The Dream. The Illusion of Time.

I am seeing that the universe doesn't rationalise in terms of right or wrong, but in terms of manifest and un-manifest.  Storm are destructive, but nature doesn't see this as wrong, but as a storm. Is that not the way it is in life?  For if we are not life, what else are we?

To look at life is to look at all of life. If we begin to pick and choose what we want to experience surely we will not be living wholly. Not that we have any choice other than to choose the manifest, as there is only now. How can we master it, if we don't choose to accept and experience it?  

So I would need to take care in the habit of thinking positively about the future, for every manifestation manifests wholly with both opposites of good and bad, or it would not be whole.

However, this is the illusion, for the future is now unfolding in every disappearing moment, which immediately becomes the past..That is the dream.  That is the illusion of time.

Knowing, Not Knowing

In zazen today.... We can know the unknowable through awareness, experientially. It is far from making sense because it is far from reasonable. Only the mind is reasonable. The Self simply is.

Stream of Conscious or Just Plain Mind Antics...

At touch of stream of consciousness here.. Or maybe better to call it the narratives of the mind…

I am aware of the need to focus on the here and now, to be aware of when my mind gets totally absorbed in the daily tasks that I perform. Totally engrossed in the material world and leaving behind the spiritual awareness that I have developed in zazen.  I am thinking right now of zazen.  But is that the zazen what was, and not zazen of the here and now? The mind being aware of itself?  What tricks!

Of the mindfulness that I attain in zazen...  I can recognize that I am closer to centred-ness in zazen than I am when the world sucks my attention into itself. Or perhaps truer to say that the world doesn't do anything as it is after all... me!

It's just that when I am sucked into the world, I am a space filled with the physical story of my existence and not giving my attention to...  I - the being who is experiencing experience.

However, right now I am aware that there is a fight already beginning within me. A "reasonable" fight where a part of the mind is saying, "I have done my zazen already, therefore it is important that I get on with life and write this." 

What a crazy statement! Obviously comes from my mind as if zazen isn't part of my [other] life. So how do I stop this?  I don't…   It is all me.

For to resist is to desire that I change whatever is so in my existence of any given moment.  To try and change is a form of desire to rid myself of desire in the secular world. 

Desire [no matter what it is for], is the source of all suffering. So said the Buddha. And I am seeing proof after proof of the truth of it.  But enough of so many inadequate words.  This is Zen.

How Can This Date "Thing" Get To Be So Real?

Well, here I am at the 2nd Day of December. That is just a name. Just a label. Is just a story about December. A story I hold in my mind. A unique story, but a story that I share with the rest of humanity - well the majority of humanity that shares the concept of a calendar that is believed to be real. .  My narrative that I have learned. That is nothing new or mysterious unless I move into the question about it. What is it really? 

Numbers on a piece of paper on a wall. But where else is the actual reality of the calendar.  I can look outside and see frost on the grass and that tells me it is December?  No… Naturally speaking that tells me it is cold outside.  So I say this is the date.. What is?  It is not anywhere to be found except for in my concepts.  In my mind.  A idea created to help us know… what?  The date of course! And everybody else who knows about dates will agree with me that it is the 2nd Day of December right now.  But we've invented it! A concept. An idea... and we call it reality.  It doesn't exist anywhere else outside of the mind.  How could this date thing get to be so real?

In zazen, if I completely drop the idea of "date" existence continues.  If I could possibly throw it right out of my mind and forget that it ever exists, there are some people who would say that whether I know it or not, the days come and go, and that means that the days have dates and they come and go.  But to me they have been forgotten.  We need to forget our self, so that we can remember who we really are.. How much more "Zen" can one get?

The Illusion of Paradox.. Letting It BE.

Whatever is happening right now, could be a response to a past situation or indeed a past life.  In Zen, it is named makyo, yet it is what is so with or without the name.. It has come to awareness therefore it is of value to see how I got it wired together in the here-now?

In reality,  the past is gone, but the reactions may remain.  No, it is the concept of the past being gone (or not) as the past is an illusion and an illusion cannot exist, therefore another paradox. Name it and that isn't it. Name it illusion, and drop that thought... Now what!? Sucked right into the paradox there! And further paradox...

Accept what is already being accepted. For nothing can be in awareness without such acceptance! So there is no acceptance when one already accepts!.

How do I work this out? I do not work it out!  If past lives are gone - they are illusions, yet illusions are what are preventing me from awakening?  If illusions are not resolved, do they not continue to influence our lives?  Probably.  But that too, is illusion.

If I ignore all this without looking, then that will not work. If I seek then that will not work. So, without seeking and without not-seeking... Living again with paradox.

Roles "I" Play

I know that I play a role of my own created narrative.  I just need to know that I know it.  I know that my narrative is created out of my identification of the body-mind.   I know that night-time dreams and daily living in my "waking state" generate identical responses in my body mind.  So what to do?

No "doing". Listen and watch as Self. Practice zazen. What else?

I am Self taken on human form and this "I" is nothing reasonable or intellectual, it just observes reason, knowledge or any other phenomenon. In fact it is not "it" at all! I am I. Nothing to do with the story that I have created about who I am.  So who am I that contains all such narrative? Crushing the narrative won't "work" either! I still remain.

Opening Up

I would say that we need to open ourselves to all that we experience as we experience it.  Not making it happen, but allowing it to unfold for life often teaches us things we prefer not to learn about, and those lessons can be delayed, not lost, but will always come back to us, perhaps in a more intense form that we may pay closer attention.  We can choose to be great explorers of life itself, or otherwise prevent ourselves from growing and learning.