Expand your vision

In life, how often do you allow yourself to experience frustration, impatience, or other apparent roadblocks when you are looking? To visualize something in the mind is to allow it to take form and shape in ways the mind can pin down or understand. You may not realize that you are conditioned to view the world and what is unfolding not as it really is but through your own filters of thoughts, beliefs and emotions. Consider this perspective:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A curious monk asks a MASTER, "What is the Way [to see]?"

"It is right before your eyes," said the master.

"Why do I not see it?"

"Because you are thinking of yourself."

"What about you: do you see it?"

"So long as you see double, saying I don't and you do, and so on,
your eyes are clouded," said the master.

"When there is neither 'I' nor 'You,' can one see it?"

"When there is neither 'I' nor 'You,' who is the one that wants to see it?"

______________________________________________________________________

"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
-Marcel Proust

Practice nothing

Pratice nothing.  Be everything. What is self-evident speaks with clarity.  Notice what you choose to perceive.  This is key to growing awareness of what you selectively ignore.

"Be master of mind rather than mastered by mind." - Zen Proverb

Notice opportunities for freedom

In between emotions and, even before any emotion arises, you can notice a gap of emptiness.  This is a period where one is aware of the true nature of mind and everything, where ignorance does not exist, where one feels the reality of timeless stillness and peace. Then, something happens. The spell is broken by the conditioning of everyday distractions.  What can be done to awaken more fully?

The mind would have you believe you have to do something to get somewhere or to awaken.  Watch what happens as you stop thinking and doing.  As you step back, you begin to realize you spend enormous amounts of energy thinking and doing and rarely step out of the prison of the mind. 

Every moment, new levels of self-awareness are open.  You walk through or disregard the opportunity.  Depending on how you choose to experience life, you notice patterns and gain some measure of control over the mind, or not.  Recall what truly serves you and do that.

"If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also light your own path." -Zen saying

Find the Way

This Zen tale is from the annals of Zen.  Take heed, step back from what you believe, and learn to find your way;

A master was asked the question, "What is the way?" by a curious monk.

"It is right before your eyes," said the master.

"Why do I not see it for myself?"

"Because you are thinking of yourself."

"What about you: do you see it?"

"So long as you see double, saying I don't and you do, and so on, your eyes are clouded," said the master.

"When there is neither 'I' nor 'You,' can one see it?"

"When there is neither 'I' or 'You,' who is the one that wants to see it?"

You cannot steal the Moon

Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal.

Ryokan returned and caught him. "You may have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you shoud not return emptyhanded. Please take my clothes as a gift."

The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.

Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow, " he mused, "I wish I could give him this beautiful moon."