Okay, this isn't TRULY a derivation! I just wanted to share Roshi Hogan's post from Monday -- I'm a bit behind on my blog reading.
A lot of mention is made on this blog about the idea that life is a journey and that we each must forge our own path. One question that many may have is: Where should the journey lead us? I love the perspective posted on Pure Mountain Tao:
A lot of mention is made on this blog about the idea that life is a journey and that we each must forge our own path. One question that many may have is: Where should the journey lead us? I love the perspective posted on Pure Mountain Tao:
We may think of finding the Tao as a journey to somewhere. This however is not true. Truth is we are merely coming home again. When we are born, we are one with the Tao. There is no division in the mind. As we age, divisions are created. We wander away from our connection to the universe. We get immersed in modern culture and its ways. This takes us away from home. We become strangers in our own mind. Our existence becomes one that is based on illusion and deception. Coming back to the teachings of the Tao is coming home again. Breaking down barriers, unifying the mind in purity. So you see, we are coming back to where we started.
Yes, I hear a lot how people discover the TTC and say how it seems familiar, simple and right. Where life up to then had been progressing to unnatural, confusing and wrong.
ReplyDeleteFor my own spiritual journey, I find that I am increasingly uneasy with philosophies which support a view of growth through adversity, learning valuable lessons such that we not repeat them, or other ideals which intimate that we have immersed our egos in a false existence and that only by awakening can we participate fully in existence. That somehow we must remove ourselves from the illusion in order to understand that what we think constitutes reality is not truth, and therefore someday we must develop the skills to move beyond this existence.
ReplyDeleteMight we consider that existence simply for its own sake is purpose enough? Is it not escapist angst to determine that a goal of life is to conquer the dream and own ourselves? If goals are obstacles to mindfulness and living in the moment, is growth through or out of adversity not also a goal with all the inherent judgments and valuations therein? As such, is growth such a critical aspect to existence?
One goal of growth seems to be that we must try not to compare ourselves and to not look beyond our own internal responses to the external illusion. Is it not deceptive to say that we should endeavor to not measure ourselves against anything, that only our own internal state is reality? Do I not only know that I am, because I can sense that which I am not? A particle alone in the universe has no properties, no existence.
In this vein, I defend our right to be asleep in our bodies. I defend our right to repeat mistakes without consideration to some great lesson we were supposed to learn, and have yet to accept so we stop repeating it. I defend our right to be fully immersed in the human experience as a critical piece of the spiritual puzzle.
By this I mean that all experience is merely what it is, not something to figure out how never to experience its like again. What if pain and suffering will not gain us wisdom, nor truth, nor growth, but exists as their own purpose, and that love is about recognizing that all aspects of existence are beautiful because then it can be experienced as much more than merely a dream in the mind of the cosmos? Is it more terrifying, and freeing, to truly let go of expectations and accept that we chose to experience even our worst, repetitive pain as an integral part of our personal rhythm within the great pattern?
Why not accept that we choose to be that whorl in the flow of existence which experiences more pain than joy in the balance, records it, creates it, is that organized moment which revels and dances in the whirlpool which sucks us down where we see existence from a particular perspective, only to be spat out again and flow once more? Yes, as spiritual beings we have the power to change, to repattern ourselves and become a different eddy in the flow. We have the power to step outside the dizzy dance of being and choose never to enter here again. Yet to denounce others as asleep, as unaware, as living in illusion seems arrogant and divisive. To envision we might achieve our more perfect world if only ‘they’ would wake up, become properly mindful, reach for enlightenment, does this serve to accept and love all aspects of existence, or merely to devalue their experiences next to our own?
And yet, is not even that egotistical world view also part of the great puzzle, and thus also to be embraced?
ASG