If we are interested in Zen, what prevents us from having a sufficient aspiration for kensho (seeing our true nature)? It might be believing that we have time on our side which we imagine allows us to become attached to worldly values and things to the point where Zen by comparison is more of a curiosity. With this kind of attitude our aspiration is not as high as it should be. We have more aspiration for sex and a BMW!
This tendency can be corrected to a certain extent by meditating on the non-everlasting, transitory nature of this life. We don’t need books to teach us this. We only have to look around us to see how everything is always changing, and more than often not for the better. Change includes our family and friends. It even includes us—we are always aging. A smooth face soon has wrinkles. Black hair soon becomes gray. We are no longer the little toddler or the adolescent. We are growing old and will one day die.
By meditating on the transitory nature of this life we will not delude our self into the false belief that we have time on our side and think more, seriously, about coming to know what is eternal, blissful and our true nature which survives the death of this temporal body.
This all sounds so easy but this is because we always believe that we have time on our side, enough to waste for many years. Then in our sixties we can really get into Zen. But as the Chinese say, this is like digging a well when you are thirsty. The hidden meaning is that it is too late to dig that well. You should have done it long ago. But we never learn.
I started digging my deep well at twenty. I quickly found out that Zen and the pursuit of enlightenment is an adventure like no other. There was never a boring or dull moment. Sure there was also a dark night of the soul. I remember this time well. But in the words of the late poet-songwriter Leonard Cohen who was a Zennist, “There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in!” When in the darkness you see this mysterious ‘crack’ the light comes pouring in. You’re amazed. What is it? And it keeps on coming until the dryness of spirit is quenched. And all that was kensho. And here begins the real path of Zen which is another adventure that far exceeds the previous one. It is where you meet the Buddhas who sustain you which is described in the Lankavatara Sutra.
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