DHARMA SPRING

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"The greatest way is not difficult if you just don't pick and choose." This phrase begins the well-known poem Trust in Mind  by the third Zen ancestor, Sengcan. This is the third of a series of talks offered at a multi-day meditation retreat with this phrase and related material as a theme.

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"The greatest way is not difficult if you just don't pick and choose." This phrase begins the well-known poem Trust in Mind  by the third Zen ancestor, Sengcan. This is the second of a series of talks offered at a multi-day meditation retreat with this phrase and related material as a theme.

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"The greatest way is not difficult if you just don't pick and choose." This phrase begins the well-known poem Trust in Mind  by the third Zen ancestor, Sengcan. This is the first of a series of talks offered at a multi-day meditation retreat with this phrase and related material as a theme.

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When Huangbo first met Baizhang, Baizhang exclaimed,  "Magnificent! Imposing! Where have you come from?”
  “Magnificent and imposing, I’ve come from the mountains,” replied Huangbo.
   “What have you come for?”
   “ Not for anything else.”

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Happiness. Elusive, fleeting, widely sought after. And a seemingly endless supply of ideas, paths, recipes, formulas, bits of advice and more about how to reach it and how to keep it. Testing out and exploring these to discover what results is certainly worthwhile. And it’s equally worthwhile bearing in mind these may oftentimes be the very obstacles and limitations to reaching that which we seek. What if there’s no reaching involved at all? What if that which is sought after is already here, simply waiting to show up in beautifully unexpected and unreasonable ways, given the opportunity?

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Great Ancestor Ma said: To advance from where you can no longer advance and to do what can no longer be done, you must make yourself into raft or ferryboat for others.

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Information is streaming toward us nearly continuously, incessantly, from all sorts of directions. What’s more, this information is passing through all sorts of gates, windows, lenses, filters – internally and externally – which color, tilt, twist, spin the information in all sorts of ways. Under such conditions, how can one even begin to surmount the daunting task of getting to the bottom of things, of connecting with the bare, vivid reality of what is? Well, a helpful start is to acknowledge that what is is: information is streaming toward us nearly continuously, incessantly, from all sorts of directions. What’s more, this information is passing through all sorts of gates, windows, lenses, filters… 

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We humans crave structure and the beneficial, supportive container it provides. When it comes to navigating life, then, we are inclined to look for the recipe, the formula, the trustworthy and reliable way we can follow that will carry us along and through it all. But life is inherently wild and unpredictable, so trying to meet and journey through it via a set recipe or formula is a path that will inherently and necessarily fall short. There’s a beauty in that falling short. It seems as though our ideas about these paths carrying us through life are replaced by the actuality of them carrying us more deeply into life again and again, further and further into the midst of its wild and unpredictable ways, with an increasingly greater capacity for being right there, right here. Along with this comes the freedom of no particular way to go, fully, and no particular way to be, fully – the possibilities of meeting and engaging with life unfold, open and endless, calling to us, calling for us. And we respond, capably and fully.

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When we are seeking something - something such as "the light" - there are two primary hindrances inherent in our search: having an idea of what we're seeking looks like, and having an idea of where we need to go and what we need to do to find it. Ironically, having such ideas is necessary for our seeking. For one, they provide motivation. And they provide us with something to work with, wear down, break through, until we meet the field of all around us without such obstructions, and discover the light shining in ways well beyond and well before our ideas of it. What's more, we discover what we perceived as obstructions were actually gateways and the light was right there in the midst of them all along, and it remains, shining on through.

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