When I was a teenager, I was not happy with my mind. Fifty years later, I think I see that there’s a natural rhythm in awareness, a rhythm that Gautama identified as his “way of living”. In particular, mindfulness of the cessation of habitual or volitive action with regard to the movement of breath allows a natural rhythm in awareness that includes thought.
Lots of folks discover that they are helpless to do the right thing in life, and learn to give their action up to a higher power. When they give their action up, I believe they experience the same cessation of habitual or volitive action I have learned to experience, and they find a more natural rhythm of awareness.
Learning to give up and let go surely helped me suffer less. Thank you for articulating it succinctly. Thank you, Mark!
I think what you’re talking about is a “view” that is non-conceptual and expansive, without a fixed location in time or space — big Mind rather than small mind, as Suzuki Roshi was fond of saying. This can be cultivated through zazen.
There’s no place to leave a response to your Disclaimer, so I’m leaving it here:
Someone gave you a jewel, and you mistook it for a stone.
Granted, it had some dirt on it.
“I can only say, that I can’t help the style with which I write.”
Comma splice.
Writing is a choice. Speaking is a choice.
Are you a student or are you a stone?
I give up my action to a higher power
which tells me to leave you this response.
But I can’t deny this habit of correction,
of thinking I know something,
the volition
to poke a flower into blooming.
Namaste.
“In writing assignments a comma splice is typically regarded as an error. In informal writing, though, a comma splice can be carried off successfully with the right kind of clauses: not too long, and preferably related. Adventurous writers pull it off regularly.”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/maybe-you-like-comma-splices-maybe-you-dont
Certainly agreed. If you want the comma for effect, I suggest cutting “that.”
But I also suggest cutting the whole sentence,
since you can help the style with which you write.
To say so feels like a cop-out,
an underestimation of your own Buddha nature,
a refusal to practice awareness through your art.
“I can only say, that I can’t help the style with which I write. If I did not strive to be beyond doubt in what I have to say, I might not find the words I myself need to hear.” (Disclaimer)
The style in question was the certainty with which I write. The gentleman felt that my tone might mislead students or would-be students into thinking I was a credentialed teacher, which I am not.
“Writing is a choice. Speaking is a choice.” There is the cessation of that action of speech, body, and mind, wherein one determines and then acts–that’s the core teaching of Gautama the Shakyan, and most of what I write about.