It is essential at the beginning of practice to acknowledge that the path is personal and intimate. It is no good to examine it from a distance as if it were someone else’s. You must walk it for yourself. In this spirit, you invest yourself in your practice, confident of your heritage, and train earnestly side by side with your sisters and brothers. It is this engagement that brings peace and realization.
Received as Daily Dharma from Tricycle.com on the 12th of June 2011
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I think Robert Aitken Roshi makes an important point here: "It is this engagement that brings peace and realization." Not some amazing 'spiritual experience', not meditating for hours on end, not cracking a particular Koan, not receiving a nice pat on the head from the teacher, not taking vows, not becoming a monastic... although of course all these things will bring about their own results.
It is the genuine hard work and engagement with something that has deep personal meaning that brings peace and realization.
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2 comments:
Great post. And I'm thinking that we could bring "genuine hard work and engagement with something that has deep personal meaning" to this very moment, which is as deep and personal as anything ever could be!
Thanks & quite right! _/\_
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