 16 Apr 2007 @ 23:51, by hgoodgame
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served Tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"
“It is not the spoon that bends; it is the mind.” – The Matrix
All around I hear the chatter of those who claim life isn’t fair, this group or that person is taking advantage of them. We seem to have become a world of helpless victims and rarely are found individuals who take responsibility for their personal circumstances. The true pity of the matter is that we have been scripting our own reality all along, yet haven't realized it, don't want to be made aware of it. Thus we take the real for unreal and the unreal for real. We say it is outer circumstances if we feel limited or powerless when it is us that have given it power. And in this way we throw away our power after nothing at all.
It is in our being with whatever outer circumstances we find ourselves in that illuminates our degree of awakening. This is not a state that can be attained by escaping somehow or changing the outer but by maintaining one's center regardless of all outer circumstance and seeming. Once we recognize the world as our projection we can begin re-creating our circumstances consciously from the inside out and only in this way will we learn to master this self and this apparent world. We have placed ourselves right where we are for a reason and it isn't to change 'them'. Thus, there is no 'them' to join or fight.
To master your own life has nothing to do with changing the world. Once you have awakened, the world does not change, only one's view of its right or wrong-ness changes. Duality disappears, the drop slips into the ocean, or another way I’ve heard it said and seems even more beautifully true, the ocean enters into the drop.
Occam's razor states: if there is more than one possible theory in answer to a challenge, it is the simplest one that will be found true.
Leonardo di Vinci: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. "
Buckminister Fuller: "When working on a problem ... if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
Image credit to Osho Zen Tarot Deck
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