Facing It Directly

These days there are many public teachers whose guiding eye is not clear. How wrong this is! How dare they mount a pulpit to try to help others??

Showing a symbol of authority, they rant and rave at people without any qualms, simply pursuing the immediate and not worrying about the future. How miserable!

If you have any kind of a clue at all, you should not let yourself be set up as a teacher as long as you are not enlightened, because to do so is an absolute travesty!

If there is something real in you, “musk is naturally fragrant" they say. Do you understand this?

Just look how many phony “Zen Masters” there are, degenerating away each and every day. They are like human feces carved into wooden icons; in the end, all you're left with is the smell of shit!

Wishing to get out of birth and death, wishing to attain release, you try to become unified; but one does not attain unification after becoming homogenized. If you try to make yourself unified, you will certainly not attain unification.

There's a story about a seeker who called on a Wayfarer and asked, as they roamed the mountains, “An ancient teacher said he sought unification for thirty years without being able to attain it; what does this mean?” The Wayfarer replied, “I too am thus.” Then he asked the seeker, “Understand?” He also gave the seeker a poem:

 The ancient teacher attains unification
 and I too am thus;
 before the end of this month,
 I will settle it for you again.

At the end of the month, the Wayfarer passed away.

Tell me about unification; is it good or bad?

The ancient teacher attained unification, and I too am thus.

I hereby announce to all Zen seekers: Facing it directly, don’t stumble past!

Each of you, go on your own way.

Some people talk of seeking out "ego death" ... they do not realize that any "ego death" while they are alive will only be a small death. True "ego death" is simply "death", for that is when the vapor has fully dissipated. When the self dies, there will be no self left to mourn it. The True Self does not mourn because it does not go anywhere.

So each of you: go your own way! You cannot fake enlightenment to yourself.

Submitted December 26, 2019 at 08:30AM by GreenSage45 https://ift.tt/2EPdYj4