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.
Several times during the day, pause and simply look around. For a few breaths, do not apply words, labels, or names to what you see and hear. Let everything appear as pure color, sound, and movement in a single open field of awareness.
This awareness itself cannot be seen, touched, or known as an object. Yet in it, everything appears and disappears on its own. Even the body and mind you call “me” are experiences arising in this open knowing.
Gently ask: What is it that I am taking myself to be right now? One of these changing objects that appear in awareness, or this simple knowing in which all images, thoughts, and sensations come and go?
In commentary on the fourth chapter of the Platform Sutra, contemporary Japanese teacher Shodo Harada explains what happens when we let go of obstructive thinking and attachments.
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