Trust
In Zen, the journey to at-one-ness, is about focusing on everyday events, and seeing the profundity that is there. If I am to become one with all there is, I need to contemplate all the “ordinary things”.
Zen asks me to extend my sitting zazen into mindfulness of everything I do and encounter, and in the face of there being no guarantees!
I am asked trust completely!
Take the everyday event of a small seed in the ground as it transforms itself into a mature plant. It trusts the universe as it sends its sprouts towards the sunlight.
In fact zazen is a process of trust. That trust is blind, yet all-seeing. I just need to get to see that I can see a “something” that is beyond the illusory wheel of life and death.
There cannot be a guarantee as that would be saying that manifest and non-manifest exist, when in fact they are illusions. They are not even an illusions, because by its own definition, illusion cannot exist!
February 18th, 2010 at 12:46 pm
This is timely–I’m working on remembering how to trust the writing process, ie, not second-guess myself all the time. Love the thought that trust is blind, yet all-seeing.
February 18th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
I found that mindfulness could also be achieved by doing things slowlier than usual. Including slower breathing
February 19th, 2010 at 6:22 am
Hi Charlotte, I love that paradox of blind - all seeing too. It is about just being with whatever there is to be with.
And Rizal… I used to practice Ki Aikido, a martial art that is the practice of co-ordination of mind, body and spirit. To work in such cordination, started slowly at first for beginners, but then it was like awareness was being anchored one point in the hara (lower abdomen) where all was very still and centered, like the eye of a hurricane, whilst all around that one point, body and mind was very alert and could move with incredible speed if speed was needed.