Circles or Truth.Western psychoanalysis is intellectual and will go on and on digging, but not really going anywhere. One may spend 10 or 15 years analyzing dreams, revisiting the past, pulling apart every emotion- distorted overtime, asking: “where did this greed come from, this jealousy, this fear, this quiet cruelty? “ Mind talking about the mind. Endlessly. Going in circles. Same patterns. Same grooves, deepening week after week. Memories replayed so many times, they harden. They feel so real, so solid. Untouchable. Still, nothing moves, nothing leaves. The problems remain, sitting there, looking straight at you. One would want to get out of his skin, and run away. But no matter where you run to, you came along. So we change therapists. Try another one. Usually more expensive. Supposedly better. But if it works… Where are the results? At some point, it becomes a dependency, almost an addiction. Someone else must interpret your suffering. Someone else must tell you what is wrong. Look at the word ‘patient.’ Something in it settles in, doesn’t it? For the ego, needs this. It needs a problem. It needs a story. It needs justification of its personal misery, to continue to carry on. Because if there isn’t anything left to analyse, then what is left of ‘me.’ Now, there is another way. More direct. The eastern approach doesn’t circle the problem. It cuts through it. In fact, you just seat there, silent on your cushion. No long explanations. No endless digging. Just seeing. Seeing the connection between everything. No separation. Not as an idea, but a process of direct experience. Sit. And be still. 2,500 years ago, The Buddha Siddhartha Gautama expounded the Truth on how to end suffering. Clear. Precise. To the point. True back then, and true to this day. You are not the mind. You are not the body. Simple words, but not easy to live by. Because no one can do this for you. No one can observe for you. No one can be present for you. This is the work, the inner work. The kind that asks everything from you. Honesty. Attention. Courage to sit there. Forgive, as one witnesses mental and physical discomfort. A willingness to drop, delete, discover your true face, and delight in what comes afterwards. Is it easy? No. It is real. Raw at times. It is beautiful. Whatever it takes because… We’ve all been here and tried before, one way or another. Failed, lost track, got pulled back into the noise. But still, today we are here again. Same lessons. Different day. Like school, if you don’t pass, you come back, sit through it and to face it again. Delete. Delete. Try again. This time perhaps, when the lessons are learned and embodied, you will graduate, the Crown Jeweled of the human potential. But what sees? What knows? What has been there the whole time? The body will dies but never the witness. Remember who you are. With unconditional Love and Joy, Ven. Bao Co
|
