1.7
April 5, 2011

Learning to Appreciate our Life.

“Look!

Look.

This is your world!

You can’t not look.

There is no other world.

This is your world; it is your feast. You inherited this; you inherited these eyeballs; you inherited this world of color. Look at the greatness of the whole thing.

Look! Don’t hesitate—look!

Open your eyes.

Don’t blink, and look, look—look further.

Then you might see something. The more you look, the more inquisitive you are, the more you are bound to see. Your looking process is not restrained, because you are genuine, you are gentle, you have nothing to lose, and you have nothing to fight against. You can look so much, you can look further, and then you can see so beautifully. In fact, you can feel the warmth of red and the coolness of blue and the richness of yellow and the penetrating quality of green— all at once. You appreciate the world around you. It is a fantastic new discovery of the world.”

~ from Ocean of Dharma by Chogyam Trungpa, edited by Carolyn Rose Gimian

In meditation practice, we are not looking for anything. We are simply looking. Buddhism nor meditation make us better people. It is not a matter of creating a super enlightened Buddha mind or anything like that. Happiness is a byproduct of realization…

We discover simple happiness when we see our confusion for what it is. When we realize that the world is not happening to us—that life is not personal—we can relax. But we are not looking to figure this out… We are just looking!

~ from Enlightenment Begins With Taking A Seat by Ben Riggs

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