Grace II
What is the mysterious silence of zazen that produces grace? Being touched by timelessness, selflessness, and infinite space can release, from the root of “self-ness”, the knots in our consciousness that we cling to as “our story” and produce our suffering.
If we can stay with our experience of going beyond our concept of self, there is nothing to grab on to. If we reduce our “thinking” with its concurrent; naming, elaborating and solidifying our ideas of who we are, that letting go or freedom is a type of grace.
Grace is also non-dual in Buddhism. We can have freedom from that which we do well, and that which we don’t do well. Both of which continually circle around the mistaken solidification of a self. From a vast view, we can have perspective on our psychological selves which always includes right and wrong, and see ourselves as empty or freed from our boundaries of time and space. Absorbed in the interconnection of life, we have very little room for the thoughts that particularize us and bring us suffering. We can, in the end, radically accept who we are. With the right universal perspective, we can let go and forgive, for example. We can see every expression more universally as life itself. We can see the wave from the perspective of the ocean.
This, for me, is a type of grace that is not willed. I can practice by setting up the conditions of seeing “total dynamic working” which goes beyond and also includes my “self” but this cannot be forced. The actual moment of release of my constructed boundaries happens beyond “me”. It is grace and a very deep relief.
Rumi-
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
Doesn’t make any sense.Labels: grace, no-self, non-dual