The Great Truth Just Moved

"There is in truth deception, and in deception, truth." -- a Simple mind

An old story about Mara, the evil one, goes like this: One day Mara and his disciples came upon a man in the road. His face glowing, they curiously inquired into the cause of the man’s pleasure. It seems the man had just discovered something of the Truth.

Upon reporting this to their master, Mara, the disciple was perplexed at his reaction. You, Mara, the One of Deception, does it not perturb you that this one has come into a moment of Truth? Mara replied that it did not.

You see, Mara opined, that no sooner do people discover a part of the Truth, a moment of the Whole, then they make a belief out if it.

The great Hindu Master, Sri Aurobindo once stated that no sooner does one discover that there is a certain truth, that, then, they often chase after it. They lose their common sense. For Truth was about them all the while; they have only just noticed it! Whether you recognize or understand Mara, Quan Yin or any other sage, at any time in your life, is no matter to anyone else; the sages have always been about you.

In her book, Waking Up to What You Do by Abbess Diane Eshin Rizzetto, she writes about the “Certainty Principle.” Certainty is seductive. She says that often we desire to feel safe and comfortable via certainty. Sureness may arise out of personal experiences, but impermanence may alter the sum of those experiences. Things do change. Thus the Buddha emphasized that we must not believe the teaching alone; we must go out and discover it for ourselves.

Rizzetto writes, “truth [just] won’t be pinned down. Truth will not be pinned down with the word, the.” Truth defies definition because as soon as we try to grasp it, it changes. In this way it shares a close connection to reality. Reality is many faceted. There is no single valuable reality. Instead there are many parts of the whole. So what does this notion leave to us? It seems that we can trust, be truth, moment to moment. We can be as we are, as we find ourselves to be. This is awareness that the great masters speak about. It is just this moment, every moment together forms what we know about reality, about truth and about our selves.

Gravity Always Prevails, Common Sense

"We do not [like to] live according to common sense. We don't like the critical voice; we don't like to come down." --Nothing Special: Living Zen   by Charlotte Joko Beck

We like compliments; we like flattery. They make us 'feel special.' "What 's the difference between the sound of the [cooing] dove and the sound of a critical voice?" asks Joko Beck in her book, Nothing special: Living Zen. It seems many don't like the 'criticism.' We, according to Beck,"don't just hear the voice; we attach an opinion to what we hear." An opinion is not the same as a fact. Facts are easily verifiable. The sun for example, gives light; it rises and sets on a cycle. Our opinions may be formed variously, changed and reformed. They are not facts.

For many 'staying up,' as Beck calls it, is a quest to always float, like a ballet dancer suspended in air. But gravity, the fact of the matter, prevails and we return to the ground. Common sense is not something most of us admittedly indulge in. Our preferences trend more to the fictitious, the imaginary, the wishful. And we all have this same inclination. Some say that hope springs eternal. "
 Yet like it or not, life consists of much unpleasant input. Seldom does life gives us just what we want..."  We spend our time trying, like a juggler, to keep all the balls up in the air, to avoid a crash.

Fact may be that in most, if not all lives, illness and injury are a component of daily living. Injuries may be both mental and physical; we can't avoid disappointment, loss or grief. Seeking to 'take out some insurance' against unpleasant events, we often think the best course is to avoid any 'contact with painful reality.' Our minds spinning, racing busily ahead, we persist in trying to avoid all pain. We plan, strategize, evade, stonewall, avoid, fear, resent; we look for the best way, we think to avoid all pain.
Doing what we can to feel safe and not scary, we just want to be undisturbed. The ultimate action of the mind is to transform facts, what is neutral, and real into another state, so as to think that what disturbs, is unpleasant, challenges us, cannot get near us--not ever.

"We want to stay up in our cloud of thought about our enterprises, our schemes for self-improvement." And while self-improvement such as improving our health, losing weight, learning a new language and the like can be beneficial, the 'wheels go off the wagon,' if you will, when we add on to the improvement effort a notion or desire to protect ourselves from the ups and downs of life. Some, for example, believe that eating certain foods or engaging in rituals or other practices will keep them from diseases such as cancer, or they'll  live longer.
We try to insulate ourselves in these instances from the base unpleasantness of life. It just has to be some body's fault! 

The struggle between the 'sound of the cooing dove' and the rasp of reality continues to cause suffering; for as long as one attempts to avoid or imagine, life is not simply as it is. Our opinions continue to enforce our behaviors, behaviors may become demands. Demands unmet may become painful resentment, rather than sense-perceptions from our faculties. Carefully sitting with them, life as it is, allows us to observe our thoughts, to become aware of our physical senses, to listen to our body.
Gaining honesty about our opinions, our self, those around us brings clarity to the day. When we realize that there is 'nowhere to get to,' that we are already arrived in the right place,  just this moment, our suffering ceases. Acceptance now takes its place.