Boxes

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

The other day someone said to me they "had enough religion." That comment, meant to be an offhand reply about coming back again to a service, has stuck with me. Like one of those scriptural phrases or a line of poetry, it rolls around in my mind.

A comment like this suggests religion exists outside of us. I suppose for some this is true, they slice life into pieces and create boxes: this is spiritual, that is religious, this is philosophical, that is scientific, and so on.

Actually, we all do this. It is an aspect of our mind, created by our brain, that we do it. Ad like any organ, it functions autonomically. What do we do with the products of such production?

Some of us take this products seriously, see the slice as existing outside of us, as if we were simply remarking on the natural state of the universe. We fail to see how silently and how quickly our mental knife cuts, sorts, and moves on. In fact, we fail to see we are doing it at all.

So we live in a world of boxes. Some ours, some others. Comparing, valuing, and selecting, boxes and symphonies of boxes compete. We work for this box, we've had enough of that box. We love this other box and hate that one over there. All the while not understanding that the boxes are our own mental creation and that actually there are no boxes, just life.

Our practice is the practice of living without boxes. Everything is us. Nothing is not us.

Be well.