I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand….
I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.
David Whyte, Fire in the Earth
Silent illumination is the realization of … wakefulness, stillness and awareness… all of which are different ways to describe mind’s natural state. Experiencing it for the first time is like suddenly dropping a thousand pounds from your shoulders – the heavy burdens of self-attachment, vexations, and habitual tendencies. Self-attachment, vexations, and habitual tendencies run deep. So practitioners must work hard to experience enlightenment again and again until they can simply rest in mind’s natural state. The key is to practice diligently but seek no results.
Guo Gu, You Are Already Enlightened
Some traditions, East and West, hold that everyone, deep down, has an original perfect quality, a clear or luminous, natural, true state and potential. This gets covered over by the constructions and labels which we adopt as we conform to our environment, or as we change ourselves in response to people around us or the circumstances of our lives.
In some Buddhist traditions, we simply should get in touch with our already present, buddha-nature, underneath all our daily agitations.
All beings are full with buddha-nature.
It is only due to their agitations that they do not know or perceive it.
Thus, diligently work with those experiences which lead you to eradicate getting agitated.
Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Mahayana Buddhist sutra, c 2nd Century CE
It’s natural for us to fall apart in the face of loss. No need to stop it. Often our old coming mechanisms simply don’t work in this new context. However, finding our ground or recalling what has been most meaningful can help us stay present with what we are experiencing. We don’t have adequate language to describe this sort of incomprehensible experience, so we name it Mystery with a capital M.
Over the years, I have found that what we can experience or know directly may be much more important than our ability to explain or measure it.
Frank Ostaseski
If we weren’t unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,
if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.
Pablo Neruda, Keeping Quiet
Coming, going,
the waterbirds
don’t leave a trace,
don’t follow a path.
Dōgen Zenji, 1200 – 1253, Japanese Buddhist writer, founder of the Sōtō school of Zen, On Non-Dependence of Mind
Mindfulbalance 