The greatest curse of life

The master says that practicing gives you strength, strength to say no to your karma and break the chain of unwholesome activities.

Your (bad) karma is like a curse. These unwholesome ways of thinking, rooted in anger, ignorance and greed, solidified into habits, habits of the mind, we sometimes call habitual tendencies. These are what leads us through our lives on a day to day basis.

Zen and Buddhism tells, "hey wake up now! What are you doing?" if we are mindful, this wake up call is often heard. If not, we go along with our habits developed since long ago. The thing is these habits are formed over a long time and they literally created us! We are re-made of them so many times, they are all around and it's hard to notice them. It's camoflaged into the fabric of our thoughts. However, when we become more mindful, we suddenly realise that those habitual tendencies and defilements are driving us to do things. Sometimes, we notice, but as soon as we notice, we get lost in them the next moment, mired in their midst.

It is like being cursed. Curses control our minds, forcing us to see, hear or do things we normally would not see, hear or do. Defilements and habitual tendencies are exactly like that. If you are clear, you immediately know that you are not like this and would not do such things. At this time, if your are strong, you maintain this clarity and do not identify with the curse, thus breaking the curse. This is where the strength that the teacher talks about comes in. The seeing is the first step, the strength combined with the clear seeing breaks the curse. If your seeing is not clear enough, you would not be able to uproot the curse and would need to continually deal with it as it tempts you continuously. If your seeing is clear, you trace it to it's root in your mind and uproot it totally in one full effort.

It is so with curses and also with habitual tendencies and defilements. They chain us without us knowing, prod us in certain directions and we follow them unknowingly. So it is said, clear mind, clear mind, watch, watch! And then at the same time, develop and train your strength. Strength helps to sustain clear mind and clear mind puts strength to good use.

In buddhist meditation we train both. Clear mind in knowing what is and what is not and strength in bring back the mind and not letting it get swept away into the stories of our mind.

Be clear right here right now. Ultimately still, take your place in the centre stage of your life. Remember, all around you, it is all false. Yet, in my tradition, they say, one more step is necessary, what is it? What is worthy enough for us to live and engage our lives in?

One last thing: Be careful, if you are not totally empty, karma will have a hold on you!! If you are totally empty, anything I say is just wind.

Emptiness and your life

These days, after a diamond sutra chanting and Dharma talk by Shifu, i've been feeling an intense sense of emptiness. I keep recalling shifu's words that everything is actually just an empty shell. Yet as I go through life, I do so pretty much as a normal person. The Truth is, all is empty, empty of substantiality, empty of substance. All things without exception are thus. At such a time, nothing is important anymore and you know there is nothing to cling to. When u realise you are clinging to something by habitual energy, reminding yourself of this truth or using this truth to break down the thing you are attached to, you find that whatever you are attached to automatically distintegrates and breaks apart. But, only if you notice, and decide to do so.

Once in a talk, someone asked Shifu what is the meaning of life. Shifu said there is no meaning.

If everything is empty, then of course there is no meaning. After all 'meanings' are imposed on things by us. It is we who make things meaningful. In fact, it is all fabricated on the basis of insubstantial empty things.

So the question remains, why do we live in this world? What are we to do now?

When one's life loses all meaning, it is actually quite similar to the start of depression, before depression sets in. The emptiness is similar. However from this emptiness, there are two ways to go. Embracing the emptiness, recognising it, and choosing to stay happy, or rejecting the emptiness and think that you have lost everything, go into shock and then becoming depressed over it. In fact, nothing has changed. Everything has always been meaningless and empty.

Yet since meaning is created and decided upon by us humans, from this point on, you can actually decide what meaning you want to give to your life. So the question is, what do you want to do with your life?