by Daniel Doen Silberberg | Jan 20, 2010 | Uncategorized, Zen
We’re all just traveling through this life. We are all going to die, and our lives pass quickly. The warrior-traveler is a realist; he doesn’t get lost in the story of his life. People who don’t realize they’re travelers act as though they will live forever, and this is just unrealistic.
Remember, too, that everyone else is a traveler; they and all the things they care about are just passing through. Everyone is going to die. Remembering this can make us treat others more kindly; when we think someone will be around forever, we don’t give them the same kind of care and respect.
Knowing that you’re just passing through can be scary, but it’s also liberating. When you’re a traveler-warrior, when you understand that you’re just passing through life, not a whole lot matters. And when you really understand this, you can focus on what you really want. Knowing that you’re just passing through, knowing that you’re going to die–what do you want to do with your life?
by Daniel Doen Silberberg | Feb 9, 2009 | Uncategorized, Zen
When you do sitting meditation, zazen, you let everything come in, you don’t try to get rid of it, and you allow yourself to be with what is. This is preparation for being able to choose what you get. Otherwise, you will have–and you really will!—a lifetime of putting off everything to a future time or regretting a past time. So the practice of zazen, what we also call remembering oneself, is to stop thinking for a moment and just be here. A more forceful way of saying that is to choose what is. It is to be here and be really here. To want to be here. So you don’t hold the idea that you’re going to be happy and start living when X and Y come to fruition. You’re going to start now. Always now. You’re going to choose what is. Choose what you get.
Please work with this. You will see that it’s very powerful. It’s even more powerful than remembering yourself. And don’t take it in a simplistic way. I’ve got this house, I like it, I can always be thinking about how I’m going to move to California, in which case I won’t like it, or I can choose to like it, be here, and think I would like to move to California and that will be part of it. But it’s a subtle difference. For most of us, we’re always moving to California. We’re never, ever choosing what we have. Choosing what we get, another word for it, simply, is living. Not putting it off, not regretting it. It means choosing to be the age you are, choosing to be the sex you are, choosing to do the job you do. Choosing the weather to be what it is. Choose what you get; live right now.
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