Today is Uncertain.... Always

Today is uncertain. There is no future and I need to engage with the uncertainty of what's to come.  Not that  ANY day has ever been certain, but there is only now, and now, and now.. Going, going into countless successive moments of now..  Life is state of flux. To realize the alchemy of spiritual awareness is nothing more than being 100% here and now.. Moving on and on, certain of the uncertainty!

Is it not all right to be stupid?

This is Zen… Or not…

Carp diem? Seize the day?  How can this be? This moment, once here is gone. Is it stupid to try and seize it? The past, the present, the future, how can they exist? For immediately now comes it is gone. So how can a day exist? Past, present future tenses.. Tense time…

Equally, how can I seize what I am?  How can an eye (or I) look at itself?  I can only be.. The moment can only be, and then it is gone.. I? Am I immediately gone? That cannot be so? I am empty, a mirror. But the illusion is that I am not empty but full of rubbish like this…  This is not Zen it is stupid… to the degree that it is not.. 

Let's not be clever, for this is stupid.. But is it not so? Is it not all right to be stupid? 

Here. Now. Listen. Nothing.

Mind. All these wheels and thoughts racing around as if they are important and the very stuff of life itself.. But is this really so?  What is important? What is really important?

Nothing... Nothing cannot exist outside of the here-and-now. This is it! Listen? Nothing.  No mind!

Now look at mind.. The wheels within wheels. The cogs of this ever self-important machine.  For what?  Exactly? And then there's nothing. For mu, as a Zen master would or would not say.. Would or would not? Who knows?  Zen.  Zen? Really?

An intention to be mindful with everything that I do, presents a challenge. I become aware of the times when I am not mindful. Only in retrospect of course, and then I can focus on the now. Mabye.

Such is the mind. Listen carefully to all the languages that are used.  Even the languages of the great masters.. Listening to what they say, are they always in the here-and-now? If they are who is responsible for that? Them? Surely that is a fragmentation of you and them - another duality?

Can you really be responsible? Others - self. An illusion?

Always fully present? Does their speech depict this? Closer to home and of greater value. Listen to yourself? Are you always in the here-and-now? Always present with what is so?

Silence

Take a moment.. Listen to this silence. The here-and-now....
Notice there may be noises, and listen to the silence. The here-and-now.

Listen. This it the universe, wherever you may be focused in it.
There is a silence beyond the noise.
The dark of the moon?
Is this a time for listening?

This is zazen. Just listening to silence, if you like.
The silence behind the intruding thoughts
The universe.
No answers. There are no questions that are not already answered
In themselves.

Silence reflects the "suchness"
The being-ness of being.
This is it.
This is now.


The silence is always there.
I will need to remember to listen more often.

Dark Shadows in Neat Boxes

Dark shadows exist at the back of the mind. Zazen can bring them to awareness that can act like a candle or a bright torch shining light into them and creating greater clarity.   In zazen I don't try to stop myself thinking about the discomfort of such shadows, as there is something they are teaching. Writing about it with mindfulness and focus is a great support.  This is what I feel is unraveling the wiles of karma and is a valuable process to do through communication, thus making issues clearer to awareness.

No!  Not clearer to the mind, as rational reason likes to "own" each and every experience, wrapping them up and putting it away in a neat boxes for future reference. Spiritual experiences cannot be owned, because every experience is immediately gone and we are into the next one.  It's the journey.

Looking Zazen: Guilt and True Forgiveness.

Guilt and True Forgiveness

In zazen today I have been fascinated by the antics of the mind.  This whole thing about guilt complexes - to give it a Freudian term.  He said that they were buried in the subconscious mind and yes, they are. As they emerge into consciousness, the mind creates a (dis)ease of impending retribution, from others, from karma, from the universe. 

It came to me that guilt is the operation of the conditioned mind when we think we are doing what is considered to be wrong. I am using the word "considered" (to be wrong) because right can only be genuine right when coming from the heart, from the self where there is no motivation, no desire for anything. All other stuff is just societal control, which from birth slowly enters into this life. I have swallowed all this hook, line and sinker and are therefore just as likely to feel a judge as anybody else. I am looking at this from my own perspective. Even though, I have heard so many tell me of their guilt complexes and resultant anxieties, I can see the reality that all is one, and to be able to know something I must own it. Whilst others have it, I must know  of it too, or I could not talk of it and would be prone to judging it without realizing it. Transcending it it not necessarily making it "better" or destroying it. The experience can disappear, but to disappear there needs to be something to disasppear. I need to experience it and see it as an energy with opinion attached, and then there is an opportunity to transcend it. It exists as a physical manifestation belonging to this physical world, of which I am merely a visitor! 

My work as a Zen practitioner, has always been to transcend this conditioning and choose for myself to be in harmony with all else. Societal rules don't change, but my awareness does, so that I can be free to live in harmony with the rules. I can choose freely for myself.   Acceptance and observation - just watching what arises. Going completely with the flow.  What would emerge then?  "True righteousness" born of awareness?  Is this true forgiveness?

Conditioned Mind... or Prison

I am my own creator of these prison bars..

I made a prison of negativity…

And through zazen,  I am getting that I am now nervously coming out of that prison.

Each awareness of imprisonment of this sort,

Does lead me to a great sense of space in which to just be. 

Experiencing my life…

Nervousness is a resistance that is bound to be a response as the bars disappear, Because those prison bars of ignorance through conditioning,

Can act like a security blanket that has for lifetimes, held me tight..

Security though is the freedom to expand into the adventure of life in this universe..