Let the Buddha Walk
By Thich Nhat Hanh

I have a student named Sister Tri Hai who spent a long time in prison. She was a peace activist I knew since she was in middle school. She came to the United States to study English literature before going back to Vietnam and becoming a nun. When she was out in the streets advocating for peaceful change, she was arrested and put in prison.

During the day, the prison guards didn’t like her to sit in meditation. When they see someone sitting in a prison cell solidly and stably, it feels a bit threatening. So she waited until the lights had gone out, and she would sit like a person who has freedom. In outer appearance she was caught in the prison. But inside she was completely free. When you sit like that, the walls are not there. You’re in touch with the whole universe. You have more freedom than people outside who are imprisoning themselves in their agitation.

Sister Tri Hai also practiced walking meditation in her prison cell. It was very small—after seven steps she had to turn around and come back. Sitting and walking mindfully gave her space inside. She taught other prisoners in her cell how to sit and how to breathe so they would suffer less. They were in a cold cell, but through their walking meditation, they were grounded in the solid beauty of the earth.

Those of us who can walk on the earth, who can walk in freedom, should do it. If we rush from one place to another, without practicing walking meditation, it is such a waste. What is walking for? Walking is for nothing. It’s just for walking. That is our ultimate aim—walking in the spring breeze. We have to walk so that we have happiness, so that we can be a free person. We have to let go of everything, and not seek or long or search for anything. There is enough for us to be happy.

All the Buddhist stories tell us that the Buddha had a lot of happiness when he sat, when he walked, when he ate. We have some experience of this. We know there are moments when we’re walking or sitting that we are so happy. We also know that there are times, because of illness or physical disability or because our mind is caught elsewhere, when we cannot walk freely like the Buddha. There are those of us who do not have the use of our legs. There are those of us who are in prison, like Sister Tri Hai, and only have a few feet of space. But we can all invite the Buddha to walk for us. When we have difficulty, we can leave that difficulty behind and let the Buddha walk for us. In a while the solidity of the earth can help us return to ourselves.

If we sit mindfully, if we walk mindfully and reverently on the earth, we will generate the energies of mindfulness, of peace, and of compassion in both body and mind.
We are made of body and mind. Our body can radiate the energy of peace and compassion. Our mind also has energy. The energy of the mind can be powerful. If the energy of the mind is filled with fear and anger, it can be very destructive. But if we sit mindfully, if we walk mindfully and reverently on the earth, we will generate the energies of mindfulness, of peace, and of compassion in both body and mind. This kind of energy can heal and transform.

If you walk reverently on the earth with two other people, soaking in the earth’s solidity, you will all three radiate and benefit from the energy of peace and compassion. If three hundred people sit or walk like this, each one generates the energy of mindfulness, peace, and compassion, and everyone in the group receives that healing energy. The energy of peace and mindfulness does not come from elsewhere. It comes from us. It comes from our capacity to breathe, to walk, to sit mindfully and recognize the wonders of life.

When you walk reverently and solidly on this earth and I do the same, we send out waves of compassion and peace. It is this compassion that will heal ourselves, each other, and this beautiful green earth.

I pay homage at the feet of the guru,
And here present the essence of key points
From the clear light vajra pinnacle:

Having laid a foundation with the path of devotion,
And severed the basis of the deluded mind at its source,
Naturally and without contrivance,
Sustain clear and empty awareness,
Which is inexpressible and without basis or origin.

When you know the key point of how to Naturally release dualistic thoughts, they will no longer bind you.

For enhancement, focus on the merging
Of the outer and inner skies.
Settle without clinging in all-pervasiveness.
Cultivate renunciation, compassion and bodhicitta,
And strive to adopt and avoid actions according to their effects—this is crucial.

The one called Chökyi Lodrö
Offered these few words of instruction.

At Sāvatthī, standing to one side, the god Kāmada said to the Buddha:

So hard it is to do, Lord,
It's so very hard to do!

[Buddha]
But still they do what's hard to do,
Who steady themselves with virtue.
For one pursuing homelessness,
Content arrives, and with it joy.

[Kamada:]
So hard it is to tame, Lord,
This mind of which you speak!

[Buddha:]
But still they tame what's hard to tame,
Who delight in senses at peace.
Cutting through mortality's net,
The nobles, Kamada, proceed.

[Kamada:]
So hard it is to go, Lord,
On this path that gets so rough!

[Buddha:]
Still nobles, Kamada, proceed
On paths both rough and hard to take.
Those who are less than noble fall
On their heads when the path gets rough.
But for nobles the path is smooth
— For nobles smooth out what is rough!

"Enemies like hate and attachment have no legs, arms and other limbs, and have no courage or ability, so how, then, have they managed to make me their slave?"

— Shantideva

Approach what you find repulsive, help the ones you think you cannot help, and go places that scare you.
- Machik Labdron

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is - the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it.

Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 1

My nibbas better realise bliss is conditioned.
I dare us to seek the unchanging.
If this fool isn’t mistaken there is but one.
Set me straight, Lecture me otherwise, “I” will weep of joy.

This is what happens when someone attempts to explain the unexplainable(reality) by animating abstract mathematical models(probably formless)
I find this so funny, I don’t know why. If someone think this is a fair representation of the lower cell realm, please explain how they came to this conclusion.

Void weaving part 1.

Faith and certainty, fills the same practical role as ignorance. As they both restrict the capacity to learn or experience beyond itself. One who thinks he knows would not care or even consider to question it.

Adherence to reason or dogma is still adherence. Adherence being the loss of autonomy, a kind of submission to the conditions of an identity or dependent suchness.

This is zerosum statements. It is proof of what it's not.
Proof being some cause of conclusion.
conclusion being the word, conditions being the definition.

In any elaboration, practice or explanation the operators in use is but a few.

The few has the ultimate nature of sameness. Sameness in that the identity of any one of these, is dependent on its relationships with what it is not, it is other dependent. As all operators(or terms) share this attribute as their definition they are not different. As they are dependent on eachother they cannot be exclusively true or false, or real at the expense of another.

Void weaving part 2.

As the nature of mind conditions the independent base of itself regardless of the unreality of these conditions. I find it useful to weave the void so that these empty threads recursively yield the conclusion of rememberering this boundless freedom.

This is not speculation it is derived from simply analysing phenomena. Observing mind(reality).

[
Thus, while ultimate reality is beyond language, "apart from all names and words", noble awakened beings "provisionally invent" linguistic conventions such as "conditioned" and "unconditioned" in order to lead sentient beings to the truth. However these inventions have no absolute existence, they are like the creations of a magician, which only appear to be dualistic, but actually lead to a non-dual transcendent reality.
]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhinirmocana_Sutra

Suppose a king or royal minister has never heard lute music before. But one day he does hear it and he says: ‘Good man, tell me, what is that enchanting and delightful, intoxicating, ravishing and enthralling sound?’ Then they say to him: ‘That Sir, is the music of the lute.’ So he says: ‘Go, bring me that lute.’ So they bring it to him but he says: ‘Enough of this lute. Bring me the music.’ Then they say to him: ‘Sir, this lute consists of many parts; the belly, the skin, the handle, the frame, the string, the bridge and the effort of the player. And it makes the sound because of them. The sound is because of these various and many parts.’ Then the king breaks the lute into a hundred pieces, splinters it again, burns it, puts the ashes in a heap and winnows them in the wind or washes them away in water in order to find the music. Having done this he finds no music and says: ‘A poor thing indeed is a lute; whatever a lute may be. The world is deceived by such things.’ In the same way, one investigating the body as far as the body goes, investigating feeling, perception, mental constructs and consciousness as far as they go, finds no ‘I’ , no ‘I am’, no ‘Mine.’

-Samyutta Nikaya IV 197

Science getting up to speed with Buddhas dharma. Interesting talk on cognitive science and consciousness.

https://youtu.be/reYdQYZ9Rj4