The question came up today about whether a Buddha would ever feel frustration ... did he always feel peace and contentment?
I believe he knew how to feel peace and contentment, even amid a world that can often be frustrating!
You see, the highest Contentment, attained through dropping all thought of sameness or difference, is being Content with not being content all the time. We can experience a deep, abiding Contentment ... fully present even with daily pains and sometime discontent.
The best way to be "at home in" and "at one with" life is by always being at home ... lacking all thought of somewhere else to go ... even when life takes us places where we do not want to go. Drop all resistance to sometimes resisting (sometimes not resisting) ... and that is Deep Liberation.
The True Peace sees right through this messy world we live in that is sometimes peace sometimes war.
To hope for one's experience on the Zafu to always be a joyful, blissful, happy time is ... in our view ... not the Highest Samadhi. To favor only the blissful moments, and to reject the bored or painful moments is (in our view) not Enlightenment ... for Enlightenment is to understand the Bliss that is sometimes being amused, sometimes bored ... for that is wonderful life, no place other to be (or where you should be).
Oh, for sure, our Zen practice
will also teach us many ways to drop resistance to life we normally
feel. So, very often, we can drop resistance, discontentment, pain and
the like that is present in life and on the Zafu (we become "masters of
the mind", who know 1000 tricks to change the mind). Yet, still, the
Greatest Change is knowing that we flow with whatever comes.
And how do we do this?
"Just Sitting", moment by moment on the Zafu, dropping all thought of
anything to add, anything to take away, all goals and ideas of other
places to be, knowing that a pure moment of Zazen is the whole universe
sitting Zazen in that moment (like the cosmos in a grain of sand), all
the world living life as you live life. We come to observe our coming
and going boredom, discontent or small resistances as if a spectator
watching a bit of mental theatre, all while comfortably at rest in our
True Seat. We "go with the flow" because we ARE the Flow!
Those meditators who seek only bliss states, only joy, only peace as "right" meditation ... not only miss the complexity of this wonderous life, but overlook that Joy and Peace beyond some mere joy and peace.
(remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells;
a sitting time of 20 to 35 minutes is recommended)
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