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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3331, Sunday, October 26, 2008, Editor: Mark
The River and the Clouds
Once upon a time there was a beautiful river finding her way
among the hills, forests, and meadows. She began by being a
joyful stream of water, a spring always dancing and singing as
she ran down from the top of the mountain. She was very young at
the time, and as she came to the lowland she slowed down. She was
thinking about going to the ocean. As she grew up, she learned to
look beautiful, winding gracefully among the hills and meadows.
One day she noticed the clouds within herself. Clouds of all
sorts of colors and forms. She did nothing during these days but
chase after clouds. She wanted to possess a cloud, to have one
for herself. But clouds float and travel in the sky, and they are
always changing their form. Sometimes they look like an overcoat,
sometimes like a horse. Because of the nature of impermanence
within the clouds, the river suffered very much. Her pleasure,
her joy had become just chasing after clouds, one after another,
but despair, anger,and hatred became her life.
Then one day a strong wind came and blew away all the clouds in
the sky. The sky became completely empty. Our river thought that
life was not worth living, for there were no longer any clouds to
chase after. She wanted to die. "If there are no clouds, why
should I be alive?" But how can a river take her own life?
That night the river had the opportunity to go back to herself
for the first time. She had been running for so long after
something outside of herself that she had never seen herself.
That night was the first opportunity for her to hear her own
crying, the sounds of water crashing against the banks of the
river. Because she was able to listen to her own voice, she
discovered something quite important.
She realized that what she had been looking for was already in
herself. She found out that clouds are nothing but water. Clouds
are born from water and will return to water. And she found out
she herself was also water.
The next morning when the sun was in the sky, she discovered
something beautiful. She saw the blue sky for the first time. She
had never noticed it before. She had only been interested in
clouds, and she had missed seeing the sky, which is the home of
all the clouds. Clouds are impermanent, but the sky is stable.
She realized that the immense sky had been within her heart since
the very beginning. This great insight brought her peace and
happiness. As she saw the vast wonderful blue sky, she knew that
her peace and stability would never be lost again.
That afternoon the clouds returned, but this time she did not
want to possess any of them. She could see the beauty of each
cloud, and she was able to welcome all of them. When a cloud came
by, she would greet him or her with loving-kindness. When the
cloud wanted to go away, she would wave to him or her happily and
with loving kindness. She realized that all clouds are her. She
didn't have to choose between the clouds and herself. Peace and
harmony existed between her and the clouds.
That evening something wonderful happened. When she opened her
heart completely to the evening sky she received the image of the
full moon - beautiful, round, like a jewel within herself. She
had never imagined that she could receive such a beautiful image.
There is a very beautiful poem in Chinese: "The fresh and
beautiful moon is travelling in the utmost empty sky. When the
mind-rivers of living beings are free, that image of the
beautiful moon will reflect in each of us."
This was the mind of the river at that moment. She received the
image of that beautiful moon within her heart, and water, clouds,
and moon took each other's hands and practiced walking meditation
slowly, slowly to the ocean.
There is nothing to chase after. We can go back to ourselves,
enjoy our breathing, our smiling, ourselves, and our beautiful
environment.
- Thich Nhat Hanh, from Allspirit
To Know Yourself is to Forget Yourself
The journey of awakening happens just at the place where we can't
get comfortable. Opening to discomfort is the basis of
transmuting our so-called "negative" feelings. We
somehow want to get rid of our uncomfortable feelings either by
justifying them or by squelching them, but it turns out that this
is like throwing the baby out with the bath water. According to
the teachings of vajrayana, or tantric, Buddhism, our wisdom and
our confusion are so interwoven that it doesn't work to just
throw things out.
By trying to get rid of "negativity," by trying to
eradicate it, by putting it into a column labelled
"bad," we are throwing away our wisdom as well, because
everything in us is creative energy - particularly our strong
emotions. They are filled with life-force.
There is nothing wrong with negativity per se; the problem is
that we never see it, we never honor it, we never look into its
heart. We don't taste our negativity, smell it, get to know it.
Instead, we are always trying to get rid of it by punching
someone in the face, by slandering someone, by punishing
ourselves, or by repressing our feelings. In between repression
and acting out, however, there is something wise and profound and
timeless.
If we just try to get rid of negative feelings, we don't realize
that those feelings are our wisdom. The transmutation comes from
the willingness to hold our seat with the feeling, to let the
words go, to let the justification go. We don't have to have
resolution. We can live with a dissonant note; we don't have to
play the next key to end the tune.
Curiously enough, this journey of transmutation is one of
tremendous joy. We usually seek joy in the wrong places, by
trying to avoid feeling whole parts of the human condition. We
seek happiness by believing that whole parts of what it is to be
human are unacceptable. We feel that something has to change in
ourselves. However, unconditional joy comes about through some
kind of intelligence in which we allow ourselves to see clearly
what we do with great honesty, combined with a tremendous
kindness and gentleness. This combination of honesty, or
clear-seeing, and kindness is the essence of maitri -
unconditional friendship with ourselves.
This is a process of continually stepping into unknown territory.
You become willing to step into the unknown territory of your own
being. Then you realize that this particular adventure is not
only taking you into your own being, it's also taking you out
into the whole universe. You can only go into the unknown when
you have made friends with yourself. You can only step into those
areas "out there" by beginning to explore and have
curiosity about this unknown "in here," in yourself.
Dogen Zen-ji said, "To know yourself is to forget
yourself." We might think that knowing ourselves is a very
ego-centered thing, but by beginning to look so clearly and so
honestly at ourselves - at our emotions, at our thoughts, at who
we really are - we begin to dissolve the walls that separate us
from others. Somehow all of these walls, these ways of feeling
separate from everything else and everyone else, are made up of
opinions. They are made up of dogma; they are made of prejudice.
These walls come from our fear of knowing parts of ourselves.
There is a Tibetan teaching that is often translated as,
"Self-cherishing is the root of all suffering." It can
be hard for a Western person to hear the term
"self-cherishing" without misunderstanding what is
being said. I would guess that 85% of us Westerners would
interpret it as telling us that we shouldn't care for ourselves -
that there is something anti-wakeful about respecting ourselves.
But that isn't what it really means. What it is talking about is
fixating. "Self-cherishing" refers to how we try to
protect ourselves by fixating; how we put up walls so that we
won't have to feel discomfort or lack of resolution. That notion
of self-cherishing refers to the erroneous belief that there
could be only comfort and no discomfort, or the belief that there
could be only happiness and no sadness, or the belief that there
could be just good and no bad.
But what the Buddhist teachings point out is that we could take a
much bigger perspective, one that is beyond good and evil.
Classifications of good and bad come from lack of maitri. We say
that something is good if it makes us feel secure and it's bad if
it makes us feel insecure. That way we get into hating people who
make us feel insecure and hating all kinds of religions or
nationalities that make us feel insecure. And we like those who
give us ground under our feet.
When we are so involved with trying to protect ourselves, we are
unable to see the pain in another person's face.
"Self-cherishing" is ego fixating and grasping: it ties
our hearts, our shoulders, our head, our stomach, into knots. We
can't open. Everything is in a knot. When we begin to open we can
see others and we can be there for them. But to the degree that
we haven't worked with our own fear, we are going to shut down
when others trigger our fear.
So to know yourself is to forget yourself. This is to say that
when we make friends with ourselves we no longer have to be so
self-involved. It's a curious twist: making friends with
ourselves is a way of not being so self-involved anymore. Then
Dogen Zen-ji goes on to say, "To forget yourself is to
become enlightened by all things." When we are not so
self-involved, we begin to realize that the world is speaking to
us all of the time. Every plant, every tree, every animal, every
person, every car, every airplane is speaking to us, teaching us,
awakening us. It's a wonderful world, but we often miss it. It's
as if we see the previews of coming attractions and never get to
the main feature.
When we feel resentful or judgmental, it hurts us and it hurts
others. But if we look into it we might see that behind the
resentment there is fear and behind the fear there is a
tremendous softness. There is a very big heart and a huge mind -
a very awake, basic state of being. To experience this we begin
to make a journey, the journey of unconditional friendliness
toward the self that we already are.
- Pema Chödrön