Zen story: When is awareness really awareness? When awareness has been inputted into awareness.
By emptychair
@innertalks (23742)
Australia
March 28, 2022 8:56pm CST
The Zen master, Haroldo Kerploski, was sitting on an outside bench, in the monastery, crying.
One of his students walked past him, and said,
"What is the matter, o master."
The master replied,
"I have tears in my eyes, so I cried them."
"We should chop wood when we chop wood, eat when we eat, sleep when we sleep, and cry when we cry."
"Everything must be done without pretence, and be itself in us coming, and going, from us too."
The student said,
"So, you are no more than a baby. You act from your reflexed responses only."
The master said:
"No, my lad. We Zen masters have introduced awareness into all of our reflexive responses."
"And so, when we sleep, we are aware of our sleeping, when eating, we are aware of our eating, and when crying, we are aware of our crying."
"Now, a mountain will always be a mountain, a river a river, and the moon the moon, but all of these things only become so to us because we have seen them from awareness, not blindly, reflexively so.
"When is awareness really awareness?"
"When awareness has been inputted into awareness."
"We enter into awareness by our being aware of awareness within us."
"We match/align ourselves to awareness, rather than our responding reflexively to just our reflexes."
"Awareness is both a state, and a position."
"It is the energy of love, radiating out from that love, and only by our loving too, can we bask in the true awareness that our own loving brings to us then too."
"Awareness is seeing truth; loving is being truth."
Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com
Perhaps, the Zen master was really crying because he had seen this beggar at the gates of his monastery. Awareness often uses tears to heal us with too, as does love too.
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2 responses
@innertalks (23742)
• Australia
29 Mar 22
That is an astute observation.
Yes, some of us block our own awareness.
We are aware, but we do not want to move in that direction with our lives, but are more comfortable staying within our present comfort zone of living, awareness, and the being our present-level selves.
We also need an awareness of love.
When we are blocking our own love, we need to act more lovingly, and forgive ourselves, and others around us too.
Love can only be found, understood, known, by us by our actually loving. Love must remain active within us.
Awareness can only increase in ourselves by our being more aware. Awareness must also remain alive, and active within us too.
@innertalks (23742)
• Australia
29 Mar 22
That's true, although, we should not be ourselves over the top, to impress, or to hurt, others either.
Someone throwing an anger tantrum, is not expressing their true feelings, but more performing a dummy spitting routine, instead.
True feelings being released are always genuine, and most of us around that person can feel that, and pick up on that, as here, in my story with this crying Zen master.
Yes, the world is mostly make-believe these days, and a stage where we act falsely rather than truly.
In his song, "Are you lonesome tonight," Elvis Presley sings this great line:
"You know someone said that the world's a stage, and each must play a part."
Perhaps, that line was borrowed from Shakespeare, who said, famously, as you like to quote, from time to time too:
"All the world's a stage,.. And all the men and women merely players;. ...They have their exits and their entrances;... And one man in his time plays many parts."
Make-believe is alright on the theatre stage, but in real life, we should more endeavour to be our real selves on that stage.
@innertalks (23742)
• Australia
30 Mar 22
@Shiva49 Yes, democracy has to be returned to being for the people, and led by a real person, of democracy, not by a dictator wolf, hiding in the sheepskin of democracy.
@Shiva49 (28387)
• Singapore
30 Mar 22
@innertalks Yes Steve, I cannot but draw attention to the wiles of politicians who not only deceive but also have ulterior motives - for them, they and their party are above the country and the general public.
The rot has set in from time immemorial and is tough to rectify and repair. We need not only a system overhaul but also a new mindset.
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