Have you noticed that we often talk about Buddha as someone else?
Strange to talk about yourself as if you are talking about someone else. Buddha is not someone you will someday be If you only practice hard enough maybe you will then be the Buddha or like the Buddha. You already are the buddha… since birth, maybe even before.
Why is it that we keep looking so much into the future? What keeps us from taking the front seat in the middle now? Mahakashyapa smiled when Buddha held up the flower. That was so clear. Mahakashyapa and Buddha same or different? You and Buddha same or different? So hard to really believe this.
Knowing this is one thing. Allowing the full experience is quite another. How can we be Buddha when we struggle with getting a job, or we hate our present job, or the boss or our lives? We hate covid. Our bodies which regularly get sick and tired. That what we are never worries about these things.
A friend recently told me that he was having a horrible day filled with anxiety and fear—so much so that he would welcome dying. At the very worst moment suddenly his phone makes a plink sound and it was his daughter. At that very moment the horrible day transformed into a great day. What happened? What changes the bad to the good and the good to the bad?
All these things happen on the outside. Our lives happen so greatly in the Outside. What is in our inside? Behind our like-dislike mind?
This is where we can go during our meditation on the cushion. Who is looking, listening, smelling, feeling? This is looking at the moon rather than looking at the finger which points to the moon. Looking at the finger means we tend to look outside for our answers. This is what the teachers mean when they say you are scratching your left leg when it is the right leg which itches. When you look inside, don’t look for the answer to a problem… just state the question you have and don’t struggle to know what the answer is.
