Once you give up on the idea of getting somewhere, grasping something, realizing some mystical state, attaining high peaks...you may open your eyes on what it takes to practice: just be alive now for
IT IS ALL THAT YOU ARE. Sunny, rainy, moody, happy, depressed, the ground for practice is endlessly changing and yet, this is it. End gaining is a major sickness of practice and a great hindrance as we spend measuring what separates us from what could be, what should be. Drop the
could,
would,
should and penetrate through this very naked gate. In a train, walking the dog, shopping, dancing, sitting, lying down...it rings into the ten thousand activities, the one thousand arms of Kannon, each one being exactly what it is and yet the very core of perfect practice. If we fail to do so, we come back again and again. That's simple.
Just a thought: I used to be a chain smoker for 25 years. If my friend doesn't call me, I may start to worry. I realized how addictive my personnality is. How unnecessary this addiction is. It could be everything and anything, chocolate, sex, liquor, people: an addictive personnality is just desperatly trying to play with past and future, to manipulate reality in order to recreate something lost or gaining something yet to be discovered.
Once you sit now in now, the addiction vanishes, and this moment is truly complete, nothing extra, nothing missing. This is what our practice is about.
So 15 minutes of sitting a day, multiple insta-zazen and countless opportunities to open Kannon sun-moon glow.
gassho
Taigu