Looking without Seeing

I often notice my desire for things to be suddenly different is followed by the mental search for a solution, a plan or a program. We desire gyms to make us more fit, therapists to make us mentally well, diets to make us slimmer; the list goes on. But the primary path to anything is awareness.

Awareness of our internal and infinite strength swirls in the mingle of our most vulnerable weaknesses. Buddhism is the middle way; we coexist with everything and nothing. There is no peace, just as there is no chaos. There is only this, and this is now that.

The moment we look FOR something, we've allowed ourselves to look away from what is there. With eyes wide open, we can allow ourselves to see through delusion, to be with all thought, all knowledge, all images, and in pure darkness, knowing that true reality is fleeting. That is enlightenment.

It is useful to let go of the illusory need to see. We most benefit from looking without being held hostage by an expectation that we will see. Looking is enough.

Comments on Steve Hagen's "Buddhism Is Not What You Think" Chapters 3 & 4

Allowing ourselves to volley in an imagined world of this or that results in an imagined existence, at least half of the time. Hagen writes, "...we imagine mental objects that we call good and evil...they're phantoms we've created in response to other phantoms."

I often find myself setting goals, an expression of dichotomous, imagined living. I weigh this, but should weigh that; I run at this pace, but should run at that pace; I've accomplished this, but should accomplish that...the list continues.

Hagen encourages us to embrace our existence in Totality. That our only reality is the present, a place of wholeness where "that" is illusion. More directly, he addresses our illusions of good and evil. That there is a preferred way of being, a goodness that has a genuineness that is more authentic of better than evil or bad ways of being. He reminds us that "our effort is to live fully and compassionately in this world of muddy water without churning it up all the more." And so, the Precepts begin to make more sense: to not speak unless one can improve on the silence.

The seduction into dichotomous thinking, dichotomous living extends to science and religion. The former being fact-based and the latter being passion-driven. But in this moment, our beliefs, from wherever they originate are our realities.

Jack Kornfield encourages us to let go of our reality. That only through our release of these "corruptions of insight" can we truly engage in the path. That clinging to beliefs, whatever their source slows our journey, holds us back from being in this moment.

My resolution for 2010 is to not make any.