If you have nothing to say, say it !

"Travel light". This advice pretty much embodies all the Zen philosophy. At least in my humble understanding.

It feels like, more and more, that contentment for the mind is much like strength for the muscles. Some people have it naturally, but most of people have to exercise to have it. It just does not happen by itself.

As physical exercise is to give physical strength to the muscles, meditation is to give contentment to the mind. As without exercise the muscle stays weak, without meditation the mind is unable to find contentment.

The hardest thing in Buddhism practice is to develop love for all things, all animated and inanimate beings. Not only things but events too. Maybe the difficulty of doing so is the reason why Zen does not focus much on Love. Zen focus on training the mind off distractions, attachments, addictions, delusions, for suffering to unfold as Love in the form of gratitude by itself.

The funny thing to me is that in the end, I must find gratefulness to the same distractions, attachments, addictions and delusions, to the suffering that I am trying to get rid of. It is hard to me to accept that suffering is generated only by the lack of gratitude. Maybe because I am not grateful (?)

Can the whole Universe stay the same when only one sole individual change, seen that every individual is the center and source of the whole Universe?

It feels sometimes to me that in life there are only two things: suffering and unconditional gratitude. Nothing else. So far, it hasn't mattered how much I have had, or who I have been as a measure of personal fulfillment. All it has mattered is how grateful or ungrateful I have been.

These are very good news. Because I realize that I don't have much control over Life, but I can for sure control how grateful I am to Life.

Tired of suffering

I am tired of suffering, exhausted. The only way I see of not suffering anymore is growing up. The only way for me to grow up, for being an adult already, is to outgrow myself. To outgrow myself as a man, I have to reborn as the Buddha I am, as every being is Buddha.

All I am is a result of my thought and emotions. Thoughts and emotions are always generated from false premises or biased principles. Therefore, what I am as a person is not real. If I am not real, my suffering is not real.

Autumn Leaves

I was sweeping the leaves outside. The ground is still wet. It rainned all day yesterday. There is this one low spot on the pavement where water always accumulates. I have to fix that one day, as everything else that I have to fix in the house, as everything else that I have to fix in my life. I don't even know if Life is fixable. I don't think it is because my life, for example, keeps outgrowing my fixings.



Regardless, all I could do for now was not to break the concrete apart and rebuild the whole thing right, not to break my whole life apart and rebuild the whole thing up, but just sweep most of the leaves on a pile, so it looked less messy. That brought me contentment. Enough contentment to motivate me to wash the dishes in the think. Enough contentment to come running here and write about it to everyone to see it.



Life is like that sometimes for me. I do what I am able to do, regardless of what I am unable to do. And regardless of that, I am able to find some nurturing contentment, and that contentment spreads, better, contagiate other parts of my life. I would like to contagiate other people with this simple contentment too, but that is not up to me. Regadless, I try. That is what I want my writting to be about.



Anyway, I wish, and I hope, one day I'll be able to find happiness in simplicity, that would make things less complicated.

Happiness has always been here all this time, I've just found out.
And all this time I've been running, rushing, outracing Happiness,
when all I needed to do was to sit still.

Anything one may say about silence, it is not silence.

One is always oneself, but the self that one is constantly changes.

Only love win battles. Because love is victory in itself.

The opposite of fear is compassion.

The Universe is alone.

The pursuit of Happiness is a death trap. Because it is contradiction. Happiness is not achieved by pursuing. Happiness is found only through realization.

Love

More important than the Love that we have and that we expect from others is the love that we have for ourselves and how much we ourselves love. Be the sun of your own Life. It does not matter what the whole Universe does, the Sun just keeps on shining, bursting heat and light.

The only way of being unconditionally happy is unconditionally loving, not objectively loving, but being Love itself, like a self consuming flame that unconditionally gives warmth and light.

The way I feel, Zen is about satisfaction through the elimination of distraction, because the satisfaction is inside. If one does not contact this natural level of satisfaction, he or she will be vulnerable to pursue that satisfaction outside. When a person tries to find satisfaction outside, the things of the world become like beautiful baits, but baits nonetheless. They become that kind of bait that is colorful and pretty, attractive to a fish, but they are actually a hook in disguise, no nutrition just death. Once that happens, a person become a hungry gullible fish in a barrel loaded with irresistible baits, irresistible hooks.

What Zen does to me is to show that life is not a barrel, and that satisfaction is not outside. If a person finds inner satisfaction Life reveals itself as a infinity ocean of possibilities, and the fish realizes that he is not just a fish, he is the fish and the ocean. There is no separation. Circumstances may be limited and limiting, but, emotional possibilities and emotional choices are always infinite and limitless if the person realizes that satisfaction is inside, that the one who owns satisfaction owns the world. The world is just a way back to what one is already is. Zen is the way back home.

Coming to think, the so called freedom may be the most imprisioning thing. Once one thinks that he or she is free, one becomes attached to freedom and is afraid to loose it, fights to keep it. But if one is afraid, if one has to fight, there is no freedom anymore, because attachment is there, and attachment is the opposite of freedom. Attachment is the ultimate and everpresent prison.

A bird in a cage may not fly out even when the gate is open, because in the cage is where he has always found food, water, protection. The cage is not a cage, the cage is home. The bird just can't fly away because the cage is inside. The cage is always inside.

A cockroach will be a cockroack does not matter where it is. It feels at home in in the sewage. In a palace, it will look for the trash bin to live and gorge.



A lion will be a lion, it does not matter where it is. In the jungle, reigns among all animals. In a palace, it will eat the king.



Zen, as I understand, is not concerned with who one is. It focus on transformation, growth, independence. No matter where a person goes, what a person does, that person will only be and do what that person is. Therefore, the better thing to be is freedom, independence, fluidity, in a way that one is able to keep rensponsive to the changes in the environment. Attachment to identity frequently means ruin and suffering.



In some circunstances a cockroach is much more skillful, powerful, able to survive than a lion. Better than be a cockroach or a lion, then, is not to be attached to identity and change as the environment and circunstances change, and win.

The highest regarded possession one can acquire for practicing zen, I think, is nothingness. Nothingness does not means nothing. Nothingness means the realization that the proccess of identification of beings, things and events is always generated and generates delusion. The Universe in the way one experiences is always delusion. The identity we find on things and the way we identify things are actually an imposition of our perception as an individual and a member of an species. Identification means isolating something as existential unity. But in the Universe there is no isolation, there is no unity. The universe is all co-related. As I understand, the concept of nothingness describes the fact that nothing is anything because all is one.

Mastering puppets

As a zen practitioner I don't see myself as a spiritual seeker. Being a seeker would mean that I am in search for something away from here and now, away from myself. The funny thing is that wherever you go, you automatically turn that place and time in your here and now, that place and time becomes you.

We are some kind of King Midas, everything we touch become gold, our gold, what we most value. What we see, feel and experience are the values that we project onto reality. We are the center of our own universes willing or not, knowing or not.

Zen, as I understand, is a realization of that. It's a realization that one needs to stop dreaming, that one needs to stop sleeping, that one needs to stop the self-imposed distractions, that one is the master of the puppets of one's own life. Therefore, one needs to step in from the periphery of one's own life. Realize that you are the master of the puppets that your experiences are.

The American dream is a nightmare, it makes the dreamer insomniac.

The Zen dream is not even a dream, because Zen is about awakening, being , instead of becoming, pursuing, dreaming, sleeping, entertainment, escaping.

Zen strives for being here and now. Realization is not there in the future. It is here and now. It does not depend on “ifs” and “whens”. Zen sells peace, not pacifiers. Peace is the fruit of detachment, enjoying more, fully being your truth, instead buying more, having more.

The American dream is about Life, freedom and pursue of Happiness. But what if one has no freedom? What if one faces death? What if one’s pursue leads to constant failure? The answer is: Those circumstances do not matter, if you one IS Life, if you one IS Freedom, if one IS Happiness.

The American dream is the path to success. The Zen awakening is the way of fulfillment.

Personality feels like a comfortable zone, better saying, prison. Isn't a comfortable prison the worst kind of prison? The temptation to not get off is just to big. The temptation to not grow out of it is just irresistible.

Evolution is the only revolution.

Seemingly, the difference between what I am and what I really am, is the exact same difference between a diamond and the dust on it.

Isn't a diamond nothing more than solid and precious transparency?

The Mountain is not the wind
The wind is nor the mountain
The fountain is not thirst
Thirst is not the fountain

Control

When I want to watch TV comfortably, I sit and use the remote to control what the TV throws at me. When I to live comfortably I sit zazen and use my mind to control what Life throws at me.