a lesson. Sometimes a valuable lesson. Where pleasure and achievement are just “so what!?”, pain can hold some profound insights.

I have had some profound realisations from pain about my existence, often momentary but profound, existential insights. This is often accompanied by a ‘spaced out’  feeling recognising for the moment that I am not my mind-body, or what has been referred to as the ‘pain-body’. But words are not really adequate to explain these moments... but I would say that these moments are healing.

It is claimed by the enlightened that on the moment of enlightenment one transcends pain.  From what I understand that does not mean being rid of pain, but finding a state of awareness that holds the pain, is the context of all feeling,  and a realisation that it does not last forever.

Zen masters get sick too. One can read many accounts of it. I guess for me it is all about making a distinction between pain and suffering as in our world,  the two seem to be blurred together in consciousness by our language.

I feel that we live in the duality of our minds, Indeed how are we to define things if there is no duality?

If there is pain then there is the absence of comfort by which to measure it.

If there is comfort then we would recognise it by the absence of pain.

Just some crazy Zen thoughts on the matter… Coming from memory of what I have learned.  That is illusion… or not!

If you wish to, please feel free to share any insight that you have about pain..

Foolish Zen, Foolish Trust

There is nothing to be learned from this post. No information to be stored and carried for future reference by the mind.  The invitation is to read it and then carry on with life. 

The moment of here-and-now is huge. I am not talking about the moments of the mind that are concerned with passing of  time, but the here-now moment. The passing of time is an illusion in spiritual reality.  The here-and-now is inclusive of everything because all that is in existence is in existence in this moment, here and now..

How can it exist without the context of here-and now? Surely if there is no  here-and-now there is no existence!

Therefore this very moment, this here and this now is the infinite creator. Creator of all that is right here and right now. All is so but the mind only sees a small part of it.

Spiritually, without thought and thinking the here-now can be realised - made real;  but when described by the mind that believes in time, it is not the here now. What is being described is what was – it is past.

This brings up this awkward moment that these words can only be believed, because they come from the mind, they come from knowledge, and knowledge can only point to the here-now but is not the here-now, but an illusion of the here-now.

But although an illusion, it exists in the here-and-now… for without the here-now, even illusion would not be able to exist.

What a load of nonsense Zen! And that is correct for Zen cannot be the sensibility that is creation of the mind!

It could be that only a total fool will trust in life completely. The total fool lives totally in the here-and-now with total trust of it. He is judged as a fool, especially by those who take advantage of him, and he keeps coming back in trust to his judges for what they did yesterday is gone. The total fool has let go of yesterday and right now is a new moment and is unpredictable..







The Sun is very powerful but doesn’t judge. It is a total fool that keeps shining down on us whether we be sinner or saint. Is the Sun so foolish? Is it not a very strong symbol of a total fool.  We are its gift of life regardless of what we do, it is only the judging mind that punishes.
Connect with life and realise innocence – the innocence that is pure and has no guilt. The word innocence is not the innocence of mind, but pointing to the very context of life, that paradoxically contains all mind stuff, all judgement stuff that is operating in the here-now.  If there is no here and no now, how can anything exist at all?

This is the awareness of the Zen master, of the buddha-mind that is breaking through the ‘shadows created in life’ The shadows that are focused on duality and rules and regulations and should-isms.
It is just so. Is that so? It is just so. Acceptance of whatever is manifest without resistance or without trying to change or alter it, or in other words, without desire.  Guatam Buddha discovered desire was the source of all suffering.

Meanwhile... I am living in the confines of my conditioning and the paradox is that to try and change it, regardless of how I try and change it, will not eradicate it. I am conditioned!  What on earth can be wrong with knowing that I am conditioned? Nothing. There is no right nor wrong except in the confines of the finite mind. 

Awareness: Being Dual

It isn’t about striving not to be dual but about being aware of duality as it is working in and through life.

Being more aware of duality existing in consciousness – focusing on it and letting it be. 

WE are the world – no better or worse, stronger or weaker than each other until we judge it to be that way.

And dualism is.

It is about just noticing our experience of living life, just noticing and allowing life to be lived through dualism.

Dharma duelling?  

There are two to make a duel and it is dual. It could be said that it is used in a Zen life to point out how dual we are when duelling. Being dual with full conscious awareness of such a state of being. Letting it all happen.

All such focused awareness may enhance the awareness of dualism. 

Keep looking at dualism when contemplating we are. 'We are' is suggesting that we are one...
One in our dualism for now. 

Keeping looking through dualism – seeing through dualism. Keep being aware of being dual and then…

The disappearance.