Description
We abide in the inexplicable amnesty of hereness. Amnesty is also a metaphor for awakening. You allow your awakening to go all the way through. And you can be free, then caught, then free again. Recorded April 17, 2022. Music from Michael Wilding. Todd Geist sings vows.
Summary
We abide in the inexplicable amnesty of hereness.
The great Mazu said:
From the beginning no creature has ever stepped out of the deep samadhi of Buddha nature.
And: For a person of the Way, whatever difficulty approaches, the mind does not recede.
And also: The whole purpose of your life rests in the current matter.
It is enough to be you, to be here. Mazu replied, when asked by a student:
“What is the essential meaning of Buddhism?”
“What is the meaning of this moment?”
At a certain phase of practice, again Mazu:
To advance from where you can no longer advance and to do what can no longer be done,
you must make yourself into a raft or ferryboat for others.
Our gestures toward the world take us further. The difficult and painful things do not diminish us. Easter approaches the exile of death, but no one is banished, so what banishes us? Something we want to stop.
Amnesty is a kind of forgetting (an amnesia.) “I don’t have to do that.” You can forget your vengeance, your age, disease, liabilities. It is an interior notion. What are you defending yourself from? Disorientation can be the harbinger of amnesty.
The great aurochs of life come to you when you accept this amnesty. You see how loving life really is. Amnesty is unexpected—a reprieve.
KOAN: This fire runs through all things.
Amnesty is also a metaphor for awakening. You allow your awakening to go all the way through. And you can be free, then caught, then free again. The illumination goes through, further and further.
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