Today,
I want you to come to sitting,
To meditation,
With no expectation of doing anything or any no thing whatsoever.
Today,
You aren't even going to be sitting.
You aren't going to be focusing on the breath.
You aren't going to notice the awareness and test the edges of your concentration.
I especially don't want you to come to the cushion with any thoughts,
Hopes,
Or dreams.
Don't expect anything.
Don't expect insight,
Wisdom,
Calm,
Cool,
Or relaxation from your meditation or non-meditation.
Don't expect frustration or distraction.
In fact,
Don't even expect meditation.
It is said that enlightenment comes easy to a person of no preference.
Nirvana is always present to those of no faculty.
Satori is immediately achieved when you drop any idea of this or that.
When the nirvana and samsara are seen as the same thing that trap you in your wandering.
When the ego is seen as friend and as foe.
When the mind is master and servant.
When Shiva laughs behind the mask of all self and everything collapses.
Back,
Back,
Back,
Back,
Back.
Until you return to exactly where you are with the entire universe of existence still bearing witness to you and with you.
Then the wisdom that sits between threads of incense will make you have the bodhisattva's smile.
All that we will find between here and there is illusion.
But what a tremendous effort we must make to cut through this fog.
It is as thick as iron.
It is the iron sheet of the present that separates past and future.
Are you expecting?
Trying to figure it out?
Trying to analyze it?
Understand it?
Stop that nonsense.
Is that you?
Or is that you trying to hold this illusion together?
Regardless it doesn't matter.
Just this.
Just here.
But even saying that sours it.
So just be.
Or just.
Just.
This isn't meditation.
That's just a label.
Just a concept.
Another hindrance we put on ourselves.
See it for what it is.
Strip it of its feathers and its fetters.
Just like you can do with anything else.
Both the good and the bad.
If you see the Buddha,
Kill the Buddha.
If you utter the word Buddha,
Wash your mouth out.
The Buddhas and ancestors have been many in deed.
Their deeds are instructive for teaching others the way to supreme enlightenment.
Yet they are like the tracks of birds in the sky and like coffee in the morning and the breaths found on the cushion.
So rest in doing this and not doing this.
A middle between those two extremes.
The middle way of mind.
If you can do this,
Turn the light of self,
Searching truly inward and take that backward step.
See all exactly as it is both one and two,
Yet neither.
You shall be very close.
So close in fact that enlightenment will be found right beneath your feet.
So sit and let us do this without expectation.
A bell will ring and about 10 minutes to signify the end of meditation.
Followed by a short statement.
Let us begin.
