So many are saying Where is God when I need him? Especially today. Many feel deserted and alone. But it is only that we have been looking in the wrong direction, searching everywhere but at home. The surprising answer to the question tells us instead, that all we need is right here with us in our everyday life. In fact it is right at the kitchen table. It is only that we have been looking elsewhere, searching all around. These episodes offer specific ways in which we can encounter God, fulfillment, enlightenment right here in our daily lives, wherever we go.
We are not aware of how much we reject life. A gap takes place before we are willing to notice, engage with and accept what's going on. Often we just block things we don't like out. Or, our initial response is to judge what's taking place, filter it through our past experiences. Take a few steps away. It is rare to simply to be present for whatever the moment brings. And beyond that it is an act of wonder to learn how to actually fall in love with the life we are living now. Not the life we wanted, dreamt of or have been struggling so hard to make happen. What is needed to fall in love with what's going on right now? How can we engage with it fully and be filled with good will, no matter what?
Good morning, good morning. It's Brenda Esh and Shoshana back with another episode of Zen Wisdom for Your Everyday Life. Good morning. Indeed, it's snowing this morning. It's just beautiful, beautiful soft. I love the snow. Soft snow drops falling in front of the window. And the plants in my room, I see them leaning toward the window a little bit more to enjoy the snow too. Mmm. How precious. Precious. You know, I wrote a book many years ago called Zen and the Art of Falling in Love. And of course, it was about relationships, Zen relationships, relationships based on Zen practice, which are beautiful. And it was really also about falling in love with life itself. Wow. When we can do that, we've got it, we've hit the ball home. Now, I don't mean to imply that if we don't do that or can't do that or whatever that means actually, that we haven't really hit the ball home, we haven't succeeded, we haven't found our target. None of that, none of that, please, because all that kind of thinking is what takes us away from falling in love with life itself. It takes us away, we feel we have to hit the target, we have to get our goals, we have to prove ourselves somehow, to be worthy, to be deserving, that we that we made it, that we accomplished what we needed to accomplish. All of that, all of that, we are beseeching ourselves. That word comes to me, beseeching ourselves, or maybe besmirched with that. We're covered with those kinds of beliefs and thoughts and teachings which really cause so much anguish in the long run. And not only that, they prevent us from actually emerging and doing what would be really beautiful and right and complete for us. It's interesting. You know, my teacher always used to say, oh, this is an upside-down world or upside down thinking. And it took me about 45 years to really understand what that means, upside down thinking, that the world is sort of the opposite of the way it we are presented it to be. It's uh the opposite. It's the opposite of what we're thinking, believing, um, asserting, fighting for, the opposite, the opposite. So that's why we sit down on the cushion quietly, not moving, not being swept up by the wind of these beliefs and these demands and these injunctions. It takes a lot of courage to step off the merry-ground a lot. You know, when we're on the merry-ground, we're very dizzy around and around and around, around and around, trying to catch that golden, that elusive golden ring. What is that golden ring? Around and around. And then when we catch it, we look at it. And the merry-ground continues. It's nothing much, just a golden ring. So to step off the merry-ground, to give up the dizziness, to give up the search, the grasping, just step off it. It can be alarming to do so because of, in a sense, the whole world is a merry-ground. We're in the midst of it, and we think, well, if I step off it, I won't be part of life anymore. I won't be part of the community anymore. My life will be, I'll be on the sidelines. No, no, no, no, no, no. You can never be on the sidelines. You're on the sidelines when you're whirling around. You're on the sidelines from the true force of life, which moves beautifully by itself, creating no dizziness, no despair, no failure, just moves in a harmony that is really beyond what we can even imagine. And we don't have to imagine it. We can just become one with it. We can taste it. We can become available to it. We can know that we are it. But first we have to step off the merry-ground. We have to let go of that dizziness, that confusion, that imbalance that we live with. You know, one of the great questions is why are we so attached to the madness, to the dizziness, to the spinning, spinning, spinning of our lives. Right in the midst of the spinning, it sometimes stops for a moment or two. Boom, stops. Reprieve, something happens, maybe we get what we were looking for, or we have an encounter, or something strikes us in the midst of the spinning around and around. And there is a moment. We're outside of that whirl. But then we return to the samsara, which means the whirl of life and death, give me, take from me, winning, losing, fighting, all of that. We jump back into it very quickly. We're very, very attached to it. It's really a counterfeit of what it means to be alive. Isn't that beautiful? Zen and the art of falling in love, falling in love with life. We don't know there's there's a life outside of that merry-ground. A much larger life that is endlessly restoring us, healing us, loving us. It's another life. And what's going on in the merry ground is not life at all, upside down world. We come into this lifetime and are so deeply programmed to produce, to perform, to be praised, to feel that we deserve to be here even. We have to really pay our dues. We have to really work hard for our place in the sun. So Zen comes to ask us, is that so? Is that true? Are you willing to test it for yourself? Try out something different and see for yourself. That is the heartbeat of Zen. Don't listen to me, don't believe anything I say. Here are some thoughts I'm sharing, and now tr test it, practice it, try it for yourself. How is this living within you? And when we begin to stop believing, believing, believing, and try to try these teachings for ourselves, even in a very simple way, without any pressure, do this, do that, just try it daily, as much as you can, as little as you wish, just try and see. All the very great philosophers throughout time all of them from Socrates onward, onward, know thyself. Know for yourself. No, no. K N O W No. What does it mean to know? How do we know? There are many ways of knowing. There's of course the intellectual way. We study, we accumulate more so-called knowledge, facts, ideas. That's not bad. Nothing wrong with it. Unless we become addicted to it. And that's just the top layer of knowing. Knowledge is not wisdom until knowledge has been digested, eaten up, tried out for yourself. And when you try it for yourself, when you're actually living it, then we're talking we're walking along the path of Zen wisdom. Wisdom is different from just knowing in your head or speaking it in words. Know for yourself. So what is it that we have to know? That's another good question, because we can't even answer it directly because it's not in the realm of words, concepts, beliefs. It's in the realm of putting one foot on the ground and then putting another one and just being, feeling engaging with your own experience moment by moment, with your own life. Life. I think Krishna Murdy said, why don't we read the book of our own life? And this is beyond reading it. We actually experience it. We're not blocking it out. Oh, I'm what what's my life anyway? It's everything. It's everything. And it contains everything, and it has everything for you. And what you need may be right right in front of your eyes, and you're running on the merry ground looking for that golden ring. Being distracted, diverted, kidnapped by the mesmerism of life, the fascination of life, of these all these external phenomena, taken away from the truth of the moment and the truth of who you are and what you really want and need. But what do you re- People say all the time, I want this, I need that, I need this. You may have what you need right now and not even being aware of it, touching it, tasting it, knowing it. And that is the entire basis that Zen practice is set up upon, the foundation of to return to your original home, original face, original self. These words are interchangeable. Take your self, take your attention back and and turn it to this moment, to this being. We do have to let go to do that. We're gathering all our scattered fragments of ourself that are all over the place. That's okay. They gather by themselves. We don't have to do anything. All we have to do is be quiet, put return our attention home. And to this very moment, to the to the plants leaning near the window, leaning closer to g see the snow drops. To see the connections, not to see it, but feel it, to know it, to be it. The snow, the plants. The sound of my voice, which goes on and on, too much talking. So what does it mean to fall in love with life? That's a really beautiful co-on. Are you in love with your life, with life itself? I'm not talking about different individual individuals. Sometimes we say, I'm in love with her, I'm in love with him. Then we cling to that particular person. That's not being in love with life. Because in life itself, one moment you love the person, another moment they'll be gone, another moment they'll be back. It's all like that. Can you be in love with life itself? And what is that? What does that look like? To really when you know when you're in love, you're not resisting, you're not defending, you trust the person, whatever you're in love with, and you see such beauty in them, which of course causes those wonderful feelings. Of course, that's the beauty in yourself which you're seeing through them. The more we practice, simply not to get something, but to fall in love with life. Which means to let go of all that which keeps us tied in a knot, running on the merry ground. And all by itself, you will suddenly say, Oh my goodness, how beautiful that is. Just something very simple. And that love will well up. It's not a love that you'll want to possess it. Or you'll cling to it, but you'll love it. You'll be in love with just being here and having this great opportunity to experience life itself. So try and see. If you want to I've been getting some beautiful emails. If you want to email me, you can at topspeaker at yahoo.com. And of course, as you know over and over, the URL for this talk today is www.zenwisdomtoday.com. Thank you for listening. Thank you very much for the opportunity to share these snow drops with you. Take care. Bye.
