230716 - Practicing without distance

The practice is not somewhere else. It needs to be reiterated, again and again and again. It’s not at the next retreat I’m going to. It’s not at my meditation session yesterday morning that went unusually good. It’s not in Thailand. It’s not at home. It’s here. Always. Contionusly arising with every new breath. Even the darkest cavern that’s been tucked away for a thousand years is lit up in an instant by a flashlight. There is never any distance between here and now. In other words, there is no distance to be traversed to awakening, although it might feel that way. Every time I find myself, I can instantly come back. Instead of trying to hide again. The imperfections of the past do not justify the future. Having been asleep does not excuse staying asleep. Every moment is marked by a breath of fresh air, by the ability to renew oneself, to leave what has been come to what is.

My exams are coming up. It’s been stressful and I’m nervious, it’s clear I’m not ready to come back to school right now. I don’t really know how to study. My mind geos crazy from the imagined pressure and then does everything else except study. Which is ironic because that just increases the pressure. I’m not sure if doing these exams are great or awful for me. I think it’ll turn out alright, but maybe it would be a good lesson if it didn’t. The practical exam is the worst, it’s really not for me. Maybe it could be, I realize. The setting makes me nervous, the responsibility and the leadership role required. But teaching itself, no matter the subject, I love. Being able to share with others. I just have to get over myself. Today I’ve seen new depths. It’s easy to stop identifying with thoughts when they’re shallowly rooted. But the deep ones, the thoughts and emotions that come to form the core of my persionality, of my trauma. They are Self. To let those go, well. Surrender takes on more and more demanding forms. I don’t know where I’ll be if I follow it through. Probably at the same place I’ve always been. There’s no escaping this, nowhere else to go. The last hope is that accepting this fact brings you somewhere else. That’s how we fetishize nirvana, pardon my French. As if the deep stillness will finally carry us away from our problems. Awakening to the illusion of self is the ultimate dream of liberation from pain. Because that’s what we truly desire. Liberation from pain. Not suffering. The clinging is left, it’s just in subtler forms. Accepting the human problems that are right here, that’s the path. It’s never abstract. It’s never somewhere else. Be Here Now.