How long? Days? Weeks? Months? Years? Decades? How many moments will pass before you as YOU--the one reading these words right now--awaken to Reality as it is: raw, vibrant, and undistorted? What keeps you, as YOU, from seeing clearly, from experiencing fully, from BEing intimate with WHAT IS instead of being entangled in what is not... without suffering?
The obstacle isn't "people, places, or things" seemingly outside of you as YOU. It isn't some flaw or lack in your AUTHENTIC SELF. We aren't damaged goods or a misfit toy. The impediment is the mind--the relentless storyteller and 'shit poster' we mistake as "ours." Because it's located in the body, we falsely assume it belongs to us, like a possession to dominate or control; like a pen we are holding in the hand. But does it? If the mind rarely follows our intentions, ignores our desires, and runs counter to our directives or what we ask, can we truly claim it as ours?
What is this mind that spins endless narratives of fear, insecurity, judgment, and craving? Does it serve you as YOU, or does it seem to act upon you as YOU, kicking your ass every day, offering its commentary but refusing to follow your requests and wishes? Is it a trusted ally or friend--or is it more like a shadow, a phantom, and a dream that binds and entangles you as YOU while claiming authority over our True Nature... Universal Loving Presence... that it never earned?
Zen... especially the sudden awakening schools like Rinzai and Obaku - rejects the idea and suggestions that liberation, completeness, or awakening lies in some distant future or faraway place. Shakyamuni Buddha didn't awaken because he accumulated six years of ascetic practices. His awakening wasn't about effort or time. It just seems that way, based on how we normally think about his experience. It happened the moment he stopped his version of hustling and grindin'... stopped striving, stopped seeking, and turned ATTENTION fully toward the present. Not drifting, not wavering... just THIS.
His practice wasn't the price of awakening; it was the process of clearing away the debris that blocked what was always HERE. Awakening isn't delayed, transactional, or conditional. It's not waiting for you in the future. It's NOW, in THIS moment, in THIS breath.
Zen doesn't dangle awakening like a carrot in front of you, whispering, "Someday, if you work hard enough, sacrifice enough, or prove yourself worthy, you'll finally arrive." Zen is the spark between the hammer and the anvil, asking: What's stopping you from BEING HERE, fully, right NOW?
Awakening isn't "someday." It's not a finish line or an achievement. Awakening is the direct experience of THIS moment. The only thing a failed system teaches is that it has failed. Zen is not built for waiting or hoping. It's built for turning--turning ATTENTION back from the mind's illusions of past, present, and future, back from fear, insecurity, and craving, to what has always been HERE: REALITY Itself (そのまま Sonomama), naked, vibrant, ungraspable.
The Buddha's awakening wasn't something added to him. It wasn't something he found or earned. It was the instant recognition of what was never him--the noticing of Reality stripped of illusion.
Zen is not a journey forward or a destination. It is a stepping back. Back to the pulse of BEingness. Back to what is so close it can't be FELT until you stop grasping. Stop delaying. You as YOU are already IT. LOOK, LOOK, LOOK! Wake up! Come HOME… soon? No. NOW.
BTW how can we "walk each other HOME," when we've never truly left our AUTHENTIC NATURE? It's just the seeming-mess... the seemingness... the dreamingness that it happened. When light shines, IT steals the darkness.
一We Are the Practice Itself
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