... Chapter 4 ... Contents ...
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| 3. To you who are totally exhausted from fighting with your spouse. |
When you're fighting with your husband or wife, you don't realize that the argument is about an illusion. But in zazen, you recognize illusion as illusion. This is why it is important to look at life with the eyes of zazen.
Equal rights are only an issue when a couple fights. When men and women are getting on well with one another, no one talks about equal rights.
Whatever you're thinking, the thoughts that come into your head right now won't be there in a thousand years.
The question isn't who's right. You're simply seeing things from different points of view.
"No one built this wheel of suffering for you, but you're the one who spins it and you're the one who rides it." [traditional saying]
But you don't realize this because you're caught in the framework of your own personal ideas.
The actions of one and the same person can save a life and can provoke anger. It's the same sun that sets on New Year's Eve and that rises on New Year's Day.
When you open your eyes and recognize the Dharma body,
you see that no single thing really exists. [Shôdôka]
Even a good-for-nothing recognizes that all things are one when he wakes up to his good-for-nothing nature.
Stop 'being' - and just stay like you are. Hold fire. Just sit [shikantaza]!
It all begins when we say, "I". Everything that follows is illusion.
Everyone imagines that their ego is something unchangeable, some immovable center-point which everything revolves around. There once was a man who said, "Look, everyone is dying except me!" He's been dead for a long time now.
Following the law of causality, ignorance [mumyô] suddenly rears its ugly head.
Blindness [mumyô] means that we don't understand the way things are. If we don't understand things, the best thing would be to stay calm. But no, instead of this we stomp around like a bull in a china shop. That's what makes everything complicated.
"I was just thinking that things were going better for me, when fell into a depression again. Oh, my mind is really sick!"
The question is only: what can you do now with this mind of yours?
Life is one big contradiction: "Have you seen what he's done?" When all the while you would have loved to have done it yourself!
Life isn't so easy. Sometimes there's war and the sky is on fire, sometimes you take an afternoon nap by the stove. Sometimes you work the whole night through, sometimes you get drunk with friends.
In the buddha-dharma it is a question of how you can give direction to this life according to the buddha's teaching.
You're in love with each other? But not for your whole life. There was a couple who loved each other so much that they attempted suicide together in order to be united in death. One of the two survived and shortly afterwards fell in love all over again.
Humans are truly pitiful.
Beauty is no guaranty for a happy life. One woman is so adored by men that she's already had three children who don't know who their fathers are.
Everybody talks about marrying for love, but isn't it really just marrying for sex? In the end isn't it really only about a penis and a vagina? Why doesn't anybody simply say that he's fallen in love with a vagina?
Take a look sometime at the face of a dog who's just had sex. He just stares into space with strangely empty eyes. It's exactly the same with people ? in the beginning they work themselves up into a frenzy, and in the end there's nothing at all.
A man who understands nothing marries a woman who understands nothing, and everyone says, "Congratulations!"
Now that's something I cannot understand.
Family is the place where parents and children, husband and wife simultaneously all get on each other's nerves.
When a child is defiant the parents curse, "You don't understand anything!" But what are the parents like? Isn't it also true that they don't understand anything either? Everyone is lost in ignorance.
Everyone is talking about education, but what are we being educated to be? Ordinary citizens, that's all.
The bull is proud of his nose-ring. And with the pack saddle of desire strapped to his back, he lets himself be led around by the nose and moos too.
What's strange is that people are happy to put up with the same thing. People who can't stay still in the face of pleasure, anger, sorrow and and satisfaction are like mutts who can't keep from yapping.
When the waves of pleasure, anger, sorrow and satisfaction have quieted down, there's nothing really left to do.
Wherever you look, you see how all living beings haggle over the same goods.
Even funnier than watching the monkeys at the zoo is observing these humans on the loose
... Chapter 4 ... Contents ...