Essential Truth

Settan once wrote a set of guidelines for Zen monasteries:

An ancient said that Zen study requires three essentials. 

One is a great root of faith. 

The second is a great feeling of wonder. 

The third is great determination.

If one of these is lacking, you are like a tripod missing a leg. Here I have no special stipulations. I only require that you clearly recognize that everyone has an essential nature that can be perceived, and that there is an essential truth that everyone can penetrate; only then will your determination continue. And there are sayings at which to wonder. If people go off half aware and half awakened, they cannot really succeed in Zen. It is imperative to be careful and thoroughgoing.

Find Your Truth

According to Zen if we don’t have any one of the three essential qualities we will not be able find the truth inside ourselves.

If you have found your truth within yourself there is nothing more in this whole existence to find. Truth is functioning through you. When you open your eyes, it is truth opening his eyes. When you close your eyes, it is truth who is closing its eyes.

This is a tremendous meditation. If you can simply understand the device, you don’t have to do anything; whatever you are doing is being done by truth. You are walking, it is truth; you are sleeping, it is truth resting; you are speaking, it is truth speaking; you are silent, it is truth that is silent.

This is one of the most simple meditation techniques. Slowly, slowly everything settles by this simple formula, and then there is no need for the technique.

When you are cured, you throw away the meditation, you throw away the medicine. Then you live as truth – alive, radiant, contented, blissful, a song unto yourself. Your whole life becomes a prayer without any words, or better to say a prayerfulness, a grace, a beauty which does not belong to our mundane world, a ray of light coming from the beyond into the darkness of our world.

To find the truth which is inside you, you need three qualities. If any one of them is missing you will not be able to go inside of yourself. You may be successful in the world but you will fail to move within yourself. This is real pain as human beings we have. We can conquer the whole world except for ourselves. With this pain you will always find that there is something missing in your life.

Journey to find truth inside us is similar to seed.

The seed cannot know what is going to happen, the seed has never known the flower. And the seed cannot even believe that he has the potentiality to become a beautiful flower. Long is the journey, and it is always safer not to go on that journey because unknown is the path, nothing is guaranteed.

Nothing can be guaranteed. Thousand and one are the hazards of the journey, many are the pitfalls – and the seed is secure, hidden inside a hard core. But the seed tries, it makes an effort; it drops the hard shell which is its security, it starts moving.

Immediately the fight starts: the struggle with the soil, with the stones, with the rocks. And the seed was very hard and the sprout will be very, very soft and dangers will be many. There was no danger for the seed, the seed could have survived for millennia, but for the sprout many are the dangers. But the sprout starts towards the unknown, towards the sun, towards the source of light, not knowing where, not knowing why.

Great is the cross to be carried, but a dream possesses the seed and the seed moves. The same is the path for man. It is arduous. Much courage will be needed.

Learning from the story Essential Truth: Find Your Truth

Experience Learning

Tune into your truth. Live it. Breath it. Beam it.

We all have an inner and outer world; how do we tune into the inner self to stay balanced and calm amid the hustle and bustle of everyday life?

The Pull of the Outer World

At one end point the pull of the outer world totally dominates. Life will then have certain inevitable qualities, as follows:

Feeling unsafe and insecure, constantly vigilant to protect yourself from the next threat from outside.

A sense of insignificance in the face of titanic natural forces.

Pressure to protect yourself by conforming to social norms and behavior.

A constant need for outward pleasures, since only they can stimulate a sense of enjoyment from life.

Fear of disease, aging, and death.

The pull of the outer world induces us to put physical reality first, and life becomes a struggle to find security and happiness under the threat that everything could collapse at any moment. Besides anxiety, there are other feelings that mask our insecurity, like the rush of thrill-seeking, the hypnosis of entertainment, and the drive to succeed.

The Pull of the Inner World

At the opposite end point the pull of the self is total. Life will then have very different qualities, as follows:

Being centered and quiet inside is a constant state that cannot be shaken by external circumstances. This leads to a sense of complete security.

One’s own awareness provides the joy and fulfillment that life is meant to bring.

Change is no longer threatening, because you see yourself as the still point in a turning world. Experience passes through you without altering your state of being.

You live in the eternal now, which makes aging and death irrelevant-they have dropped away as part of the illusion of change.

By living from your source, your true self, you are always in touch with the source of creativity and renewed possibilities.

You have no conflicts within yourself or with other people, because the wholeness of pure consciousness eradicates the play of opposites, including the play of light versus darkness, good versus evil.

The pull of the self is quiet but true, oblivious to the rise and fall of everyday situations. Finding non-change in the midst of change has long been the byword in the evolution of consciousness. The pull of the self, which we can notice every day, is the secret for making non-change a living reality.