Silence Speaking

A conversation “happened” the other day between believers in god, unbelievers, and those who cannot decide what they believe. The unbelievers scoffed; the believers took offense and affrontedness; the undecided remained confused.

I asked: Does it matter how or what one believes or does not believe unless what they think and do harms another without that other’s permission; does it matter so long as each is allowed by all others to choose their own pathway?

Arguments increased concerning the need to force, to coerce others into seeing the “light” according to one or another’s precepts. The unbelievers pointed fingers, saying, “See?!” The undecided retreated.

I asked the believers, still fighting amongst themselves, arguing their various “god-ways” and “gods,” what happened if and when all of them, unbeliever and believer, were proven right?

Eyes looked. Silence entered.

One small question from an undecided: “What do you believe?”

“I don’t believe. I know. For me. And what I know is that the answer is always yes and yes. What matters it that one among you chooses a more narrow path and another a broader one, while yet another chooses no path at all? Tao is.

“Are goals bad?”

No.  Desire, desperation…need…for success and reward are the hazard, not goals.

Goals are self-appointed tasks—to sweep the floor, to plant a flower, to clean the toilet—and destinations—to learn to play a piece of music on an instrument, to master a self-expressive art, to design a garden, to create a peaceful, wholesome environment.  

Practically,  to provide yourself and those dependent upon you sustenance through doing requires goals.  

Hazards and pitfalls appear when the goal takes precedence over virtues, when acquiring the returns for a goal achieved becomes the priority rather than the means to fulfilling one’s life needs.

You’ve prepared yourself lunch — a modest sandwich.  A friend arrives just as you are preparing to sit down to eat.  You ask, “Have you had lunch?”

“No,” they answer, “but please don’t go to any trouble.  I’m fine.”

To make another sandwich, one for them, is a solution.  Better, though, because then they do not feel as if they have caused you more effort, is to simply cut the sandwich gracefully in half, add a piece of fruit to each plate, and sit down and enjoy each other’s company.

One of my students has fallen from The Way.  It happened in a mere blink of a moment fourteen months ago.  I let her steep, did nothing.  It was not mine to intervene until she recognized and asked.  It took her fourteen months.

-_-

Where she held contentment and self-confidence in herself, where she practiced responsibility for self, she now feels only desperation and resentment.  She seeks approval, regard, accolades.  She desires to be noticed by others, her any action cheered and applauded.  She wishes to be envied for her accomplishments.  Yet, she doesn’t wish to chop wood and carry water…unless the doing brings the accolades and reward.

Embracing laziness (sloth) and greed for reward and praise (lust), cultivating pride, coveting, she reaps the fruits of her mindstate—dissatisfaction and anger…at everyone and everything.  She thirsts, and her thirst cannot be slaked, cannot be quenched, by any water.

I’ve listened.  I watch.

I’ve set her a task.

But she is not so different than the many.

A question, perhaps a test: Can you live in solitude and do, happy in the results of your doing simply in the doing; can you live in solitude and be, happy simply being?

From a Meditation

The pathless void

whispers

unseen visions

to an open mind,

reverberating

knowledge

beyond reason.

July 11, 1990 

Copyright 1990 D. L. Keur

Laying still, plumage intact, no sign of harm….

Why did it die?

It was time.  The environment became hostile to its continuance here.  It ceased acknowledging existence within this realm at this temporal expression.

Why?

Many reasons, mostly man-made.

Truth — man, at war with his environment, refusing to come to peace and enter harmony with the world of which he is intrinsically a part — is, in his fear, killing himself and all cohabitants which share existence within this particular time-coordinated biosphere. 

Life is dying?

Life is always dying here. It blinks in and out of existence faster than a nanosecond. 

Life is always being born here.  It blinks in and out of existence faster than a nanosecond.

Life is intrinsic here…and everywhere.  Life is one of Tao’s ever expanding, ever changing, ever compressing, expressions of being/becoming…and, though it appears to die, to cease existence, in fact, it does not truly cease.  It only is perceived to cease…and, in fact, by this system’s measurement and rule, it ceases within this temporal stream flow of this cooperative space. 

So the bird isn’t really dead.

The bird is.  And the bird is not.  Both.  Simultaneously.

However, life as man commonly knows it here and now is dying, yes.  The environment is changing. Quickly.  Life will continue, but life will be a different expression, intrinsically interconnected and codependent with the new environment which is becoming.  This is the nature of this expression — codependence.

As the bird, so we.

An instance enterng inside a stream of being to express as a becoming — this is creative process as seen from inside of time.  

Within a temperal perception of existing, one pays attention when tao moves zen moment into a persistent quake demanding a becoming.  We listen.  Or we should.  You know this.  You all experience this. 

“I knew I should have stopped at the Gram’s” — this after having had the “notion” while driving home.  But you neglected the nudge and simply followed whim or routine.  Perhaps you were too tired.  Perhaps it seemed silly since you just saw Gram this morning. 

There was no logical reason for the notion to nudge, but it did, and, later, having received the news that the neighbor (who was pushed by tao to move since you hadn’t) found Gram fallen, unable to get up. 

Gram is going to be fine, but, had you listened to that notion’s nudge, you would have gotten there to change that lightbulb on the porch, and she wouldn’t have fallen taking a misstep in the dark.  Instead, she now she sits uncomfortable in a hospital bed, and you now must go twice daily to Gram’s house to feed and walk her dog, then mosey to the hospital to visit and make sure the doctors and nurses don’t treat her as something less than what she is — free, of sound mind, good health…except for that broken ankle, now, and an adult with the right and the capability to make her own decisions. 

Do pay attention to a notion’s nudge.  There is always reason.  To listen and act is to save yourself and others undue hardship and extra footsteps.

So, we have been nudged.  “Begin the teaching.  Now.  Online.”

And we listen.

Welcome to Silence Speaking the essence of zentao.