Meditation from Thursday 24 September 2015

It is Thursday 24 September 2015 - some interesting big things have happened recently. You are up now - the house is quiet, it's dark, it's 1 o'clock in the morning here. The air is pregnant with possibilities.

You were annoyed.
You listen in the dark quiet to your body.
You hear the thunder - the noise is infectious.
You smile.
This is you.
You are sitting ill.
You can't lie down - that makes your illness worse right now.
You smile your subtle smile.
This is a gift.
You sit like you sat before.
You sit and listen to yourself.
You smile at the noise.
What happens happens.
Such a way to experience your body!
Listen to it groan and moan in it's pain.
Feel it do what it needs to rid itself of illness.
This body is not you.
It is a vessel you are given the opportunity to express yourself with and in.
Take care of it.
No gift lasts for ever.
You were annoyed.

Someone made you ill.
You saw many people recently.
It most likely was the person you know that had a recently ill family and discovered they could be ill themselves.
Was it them?
It could have been anyone else though too.
Your illness may not be their illness.
It matters not.
You are ill.
You need to to what you need to get better.
Let that process occur.

You learn from your body.
You learn the signs of your body in stress, your body in pain.
This is what it feels like to be ill like this now.
All ills are different.
This one is unique.
This one will never occur like this again.
Smile.
Sit.
Bow.
Take reverence in the moment.
What this moment is sharing with you now is fleeting.

This message - this text - will never be taught upon like this again to anyone ever.
Sit.
Bow.
Smile.

If something this ... uncomfortable can teach you, then all can teach you.
When you open your ears and hear - there is opportunity to learn.
Learn.
Share.
Grow.
Use this ill - use this lesson to increase your knowledge of you.
Your power.
Your understanding.

When the lesson ceases only the idea remains.
Beyond words - remember.
Use the idea wisely - use it sparingly.
That is how you get better.
Idea of a person can never be touched or handled with human contact, with human words.

You remain untouched, lighting the way of the world - being the mirror reflecting the light.
You are light.
You are ill.
You are you.

The illness of this world will not cease while this world continues.
You may use it to debase yourself - to spread the dis-ease.
You can use it to reflect the world back on itself.
You can use it to reflect the light, the way of the world back on to the world.
Light the darkness and shine forth.

What Really Matters

The Buddha refused to deal with those things that don't lead to the extinction of dukkha (suffering). He didn't discuss them. Take the question of whether or not there is rebirth after death. What is reborn? How is it reborn? What is its “karmic inheritance”? These questions don't aim at the extinction of dukkha. That being so, they are not the Buddha's teaching nor are they connected with it. They don't lie within the range of Buddhism. Also, the one who asks about such matters has no choice but to believe indiscriminately any answer that's given, because the one who answers won't be able to produce any proofs and will just be speaking according to his own memory and feeling. The listener can't see for himself and consequently must blindly believe the other's words. Little by little the subject strays from dharma until it becomes something else altogether, unconnected with the extinction of dukkha.

- Buddhadasa Bhikkhu from "A Single Handful," Tricycle Winter 1996