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Enlightenment as Completeness


Scooping water,

the moon is in our hands;

In the presence of flowers,

our clothes carry their fragrance.


As a direct result of having a meditation practice... the volume level of thought naturally quiets. What seemed loud and blaring, now is a slight chirping. Intuitive connection is experienced without obstruction. As Henry David Thoreau wrote... "We are hearing beyond the range of sound... We are seeing beyond the verge of sight."

The shorthand of that is "I Get It," because we are It. Life and our authentic nature are no longer at a distance. There are no hoops to jump through. No titles, diplomas, degrees, crests, credentials, passports, or papers to verify our worthiness to exist that are necessary. Power, control, dominance, and the desire to harm are no longer on the menu because all beings are Now experienced as Buddha... Universal Identity of Loving Presence. Nothing and no thing has a sense of being unfamiliar. Everything, every thing, and every one is a relation. This is the nature of the unobstructed view.


When we take a vacation from the false assumption that we are the thoughts that occur to us... we stop riding with the delusion that we are the ego or personality. By the way, some may not be aware of this but the root word for personality is persona, meaning "Mask." What is the nature of these masks worn over our Original presence? What is it covering? What is it guarding? Nothing that really needs to be guarded, I could tell you that much.

To authentically understand, we have to experience stepping out of the mask for ourselves. The masks have to go! How? Zazen, Zazen, Zazen, Zazen... or Working the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions... or the Eightfold Path, and Truth Inventories... they are lubricants that when applied effectively, the mask naturally falls away... and we are as we've always been... fully whole, wholly free. We realize we were merely making choices and decisions, that fooled us into thinking that we're not. A distorted sense of self cannot get out of its own way.


There's a story in the monastery I'm connected with, that's valued. Zen students going to dokusan.... one on one meeting with Soen Nakagawa Roshi, would run into the room, and bow. When they sat up, he was there wearing a noh mask, covering his face. They are quite striking and vivid and can be more than a little disconcerting. It's reported, that after removing the mask covering his face he said... "I have taken off my mask... please remove yours." It's also reported no one knew how to respond to this challenge. Bummer! Reality presents as Reality, but doped up and stoned on thought, they ran into their own iron wall of deception. There was no intuitive knowing rendered in This encounter. I'm told however many of these persons... as a result of sincere effort... came to clarity and were able to answer. They didn't give up on what was authentically valuable. They didn't settle for the mask of money, power, property, and prestige that divert most people from our shared primary purpose... to authentically and altruistically Love, with L.O.V.E. (Lots of Voluntary Effort).

Who or what are you, when you stop allowing thoughts to be your personal crisis creator? What could your life be without self-centered created problems and dilemmas? What does it cost you to be in the service of a fickle frenemy known as the addiction mind, which only knows its own poverty, and cravings? One life. Different perspectives on that life, depending on if we stop holding on to the masks... and being a puppet and plaything at the end of the strings that are pulled this way and that by the master puppeteer that's always bossing our authentic nature around, doing its bidding.


If we accept responsibility for our Buddha nature... our Universal Identity of Loving Presence... then...


Scooping water,

I am the moon my hands;

In the presence of flowers,

I am the fragrance within the breeze.


--We Are The Practice Itself

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