A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
Notice that anything we can know is always partial and limited. The total, the limitless, and the unconditional can never be grasped by the thinking mind. A mind that seeks an answer cannot arrive at unconditional freedom, because thought can only divide reality into fragments and then cling to those fragments as fixed views.
When we clearly see the limits of thinking, striving naturally softens, and we can rest in the open space of not-knowing. Ask yourself: What is it that cannot be known?
Read an excerpt from this week’s video that unpacks the components and goal of the koan “What is it that is not a thing, not the mind, not the Buddha?”
If it feels impossible to quiet the mind and let go of thoughts and thinking, Haemin Sunim offers three helpful ways to tame what Buddhists call monkey mind.
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