The Third Patriarch of Zen

by Seng-T’san

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
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According to the HeartMath Institute, “from our current understanding of the elaborate feedback networks between the brain, heart and mental and emotional systems, it becomes clear that the age-old struggle between intellect and emotion will not be resolved by the mind gaining dominance over the emotions, but rather by increasing the harmonious balance between the mental and emotional systems – a synthesis that provides greater access to our full range of intelligence.”

The HeartMath Institute’s mission is to help people bring their physical, mental and emotional systems into balanced alignment with their heart’s intuitive guidance. They were established in 1991, and they research and develop reliable, scientifically based tools that bridge the connection between heart and mind and deepen people’s connection with the hearts of others.

With this applied understanding it is easy to begin to grasp why forced positive thinking has the potential to do more harm than good.
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The mind is a place the soul goes to hide from the heart.

-Michael Singer

ahhhh so it is.  So it is.

Always looking for a way to make things better.

What if everything, I mean everything was the best it could possibly be in each moment, but our minds travel away and miss it?  Each time it doesn’t see it because it is somewhere else.

Jumping in to stop what we don’t prefer is like jumping into a small pond to stop a ripple.

What if everything is perfect and full of surprises already?
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Information has an amazing ability to transform our choices and illuminate our own knowingness.  At the same time, information can keep us suspended in this middle space of never being enough.  We see a headline promoting something, and we think, I want that because I don’t feel like I have it in my life.  We place our hope in learning about something to get away from something we don’t like about ourselves.  It’s easy to implement practices or methods to escape.  Escape from what makes us uncomfortable, what makes us feel insecure, ashamed, fearful, sad, or angry.  If we are not careful, we spend our days acquiring information to rid ourselves of things that have the potential to be our most prominent teachers.  Meanwhile, those same things we perceive as obstacles keep showing up in different places with different faces trying to get our attention.
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We realize that there is no alternative to the experience that we have.  Our experience is the only experience there is.  This is the ultimate teacher.

-Pema Chodron

(photo by Jake Ingle)

The sense of problems niggles at me.  I can’t help but question what all this thinking, all this judgment, all this monotony, this constant striving to get somewhere at some point is – it is like a treadmill.  I have watched repetitive habit energies circling my body, brain, and emotions.  Survival tactics, looking into the deep dark chasm of anger and fear.  My emotions and thinking run towards the hills; they wonder, wander and wobble.

Sometimes I think I am alone, with only words to explain, yet the words seem limited.  They do not feel expansive enough to express the inexpressible.  However, that is the limitation that constricts the expression.  They are the color we add to the world.  Bombarded by them everywhere.  Some words are filled with fear, some longing, desire, yearning, empty, sad, angry, and frustrated.  The emotions seem rooted deeper than the words can offer as their form of expression.
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The Love boils up from the heart.  It was not something that was done rather something that is always there.  To feel it is to know that the supply is unlimited.  Another can not take it away, remove or replace it.  For it is.  Read more

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise from outward things, whate’er you may believe.

There is an inmost center in us all, where truth abides in fullness; and around, wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, the perfect, clear perception—which is truth.

A baffling and perverting carnal mesh binds it, and makes all error; and to know rather consists in opening out a way whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, than in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without.

-Robert Browning

(Photo by Olivier Fahrn)

About a year ago, two questions came to me during journaling and altered my perception and reaction towards external things. These two simple questions moved me from fear and defensiveness towards the center that exists within myself, the place I experience and call balance.
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