Zen & Tautology

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

This morning is cold and fresh. I woke with no agenda. It is both a light feeling and a frightening one. Sometimes our burdens, plans, hopes, and dreams give us a sense of place, direction, and stability, while at the same time, rob us of being awake.

As a Zen practitioner I practice to wake free and stand without bags. This requires a willingness to live without place, direction, and stability. Why? All places, all directions, all ground is delusion. We create our universe in each breath, in each moment, and with each step. We die, the universe dies. And as the universe dies, we are truly born. There is a reason the Ancients taught that we should die to ourselves. One cannot be awake and at the same time live in a fiction as if it were real.

Very challenging.

The world of duality is immensely seductive. I am this; you are that. This is better or worse than that. I win, you lose. Scores are kept. And so on.

One reason I so enjoy cold air (or hot air, for that matter) is that it has a way of bringing me to attention. Like sudden noises. Awake, alert, there, in the moment. In my recent studies I find circumlocution and tautology rule. Its a problem with theology. One puts a finger on something and it slips away, like mercury. Or one uses something to prove itself. Literal nonsense.

Yet, we still seek. We still strive. So, the practice is to remember to stop, let go, and be one.

Bless the chill in the air. It's a bell of mindfulness.