Monday, September 21, 2009

Sleeping Awake

Time: 5am
Place: Living Room Floor
Circumstances: Looking at the flame, sitting on floor, with cushion, back against the wall.

I feel like at the end of the day, if this practice only makes me more awake and allows me the space to practice this skill, I will have been successful. I am catching myself more often now in sleeping-whilst-awake states. It is actually frightening how I can be doing something like drive the car while thinking about 40, 000 things at once.

I was telling Frank that I realized this practice is really just about making you okay with dying (being still, non-attachment, etc), but the more I think about it, this practice is also about making you okay with living too. It is incredible how we are living, but we're not really awake for most of it.

1 comment:

poep sa frank jude said...

Yes!! As Dogen puts it, we are 'living-dying,' and in my experience I only started 'living' when i began to face and accept dying!

Buddha means 'awake.' The ONLY 'difference' between an 'ordinary worldling' (so to speak, in old Pali terminology) and a 'buddha' is one is asleep while awake and the other is awake while awake.... :-)

That means, whenever, and for however long, we are truly awake, we are buddha!

It's like ice and water.....