Ha ha Touché! On Friday, October 7, 2011, <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hello Chris, > > In case you did not receive this message, I hope this one gets through. > > Siska > I received your post, sorry I didn't respond earlier as things are pretty hectic lately that I have not been able to reply with a sufficiently clear mind.
Siska, I appreciate your graciousness in responding to my pathetic "But no one replied!" email. I did see your reply and have been rolling it around, disastisfied with my failure to communicate my point, but not really confident I could do better in a subsequent reply. Thanks for the chance to try. > > Btw, often this forum's posts go to spam folder (including my own). If you don't receive responses as expected, perhaps they do to your spam folder by accident. I think my writing is not a bit off-kilter and not respondable to as much as I like. Google has I think learned not to put [Zen] posts into the spam filter. > Life is pretty good, I should not complain. The thing is, I have > never thought of my life as being surrounded by demons or > . My previous statement was trying to say that I wish whoever > or whatever is around, I can be in peace with it. If it is good now > (and it is), which means that I'm surrounded by boddhisatvas, then > it's good. But then I should be feeling just as good when life is not > good, when I'm surrounded by demons. It does not mean I'm > currently surrounded by demons. But then again, life IS suffering. > It is a matter of whether there is *I* who suffer. Should should should. If you are making a list of should's and oughts, the first thing to list is "Shouldn't worry about shoulds." :) But should's do arise - best just to toss aside that list. > In essence, there is no *I*. As you said, actions are self less. I disagree with your word essence. There is no I, simply, literally, and exactly. It's not some exalted spiritual truth, it's just the fact of the day, like water is wet. Any notion of I is just some mental phenomenon. There is no way to cut your human reality out from the rest of us. > But when I look into myself, I always have this sense of >-ness, sense of I, I'd call it, which is illusory, but it's there. The I isn't there - the sense is. Why worry about some thoughts? >Until this is gone, my actions are never really selfless. There is no self, so you can never have an action that is anything but selfless. Whatever you are worried about, it can't be that your actions are not selfless. Maybe you expect to do stuff and not have certain thoughts arise, and they do arise, and that worries you. The upset you get when these thoughts arise can probably go away more easily than the thoughts. At least the upset is probably causing more such thoughts. "I am not selfless yet!" The upset comes, I'm guessing, because how things are, including that bit of reality inside your head, does not match how you want/expect things to be. Seeing the wanting/expecting as merely another mental formation, and letting go of it the hope that it should be true because you want it so, I expect would reduce the upset, and reduce the sense of an I. >They are driven by this sense of centredness. Caused by? Well, that seems worth experiencing; I find it useful at times to understand the things that motivate my nervous system. > Or perhaps it's just me. > When I said I like the way Bill put it, I didn't mean the story. I like the story too, but I copy paste below which one I was referring to: > 'Doing Kindness' > If you're doing kindness to make yourself fell good, then you have missed the mark. > If you're doing kindness to make others feel good, then you have missed the mark. If you're doing kindness, you are closer but still have missed the mark. > If you're just doing, then you're close to the mark. > If life just unfolds around you, then you're very close to the mark. > If Just THIS!, Bullseye! I think I understand Bill's point here, but I don't like find an emphasis on hitting the mark or missing the mark to be that useful. If I perform an action, and then have some thoughts about what a good person I am, then that's what happened. Why then spin up the extra energy to judge it? If I don't judge it, but stay with my experience, sometime, I'll notice how the mental energy going into to creating this idea of a good Chris makes it more likely that I missed the fact that the person asked for cream instead of milk, and therefore making my action inappropriate; and often just staying present causes the thought to evaporate with no trace, no lingering energy. Let me put it to you this way. The difference between these aren't stages of growth, but different perspectives and responses to the same situation. The difference between the first and the last case isn't so much doing things better, it's not doing unnecessary things, and not seeing unreal things as real. Just let things be. I'll pick up trash or console people or tell people, no, you can't help them in that way now, or eat, or sit zazen or whatever. Looking at my mental formations and trying to judge them as closer or farther from some idealized state I was hoping for is not, for me, following the path. > All that represents what I have in mind. All except 'If Just THIS!', > not because I think the last part is n ot right, but because I didn't > really have that in mind when jumping into this discussion. > Still I like the above as a whole. It is very pithy, and not explicitly judgmental. > > Have a good weekend, Thank you for a wholly enjoyable morning of writing. Cheers, Chris > > Siska > > ________________________________ > From: ChrisAustinLane <[email protected]> > Sender: [email protected] > Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:14:05 -0700 > To: Chris Austin-Lane<[email protected]> > ReplyTo: [email protected] > Cc: [email protected]<[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Zen] Fwd: Re: [Zen Living] Supreme Vehicle > > > I am resending this email as an experiment. This post showed up on the web page but never was delivered to my mail reader, and I never saw a response. It keeps happening that I send emails and get less response than I expect and don't get my own copy back. So if you got the below email and now this email, please let me know. > > On Thursday, September 15, 2011, <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Which are you referring as my initial complaint? As far as I remember, I did not complain about anything. > > You wrote earlier: > >>It's easy to be happy when all the >>boddhisatvas are around. I wanna >>be in peace whether it is boddhisatvas or >> devils or demons that surround me. > > So I assumed you do not find yourself surrounded by 10,000 helping bodhisattvas but by demons. > > The rest of my response was based on that assumption. Both that there is some suffering in your moments and that around you are things you perceive as demons rather than bodhisattvas. > >>But perhaps I've said something that >>made you think so. > > >> >>> You only perform selfless acts. Perhaps you then add on to then some mental activity, but the action itself is selfless. >> >> I guess this is another way of putting it. So putting it the way you did for what I've been trying to say ~ everyone (or at least I can speak for myself), always add some mental activity on to their actions. With that, the actions are no longer purely selfless actions. > > The actions are still there. The food I eat > > > > Current Book Discussion: any Zen book that you recently have read or are reading! Talk about it today! > > > > Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional > Change settings via the Web -- Thanks, --Chris [email protected] +1-301-270-6524
