Right where you are is the holy place, a shrine where fundamental reality resides. Perhaps, however, you are unable to see and know this Truth. But I say to you my dearest aspiring Buddhas…this is the time and this right here is the place to see and know the Truth. It is not somewhere else or another time.
The Buddha-Dharma is ever present but the heaps of forms, feelings, perceptions, impulses and even our small-minded consciousness cover over our fundamental reality.
The Truth is that there is no separate ego-self. Thinking this way comes from ignorance and is a con game extraordinaire. Most of the world thinks there is a “ME” a “MINE” and an “I” thing that exists.
The pandemic, this social isolation is a rip in the fabric of the world’s fabrications. Many of us long to return to the operation of the mental fabrications in order to prop up “ME” “MINE” and “I.” We want to return to the illusion that there is a separate thing called by these names. We want order restored – to go back under the cover of structures that keep us thinking we are somebody separate, a somebody with entitlements and rights who is on a path to worldly success.
Lest we forget, the world of things is called samsara – the world of suffering. It is a world of unsatisfactoriness, it is painful, fueled by desire and ignorance. Don’t miss this opportunity handed to us from the Source to see the Truth.
In a matter of months, the fabrications are not holding but are collapsing. The lines we called boundaries are mere lines in the sand – subject to the waves of change – washed away in the twinkling of an eye. This time is a time to see what is reliable Truth and what is delusion. Many look to the old structures of leadership and government but leadership and government in themselves are falling apart and are not holding to the ethics and duty of their office. Corruption in the form of greed and hate abound furthering the confusion that comes with uncertainty. This time of seeing through the veil of ignorance, seeing the conjuring of delusion gives those who yearn for transcendent Truth a glimpse through to the fundamental reality. Right there, in front of us.
The basis of this transcendent Truth is a sighting of existence beyond the world of things. That’s a big deal. The cranking up of uncertainty and the falling apart of things we have counted on breaks through our cavalier approach to our existence clears a way to see through. If we want to see fundamental reality, this breakdown of systems demands our attention and makes it difficult to dismiss the fragility and ephemeral nature of the things of the world.
It has happened in history and it is happening now to all of us who are embodied now. There are those who took up the breakdown of society in WWI, WWII and turned to the fundamental reality of divine existence. The first-hand experience of the samsaric world shook some to the extent that they realized that these structures are indeed a veil of ignorance and that there is a transcendent reality that has never been somewhere else but is right here covered over by the game of ignorance.
Let me respectively remind you, do not waste this time. Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Make the most of this breakdown in the samsaric world.