“With no hindrance in the mind, no hindrance therefore no fear. Far beyond delusive thinking we (they)finally awaken to complete nirvana.” (Great Heart of Wisdom Sutra)
One major aspect of Zen practice is to awaken to a certain truth: Our feelings and thoughts are powerful inhibitors to freedom.
When we live in fear created by our thoughts we suffer in a jail of our own making. See the jailer and free yourself. That’s the message.
How to do that? How do we experience fear and dispel it within our mind? One way, I believe, is to come to terms with our own mortality, our own vulnerability, and the fact that in the greater view of things, life simply goes on as it has and will continue throughout the millennia.
Our individuality is a delusion, created by our brain. As Master Dogen pointed out in his Genjo Koan, when we step out of ourselves a realization of the universality of being opens before us and we are no longer just ourselves, but the whole universe.
When in that realization, what is there to fear?
So, in our practice of zazen, one of the things that happens is a confrontation with the loss of self. Many of us step back when that happens, afraid to go deeper and we retreat into our comfort zone, the comfort of our self. Yet, that self isn’t real. It’s a shadow cast on a screen in our brain.
As we confront these dark days, days of fear, illness, isolation, possible death, look outward to the infinite sky above us. Look downward deep into the quantum level of existence. In either direction, infinity.
Death is life and life is death; they “inter-are.” Witness the evening, witness the morning. Witness the leaves appear on the trees, witness your neighbors children. Witness the love and compassion surrounding you. What else is there, but the life we live in the here and now?
No hindrance, therefore, no fear.
Be the blessing you are and let the rest go.
Daiho Hilbert
One major aspect of Zen practice is to awaken to a certain truth: Our feelings and thoughts are powerful inhibitors to freedom.
When we live in fear created by our thoughts we suffer in a jail of our own making. See the jailer and free yourself. That’s the message.
How to do that? How do we experience fear and dispel it within our mind? One way, I believe, is to come to terms with our own mortality, our own vulnerability, and the fact that in the greater view of things, life simply goes on as it has and will continue throughout the millennia.
Our individuality is a delusion, created by our brain. As Master Dogen pointed out in his Genjo Koan, when we step out of ourselves a realization of the universality of being opens before us and we are no longer just ourselves, but the whole universe.
When in that realization, what is there to fear?
So, in our practice of zazen, one of the things that happens is a confrontation with the loss of self. Many of us step back when that happens, afraid to go deeper and we retreat into our comfort zone, the comfort of our self. Yet, that self isn’t real. It’s a shadow cast on a screen in our brain.
As we confront these dark days, days of fear, illness, isolation, possible death, look outward to the infinite sky above us. Look downward deep into the quantum level of existence. In either direction, infinity.
Death is life and life is death; they “inter-are.” Witness the evening, witness the morning. Witness the leaves appear on the trees, witness your neighbors children. Witness the love and compassion surrounding you. What else is there, but the life we live in the here and now?
No hindrance, therefore, no fear.
Be the blessing you are and let the rest go.
Daiho Hilbert
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