The Essence of Worry - Doubt and Trust

While the Monarch butterfly seems to travel great distances on a precise path, there is not a single Monarch that completes the journey from Mexico to Canada and back again. There are many that contribute to that appearance. Each and every one is born with exactly what it needs. They are not taught the way and have no need to learn or acquire anything to fulfill their purpose. All of them are simply being, beautiful, inspiring in the moment, as are we when we let go of the notion there is anything else. Doubt that? Let go. And be careful when you do, because the temptation is then to trust, and to trust, one must have some level of faith that there is something to doubt. There is not. Every Monarch will meet its end, not a single one lives with the trust that the journey will be completed, nor the doubt that it will continue. To let go of doubt is to let go of trust, else one remains on a path that will consistently circle back on itself. There is one way for each Monarch and that is to follow the way laid out within. Could anything less be true of you?

photo courtesy of mikebaird at flickr.com

The Value of Hopes and Dreams

What do you value? What is it you work to attain or maintain? Let go your attachment to that now. Whatever you desire, whatever you believe should be the outcome or reward of some effort, even if that effort be love and the results seem to be for the highest good; it is made of the stuff that is the source of all suffering.

All disappointments and struggles are all the result of holding a standard, and having values that must be met. Unfulfilled, these establish and make manifest suffering. Accomplished they bring along the suffering of worry that they may not remain. It can be no other way. Let go your attachment to all three: attain, maintain, retain, and you will know the only thing that is real and permanent.

photo courtesy GoOregonDemocrats at flickr.com

In the Blink of an Eye

I think the ‘toon perfection makes practice (last week) was hard on the eyes. So I'm making the type a little bigger...but that's not what I'm really talking about. I just couldn’t stand to leave those two characters suffering like that, so I’m settling their karma and revising their look with an additional insight into their suffering …which is trying too hard and thinking too much.

A couple weeks ago I started reading Blink! which will take quite a few months of the 5 minutes a day I give myself for reading. Considering the subject matter, it’s almost silly to keep reading. The whole book is a koan as there are almost 300 pages included in this book on “thinking without thinking”. (to be clear, by koan I mean a "story, dialogue, question, or statement in the history and lore of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, generally containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet may be accessible to intuition." –Wikipedia)

In Blink!, Gladwell reports the findings of one scientific research study after another to prove that all the knowledge we can amass about “X” over time (even a lifetime) may not be as accurate and certainly not as easy to compile as spending just 15 minutes or less observing “X”. Of course, the concept of “thin-slicing” is not new. In the compilation of the Zen master Huang Po’s teachings on enlightenment there is the persistent message that enlightenment is not something we acquire through conceptual thinking over time, but in an instant by not thinking.

What may take time on the way to enlightenment, is what I seem to do most often (and not surprisingly my cartoon characters) and that is endure the outcomes of my bungled efforts to think better than (that is, fix and problem-solve) rather than accept and appreciate what IS natural and true in the moment. When we (I and my characters) stop amassing and carrying the full load of our thinking we can enlighten up in the blink of an eye. Whew!

The Perfection of Imperfection

Well, with Mercury in retrograde this is either a really good or a really bad time to run this 'toon. No matter how well we know the spiel we may sometimes find ourselves reciting our lines through clenched teeth as we attempt to move beyond feelings of disappointment, frustration and resentment. Retrograde or not, it seems there is a kind of backward way of perfecting things in our culture and that is by finding fault and problems that need fixing. Okay so everybody doesn’t do it. For every judge there is usually a victim. But it isn’t unusual for victims to judge so they too can demand perfection or possibly seem more perfect themselves.

If you’re wondering when this cartoon box addendum in going to lighten up, how, 'bout right now! If we were all to suddenly let go of any and all expectations for perfection the whole meaning of life would be lighter. Perfect makes practice. That’s a practice we can never master but which requires us to ever find that which needs perfecting. It's a part of the problem-solving paradigm of the planet, and really, what fun is that? Perfecting will never put us in touch with the Perfect. In fact it draws us away from the Source of all that is perfect. Perfection doesn’t need to be attained, it just IS, and it is only through allowing it to Be, that we will ever see it.

Seeing Perfection in our lifetime, in everything, at this very moment is completely and entirely possible. And, there's not much we need to do to experience it. Just find nothing unacceptable. I know, that can be difficult but when given a chance, it really works and can be quite fun. No matter how wretched a thing may at first appear, admire how perfectly wretched it is. Don’t try to change it. Don't wish it would go away. Don't identify and resist imperfections. And be sure to appreciate any difficulty you have with this process as absolutely perfect for what it is.

When we accept perceived unacceptables as perfect as they IS, we are allowing for, appreciating, and expressiencing everything in balance. Of course when we continue to find things unacceptable there is little opportunty for balance and harmony because the space is filled with worries and resistance -- which of course is not unacceptable (zen intended) but is also not the limits of our expressience either.

A good place to practice unconditional acceptance is whenever you think about a particular president. It doesn't matter which one you pick (though I have my "favorite"). Just imagine how quickly that individual becomes powerless to throw you off balance when you find him to be perfect considering who he is rather than who you think he should be. He may be perfectly wretched, maybe even better at it than anyone else in recent memory! Perfectly great at it! In the words of Paul McCartney attributed to Mother Mary: Let it Be.

Appreciate all that is, as it is, in the IS of the moment. When your mind wants to wander off on how unacceptable it will be in some way, bring it back to the perfection of imperfection in the here and now. Half of all our problems will disappear when we let go of the need to perfect everything else. The other half of ALL OUR problems will disappear when we let go of the need to perfect ourselves. Sure, we'll still have reasons to grow, and things we want to do, but rather than problems, they will be simply awesome.

When we're free of the promblem solving dynamic, all of our energy is available to Be all the perfection that IS naturally in each of us. Therein lies true mastery over habitual actions that leave us stuck sitting on the couch arms folded, minds frustrated. As many a guru say, Be Here Now. When we love (appreciate, accept) All As IS (yes, there could be some hidden code in that) we are no longer disappointed, our personal power is freed up, and the world can be a better place. Really.

Peacefully, Pic;)

Chop wood, carry water

"Before enlightenment," the Zen saying goes, "chop wood, carry water." The path starts here, with so much excitement about all the wood and water there is. Trees are felled with great effort and broken into manageable pieces then stacked into piles of trophy-like proportions. Alternately, we will see our reflection in various pools from which we can draw meaning and motivation as we gather and carry it to quench our thirst when we chop the next batch of wood.

Eventually we collect so much that we can barely get around. What was once illuminating can grow to obscure our view. And yet it is not enough. We begin to see that we need to let go of these well-understood stockpiles. If we keep these stores of wood we can never be warmed by them, nor see our true selves in these batches of water we gather.

We might wonder if we could be approaching enlightenment. But the Zen saying tells us even when we are enlightened we will continue to chop wood, and carry water. So, we might wonder, what's the point? Probably it's that our reasons change. We are able to see that the needs we once sought to compensate actually have never really existed except as we chose to engage the illusion of separation and duality. Even enlightenment then is just a flash in the bucket. We see we have always been acting on what underlies enlightenment even as we thought we didn't have it.

If we are careful at this point, we could move beyond the illusional duality of ignorance and enlightenment only to see there is no true beyond -- just as there really wasn’t a before. We find ourselves standing still, but not with comparison to our former busy selves. This stillness is an IS-ness that is always present and always will be. We see that even the notion that we are not present is only a notion. For everything we perceive as other, past, present, future, can only occur in the powerful present. And there we have it…again and anew.

We have a heightened awareness of how our perceptions work even when we create the illusion that something doesn’t work. We see that we are the choice point, we are the stillness, we are essentially the void, through which everything comes and goes. We find enlightenment is not some great illumination we attain over time, but simply being empty of attachment to need and being weighed down.



Happily this does not necessarily translate into taking up the ascetic life. In fact it is only at this point that we can truly receive the joyful peaceful life we could never have managed or controlled into our experience. At any time, we can step off that beaten path and allow ourselves to freely participate in this process of cleanly and clearly bringing life into expressience. We can still chop wood and carry water, but now we can also stop, build a fire, and enjoy a nice cup of tea.

The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it. Herman Hesse