The three poisons of greed, hostility and ignorance are everywhere evident. Do you find this to be true for you? Ironically, the distress we feel in the body and heart at the situation in the world is also a sign of our ability to recognize our real situation and the ill-guided attempts to hide this from ourselves.Greed, the never-enough state of mind, chains us to an impression of me-and-mine, chains us to future thinking — not now, not enough, not whole. Hostility, us-vs-them, chains us to fear, chains us to resentment, chains us to grabbing for the self and defending against all others. The over-simplification of us-against-them thinking sets up a dynamic where everyone loses. In the long run, delusion is not a practical base for action, for healthy life.
The human world, the world of all our relations, is writhing with dis-ease. At the most fundamental level, the eye that is aware is able, if only subtly, to see through all our habitual narratives. When there is so much suffering, we know that we are being consumed by our own delusions and ideology. Why keep holding on to them?
Practice helps us awaken to our innate clarity and openness. Sitting still and experiencing what — at the moment — is, helps us to realize a luminosity of mind that lies within the flow of experience. We can call this presence. The realization of just this moment, as is, is always available and frees us from our delusive thinking and the tension that comes with the limits of maintaining a fiction. A mind and heart that is open is relieved of tension and liberated into limitless possibilities for beneficent action.
❤️ Mushin