Some people are beneficiaries of a system that enables certain individuals to amass inconceivable riches while countless others are condemned to lives of squalor and disenfranchisement. And while Buddhism extends its systemic lenses on a much wider framework of human suffering, the in-between area of the immediately near us is sometimes neglected.
Buddhism ultimately is not about making ourselves comfortable and well adjusted in samsara. It is about getting off that wheel entirely, by ending what they call the uncontrolled rebirth that arises out of confusion. We have to be careful in caring for each other and adapting to circumstances that we don’t reify the self, and reinforce our suffering.
One mahatma asked Swami Muktananda for a certificate of enlightenment. Swami Muktananda just laughed. When you live in integrity and your heart and soul are stable in that integrity, that’s what you cherish more than anything in the world. These are poetic terms and it’s not necessarily like that, but we have to use words. When you reach an awareness within yourself that is undeluded, there is no reason that you want to put a rock in your heart or dualistically split anything through an idea, because it’s not possible.
A mindfulness teacher and executive coach discusses some of the current challenges facing the development of mindfulness and how to integrate a deeper meaning and practice that is consistent with Buddha’s path.
The Song of Enlightenment is a Chan Buddhist poem that dates back to the middle years of the Tang Dynasty. The text is attributed to the poet-monk Yongjia Xuanjue who was a disciple of Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch in the Chan line and the founder of the Southern School of Enlightenment, which puts him and this text in the direct up line of the great Zen tradition.