Originally Posted by
Risho
Practice is enlightenment; practice never ends. It can't.
I don't believe in the sort of enlightenment that solves all of one's problems. Meaning that there is some point along a linear timeline that one is considered "enlightened" and then everything becomes "better" afterward. I think part of that drew me to practice. I wanted to find a way out of anxiety on some level.. uncertainty.
But things aren't fixed.
Could you imagine that?
If one had the answer to all things in life, then that would not be living.. Fixed, static answers only apply to dead things, things that don't change. Contrastingly, life is vibrant, changing, and by its very nature, things are not what we may expect if we have a fixed idea of them... which is what lends itself to dukkha.
So that being said, I believe there is enlightenment, that does make everything ok even if it's not what we expect. In a deep, deep level we are ok with things as they are because we no longer have to fit them into our limited shape of what ok is. Instead we "shikantaza-ize" them. lol We drop our judgements, grasping, greedy, ignorant, angry mind, and just let them be... allow them to be us.
But the practice never ends because the conditions of our life always change, so we always have to keep sweeping as Taigu would say.
Now that being said, my practice is shit. I look at the picture of Sawaki roshi's sewing, or how Jundo or Taigu present the dharma, how they practice, and my practice is nothing compared to that.
So I sit.
Thoughts of enlightenment or delusion, drop, sit.
Zazen feels great; drop it, sit.
Zazen feels like crap; drop it, sit.
Just sit.
But not just sitting, isolated.. giving to charity, volunteering, atoning, chanting, sitting... all just sitting in a sense.
Living life from a perspective of open responsiveness instead of closed off resentment, wishing things were the way I wanted them. And a lot of times I feel that heartache; it reminds me of how attached I am to my imagined ideals.
So again I practice. Coming back again and again to now, dropping it all.. coming back.
Gassho,
Risho