Love

More important than the Love that we have and that we expect from others is the love that we have for ourselves and how much we ourselves love. Be the sun of your own Life. It does not matter what the whole Universe does, the Sun just keeps on shining, bursting heat and light.

The only way of being unconditionally happy is unconditionally loving, not objectively loving, but being Love itself, like a self consuming flame that unconditionally gives warmth and light.

The way I feel, Zen is about satisfaction through the elimination of distraction, because the satisfaction is inside. If one does not contact this natural level of satisfaction, he or she will be vulnerable to pursue that satisfaction outside. When a person tries to find satisfaction outside, the things of the world become like beautiful baits, but baits nonetheless. They become that kind of bait that is colorful and pretty, attractive to a fish, but they are actually a hook in disguise, no nutrition just death. Once that happens, a person become a hungry gullible fish in a barrel loaded with irresistible baits, irresistible hooks.

What Zen does to me is to show that life is not a barrel, and that satisfaction is not outside. If a person finds inner satisfaction Life reveals itself as a infinity ocean of possibilities, and the fish realizes that he is not just a fish, he is the fish and the ocean. There is no separation. Circumstances may be limited and limiting, but, emotional possibilities and emotional choices are always infinite and limitless if the person realizes that satisfaction is inside, that the one who owns satisfaction owns the world. The world is just a way back to what one is already is. Zen is the way back home.

Coming to think, the so called freedom may be the most imprisioning thing. Once one thinks that he or she is free, one becomes attached to freedom and is afraid to loose it, fights to keep it. But if one is afraid, if one has to fight, there is no freedom anymore, because attachment is there, and attachment is the opposite of freedom. Attachment is the ultimate and everpresent prison.

A bird in a cage may not fly out even when the gate is open, because in the cage is where he has always found food, water, protection. The cage is not a cage, the cage is home. The bird just can't fly away because the cage is inside. The cage is always inside.

A cockroach will be a cockroack does not matter where it is. It feels at home in in the sewage. In a palace, it will look for the trash bin to live and gorge.



A lion will be a lion, it does not matter where it is. In the jungle, reigns among all animals. In a palace, it will eat the king.



Zen, as I understand, is not concerned with who one is. It focus on transformation, growth, independence. No matter where a person goes, what a person does, that person will only be and do what that person is. Therefore, the better thing to be is freedom, independence, fluidity, in a way that one is able to keep rensponsive to the changes in the environment. Attachment to identity frequently means ruin and suffering.



In some circunstances a cockroach is much more skillful, powerful, able to survive than a lion. Better than be a cockroach or a lion, then, is not to be attached to identity and change as the environment and circunstances change, and win.

The highest regarded possession one can acquire for practicing zen, I think, is nothingness. Nothingness does not means nothing. Nothingness means the realization that the proccess of identification of beings, things and events is always generated and generates delusion. The Universe in the way one experiences is always delusion. The identity we find on things and the way we identify things are actually an imposition of our perception as an individual and a member of an species. Identification means isolating something as existential unity. But in the Universe there is no isolation, there is no unity. The universe is all co-related. As I understand, the concept of nothingness describes the fact that nothing is anything because all is one.

Mastering puppets

As a zen practitioner I don't see myself as a spiritual seeker. Being a seeker would mean that I am in search for something away from here and now, away from myself. The funny thing is that wherever you go, you automatically turn that place and time in your here and now, that place and time becomes you.

We are some kind of King Midas, everything we touch become gold, our gold, what we most value. What we see, feel and experience are the values that we project onto reality. We are the center of our own universes willing or not, knowing or not.

Zen, as I understand, is a realization of that. It's a realization that one needs to stop dreaming, that one needs to stop sleeping, that one needs to stop the self-imposed distractions, that one is the master of the puppets of one's own life. Therefore, one needs to step in from the periphery of one's own life. Realize that you are the master of the puppets that your experiences are.

The American dream is a nightmare, it makes the dreamer insomniac.

The Zen dream is not even a dream, because Zen is about awakening, being , instead of becoming, pursuing, dreaming, sleeping, entertainment, escaping.

Zen strives for being here and now. Realization is not there in the future. It is here and now. It does not depend on “ifs” and “whens”. Zen sells peace, not pacifiers. Peace is the fruit of detachment, enjoying more, fully being your truth, instead buying more, having more.

The American dream is about Life, freedom and pursue of Happiness. But what if one has no freedom? What if one faces death? What if one’s pursue leads to constant failure? The answer is: Those circumstances do not matter, if you one IS Life, if you one IS Freedom, if one IS Happiness.

The American dream is the path to success. The Zen awakening is the way of fulfillment.