Embraceable You

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

Enjoy your happiness! Everywhere I see people smiling. Store clerks smile. People at social gatherings smile. Commercials have smiling, laughing faces; content, loving faces, excited, joyful faces. People are happy, happy, happy! Or sad, sad, sad.

I have noticed people often don't quite know how to experience happiness or contentment or serenity. And they run away from uncomfortable feelings, mask them with chemicals, or just plain deny them.

I hear so often, "how am I supposed to feel?" This phrase is particularly telling. Is there some cosmic measure? Some litmus test of feeling against which we pass or fail?

Under the phrase is a sense of hostility toward the feeling itself. As if a feeling of humiliation or anger or even happiness is somehow not me even if it is me who is actually experiencing it. Perhaps we don't know how to experience ourselves?

To experience oneself means to experience directly that which is under the mirror's image. Feeling images are ubiquitous, but they are like buddha images. In order to experience your own authenticity you must break the images as they arise. Embrace yourself as you are. Learn to experience yourself and reside within yourself. How?

Practice Zazen.

Be well.