To give up yourself without regret is the greatest charity. To transcend motion and stillness is the highest meditation. Mortals keep moving, while arhats stay still. But the highest meditation surpasses that of both mortals and arhats. People who reach such understanding free themselves from all appearances without effort and cure all illnesses without treatment. Such is the power of great zen.
Using the mind to look for reality is delusion. Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness. Freeing oneself from words is liberation. Remaining unblemished by the dust of sensation is guarding the Dharma. Transcending life and death is leaving home. Not suffering another existence is reaching the Way. Not creating delusions is enlightenment. Not engaging in ignorance is wisdom. No affliction is nirvana. And no appearance of the mind is the other shore.
When you’re deluded, this shore exists. When you wake up, it doesn’t exist. Mortals stay on this shore. Those who discover the greatest of all vehicles stay on neither this shore nor the other shore. They’re able to leave both shores. Those who see the other shore as different from this shore don’t understand zen.
Delusion means mortality. And awareness means buddhahood. They’re not the same. And they’re not different. It’s just that people distinguish delusion from awareness. When we’re deluded, there’s a world to escape. When we’re aware, there’s nothing to escape.
- from the wake up sermon by Bodhidharma
Some questions for you
What is it to create delusion? What is it to engage in ignorance? What is it to be unaware? Is it all willful. I'm asking you. Why do you create delusion and why do you engage in ignorance and why do you remain unaware?
For what reasons would you create delusion? What do they serve? Were you conditioned to delusion? Was delusion thrust on you?
Are you uncomfortable with the utter emptiness, the void that you fill up with with delusion after delusion, year after year? Do you sense it permeating all your compulsive knowing everything you know about all of everything the eye/mind can see/concieve?
Can you percieve without knowing for even a single moment? Try it. I can't. Why? Why must you know? Do you have no choice but to know?
What happens to the knower when she percieves the unknowable? Does she shatter? Will she perish, along with everything she knows, has known, will know? Where would that leave you?
If you could would you let go of her and her knowing? Would you renounce her? Has your mind concieved a mind of it's own? What is it that you have done to yourself?
I have my own ideas about all of these questions and my own delusions but I'm asking you. I'd like some fresh perspective. If you post here and think yourself to be not creating delusion, not engaging in ignorance, not unaware I'm absolutely 100% not looking for your perspective here. Sincerely, these questions are not for you. These questions are for my fellow mortals, so to speak. These questions are for those of you who acknowledge to at least some degree your own delusion, mortality or at least suspect it. If this is not you my only question is why do you think yourself not to be creating delusion and why would you believe a thought like that to be truth? What does it serve?
Submitted June 18, 2022 at 09:54AM by slowcheetah4545 https://ift.tt/vbxtTy8
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