photo credit: h.koppdelaney
Liberation is being set free from our own conditioned thoughts and beliefs. It is also freedom from the mechanical actions and reactions that come from them. Most of us would say that they want to be free but at the same time we want to achieve that while holding on to our conditioned thoughts and beliefs, as well as, continuing to do thing in the way we always have.
Its a simple but profound problem.
Fear is what stands in the way even if it is only the fear of discomfort.
Enduring some discomfort doesn’t seem such a high price to pay for our freedom, yet we are often unwilling to pay it. If we examine it carefully we may see that it all adds up to giving up our limitations and the suffering these limitations create.
Strangely enough it seems like our suffering is the last thing we want to give up.
This post will make me try to watch out more carefully. I kept staring at the last sentence for quite a while. Thank you very much.
We are not really taught that. Liberation-that can sound like “enjoy your life”. And of course liberation lasts forever. We are not taught that it is maybe like sports. Or even worse. And it sounds like it excludes states of mind like boredom
After some years of zen boredom unexpectedly came as issue for me. For some years no spiritual kicks seemed to happen anymore. I wondered. The first year was so exciting! I wanted everything but not this ordinary feeling.
Sometimes I think that in zen-when it should be satisfying kind of the first step is painful and than comes liberation. We want it immediatly or in a fast way.
Sensei,
I wonder if there is a koan (or other story) that points at:
A. The probable length of practice required to begin to loosen the grip of the conditioned mind (like a pat on the back) – ie. in a sense that to relieve oneself of the suffering will take more suffering (consternation, etc etc)?
I find this with my Aikido and Tango practice, the striving to get better and the (hopefully) equal patience with that whole idea, in a sense by doing the practice without a ‘desire’ for the goal. Its a constant struggle to be liberated.
And/or B:
That the transition from non-liberated to liberated (or at least some consistent appreciation of that state) is like letting go of some safety of knowing before finding another ‘safety’ of knowing (or more accurately perhaps, not-knowing!). This transition feels like swimming without knowing how to swim sometimes.
Thank you