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Sunday, December 23, 2007

Hell

Maybe I should see the buddhist precepts of living not as rules, but traffic signs. As I undestand there is no Hell as a physical place or punishment for bad actions in Zen. Hell, in Zen, is a state of being, again, as I undestand. Therefore, if I find myself breaking a precept, it doesn't mean that I am going to be punished by God or whatever. It just means that I am living in Hell already. If I find myself lying, stealing, being violent, intoxicating myself or sexually abusing somebody, it just means that I am acting guided by fear, greed, hate or ignorance. If living that is not living in Hell in itself, I don't know what else could be.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Happiness and Perfection

I don't feel like Happiness has anything to do with perfection, because perfect is not even always alive. Perfection feels more related to wholesomeness.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

The Only Hell.

Attachment is the only hell. And attachment is no more than the lack of the hability to renew ones option, move on and grow up.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Change

When I change myself, I change the world around. When I change the world around, I change myself.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

The Center of the Universe

You are not the center of the Universe, but you are the center of what the Universe is to you.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Prejudice and addiction

Zazen feels to me like a process of disintegration of prejudices and addictions, mainly, the prejudice of what one is supposed to be and the addiction to what one is.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Shoes and the foot

Samsara is the shoe. Zen is the foot. Which one would I rather live without?

Wearing shoes is necessary and can also be fun, but only when one has feet.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Before death comes.

As it seems to me, Zen is not about achieving Heavens but realizing earth with plenitude. Zen is not about reincarnation concerns but fully incarnating in this body. There is no preoccupation about life after death, but practicing being completely and meaningfully alive before death comes. When one's life is fulfilling and has sense death is impossible and Heaven is everywhere.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

the Ultimate Answer

Sometimes it comes to me the idea that Zen is a process of eliminating the question that leads to the ultimate answer. The question may be an unnecessary loop, because, as it seems to me, who asks and the answer are the same.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Playing is serious business

If you aren't playing and having fun is just because you aren't being serious enough about life.

Unity

Loneliness - Aloneness - Alone - One - Unit - Unity

Friday, November 30, 2007

The Breast of God.

Waiting, waiting, waiting. Delaying, delaying, delaying, what is already here.
Drowning in water,and crying thirsty.
We are kings, but behave like beggars.
We cry so loud that it makes the voice of the great silence inaudible.
Anxious for pacifiers we don't even perceive that the milkiest breast of God is stuffed in our mouth.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

The way I want to live my Life

Wherever I am going, I want to enjoy the landscape. My life is sightseeing, cross-country trip, a cruise. I refuse to let my life to become a sprint race. A race to a place where I don't even know that I'll ever arrive to or if I'll like when I get there.

Whoever I may become on the way, whoever I may be becoming, I want to enjoy who I have been ,who I am right now and who I was.

One must find satisfaction and joy in everyday ordinary life, even though Life is not perfect, even because perfection does not exist. It's very torturous to let our satisfaction to depend exclusively on goals, even because those goals may never be achieved, and if achieved they are never enough. It is part of human nature to always want more.

Life has to be felt, lived and enjoyed as a process, as continuous growth, and not as isolated goals ignoring what is between. Most of the time, anyway, we aren't achieving goals, but, actually working for them. Therefore, not enjoying everyday common living is truthfully wasting most of Life.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

The answer

Zazen is the answer. Zazen is the answer even when I don't have a question.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Malleability is invulnerability

It feels to me that when one is-not, unattached of any pre-conception, constantly assimilating and adapting to reality, one becomes iinvulnerable. Malleable and moving like the wind,calming and/or destructive,can not be offended by any word, can not be harmed by any act, goes where it wants, and is always wise to never enter place that it would not be able to get out.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Swords of fire and the Garden of Eden

Only after I deep realized that Life is suffering, and that suffering happens because of a conditioned mind, only then, I could deeply experience Life as pure Joy. Before realizing that the nature of mind is conditioned, one can’t realize true happiness. Without that realization, one can only have a pretension of happiness, a pretension that is not even a glimpse of the real thing.

It’s like being addicted to a pacifier and having never known the milk of the mother’s breast. It’s like being addicted to cool-aid and having never known the nectar that sprouts out from the fruit of tree in the Garden of Eden.

I said it before, and I am remembering myself again: there is only way out from suffering, and that is the way in, into oneself’s true nature, through the realization that Life under the auspices of a conditioned mind is a life of suffering. The way in is through meditation, only then can one pass through the seraphs swords of fire that guard the Garden of Eden.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Money, power, sex. Budha, dharma, sangha.

Money, power, sex.
Budha, dharma, sangha.
Great balls of fire.
You can't hold them.
You can't help holding them.
You keep juggling
while being juggled.
The universe
having fun
playing billiard
with suns.
And you are
a little ant
on the billiard table.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Without Zazen, there is no Zen.

Zen works for me like a power switch. Every time when I do Zazen I feel a intense energy working in the background of my ordinary life, inside of me, regardless of me, throughout the day. When I neglect Zazen that energy dies off like a big engine that has been turned off. Life and perception just stale, like a elevator that stops between floors.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

The way out is the way in

A couple of days ago, I was thinking about the Eightfold path as eight-lanes highway out of suffering. But, what I forgot to note is that, as I understand, the only way out of suffering is the way in. The way that goes to inside oneself.
The only way out is the way in that is the way through. Meditation, Zazen, gives one that. The way that cuts through dellusion like the sunlight dissipating fog in the morning. Zazen takes one to where one has always been, one's home that one has actually never left but still longs for because one can't see it.
It's a foggy world this one out there. We are already here, home, and we can't see. There is no place for us to go. We long for something that we already have. We are not homeless, we are just blind.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

There is a highway with eight lanes out of suffering

Sartre once said something like: "It does not matter what Life does to you, but what you do to what Life does to you".

This morning I met a very good guy who was example of it. Life was very challenging to him, and he overcame the challenge. It made me think about the Buddha's four noble truths and the eightfold path. Yes, there is suffering. But one does not have to stay attached to suffering. There is a path out, a highway out. A highway with eight lanes. The Eightfold Path.
Once again, it does not matter what happens to you. What matters is the way you view what happens to you, what kind of intention you have, the way you talk about it, the way you act, the way you live, the way make a effort, the way you use your mind and the way you concentrate. :)

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

I want to live large like the sky. Nothing is unvunerable nor undestructable but the sky. Because the sky is empty. The sky is not even there. The sky is-not, always. The weather changes, the time passes, but the sky remains a giant in its emptiness. Its greatness and limitelessness can't be affected. The only obstacle between I and becoming the sky myself is who I think I am. I need to "unbecome". "I" is my prison.

Monday, November 5, 2007

An empty mind = an fulfilling life

After many years, I finally realize, not only in a intellectual level, that as important as food and hygiene are for physical health, meditation is a must for sanity and fulfillment. One could go a day on an empty stomach, but one shouldn’t go a day without meditation. Because what matters having a full stomach when one’s life is empty? Life must be fulfilling, therefore the mind has to be emptied. And that is achieved only through meditation.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Love and the end of suffering

There seems to be only one universal solution for all the problems one can come through in life, as I see. That solution is Love, unconditional love, a love for Life as Life is. That is what dettachment means to me, a love for Life in its mutability, transitoriety. A realization that mutability makes one infinite for experiencing boundlessness. Dettachment is a love for the experience of boundlessness through the challenges that life brings, a committment to grow no matter what. That is what seems to be.

Friday, November 2, 2007

Dettachment and a gun

Dettachment looks a lot like knowing how to use a gun to me. You want to know how to do it before you need to. Otherwise, you can find yourself in deep trouble. :)

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Happiness is very simple.

Happiness is very simple. You only have to be simple yourself. But ,as I understand, simplicity can be very complicated for some people. So, Happiness can be complicated. :)

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Dark times? End of the World as we know it? - December.21.2012

People say that dark times are coming over humanity on December.21.2012. What should I do as a Zen practioner?
The answer that I found to myself is to keep working on myself, becoming a source of light. Only when the night comes is that one can see the stars. A star does not depends on anything else to generate light. Stars generate their own light. They iluminate themselves and others, looking for no reward. That is what I feel about Zen. Zen, in my personal opinion, is all about becoming an independent source of light for oneself and for all beings.