20241215 - 22:56
Today insecurities and anxiousness are unexpectedly enduring. A few days ago I thought I just needed rest after a long week. Rest has been had. This morning I told myself I just had not been sitting enough, I had been avoiding myself and thus these things had been arising. Such a claim is slightly absurd, but anyways, so it was. Today I sat, all day. Zazenkai: 09-16. At the end we had Fika(!), and sure enough; insecurities and anxiousness. They are not suffering; why should the practice grant freedom also in their regard? Perhaps these words are inadequate; practice grants a certain confidence in life that is reflected, of course, outwards, as real, bottomless, confidence. I am who I am. Every moment, sure enough, I get to see that for myself again, I get to learn what that means. And yet there’s no outside authority that could tell me, or change what that would entail. My (let’s say) dad’s opinions doesn’t change who I am, doesn’t change my expression of it (any longer!), doesn’t create someone I ‘should be’ apart of that which I (already) am. So what, then, is this insecurity, is this anxiousness? It is the wobbling of someone losing their balance when that which they have leaned on unexpectedly disappears. It tells me that I held expectations that weren’t met, that I put emphasis on something that wasn’t mine, that was ‘outside’ (these are huge quotation-marks). It points the way to things that have yet to be let go. Today the theme has been a perceived lack of social reciprocity. Well, actually, looking at it, that seems to have been the thread running through all of it. My creation of expectations on the basis of social interactions. A need to be something for someone. What an endless source of confusion and unrest! It seems to me implied then that I feel a need to be someone for myself; as a basis for this feeling itself. Sure enough, it seems like I do. Like these projects that are being undertaken, this life that is being created anew, has been confused for something which it isn’t. Like the words “For the benefit of all sentient beings”, and the responsibility that arises there, implies the possibility of failure. Every moment I give myself to it. That is the fact. The rest is not up to me. To say it again. I shall release it. It is out of my control. I live, I breathe, I am.
The rest is not up to me.