The soldier decides not to fight. The dog begins to bark. The body begins to shiver. The dog begins to lick. The woman decides to read. The breath begins and ends. The eyes blink open and closed. The dog begins to pace. The heat blows out and stops.
When you know with sincerity and in truth that you are not the body, you are not the mind, you begin to know who you are and this knowing-shift makes all the difference to how you live in the body, with the mind. You begin to see that change is the Divine, Eternal consciousness….and you see that there is no necessity for the mind and body to grieve for the so-called temporary life in the body with the mind. You accept the inevitable change of sloughing off the body with the mind. And this seeing is seeing through, the fundamental seeing through with the eyes of Buddha.
Knowing this….is knowing God’s design….and further yet, it is knowing the joy of God….the joy that today….you are in the presence of God when Bear is anxious and Harry barks. You are being there when the thunder rumbles across the sky unseen but evident, when the lightning strikes through without a doer, when water runs downhill, when bats hang upside down, when boys run at one another with sticks, when adders slither and beets stain the hands. All of this….is the play of God….all of this is the presence of God….not held in any book, not confined by any dogma….defined by any doctrine.
God occurs….is to be….is met with….is never anywhere else but everywhere all the time. We are in the middle of IT….IT is us.
Ceaseless….beyond imagination….beyond words. Unborn….undying….changeless.
With these eyes we rest in the worldly winds; the coming and going of pleasure and pain. With these eyes we forfeit ambition for or against. The mind of man craves, the eyes of Buddha accepts. All performances stop. The mind unmoved, the eyes wide open. Picking and choosing cease. Everything is the face of God, God the face of everything hidden in the manifested stuff of skin and bone, wood and shape, name and form everywhere.
Hankering after neither this or that….hankering after falls away revealing the one bright pearl.
Everything that comes into your life is in service of the ego until you see that it all has come into your life in the service of awakening. To see, without disturbance, the wounds, the gains, the losses, the pleasures, the pains, the blame, the praise, the disgrace, the honor….all of it…. the changing flow of the water into the ocean is Buddha vision. Nothing is counted as credit or debt, all blame and shame disappear, the hammer of guilt is dropped, the veil of shame torn off. All of this forgotten, never to be held against or tallied for….the chain of the tallying self is snapped….delusion cleared away….the burden abandoned.
Only a fool returns to this binding nonsense.
by Yao Xiang Shakya,
Contemplative Order of Hsu Yun