"If you’re going to deal with reality, you’re going to have to make one big discovery: Reality is something that belongs to you as an individual. If you wanna grow up, which most people don’t, the thing to do is take responsibility for your own reality and deal with it on your own terms. Don’t expect that because you pay some money to somebody else or take a pledge or join a club or run down the street or wear a special bunch of clothes or play a certain sport or even drink Perrier water, it’s going to take care of everything for you. Because it all comes from inside. As a matter of fact, that’s where it stays.
-Frank Zappa
Some people are called rogue because they are stubborn enough to get off the crazy train of consumerist culture. Raw vigorous life at the forefront of one's own decisions. There is no ticket to buy; There is no ride - it's a walk. We leave the carriage car and use our two feet. Walking is a true adventure wherein every step is a decision of will.
Just don't listen blindly to anyone without first reconsidering their particular vantage point. This way compassion arises with refusal. Understand your own shortcomings, trust what you have, and realize it is not absolute. If you can do better, do. Until then, do your best. If you don't change the road you're on / You'll end up where you're going. Only you will know and only you can appreciate it when you arrive. There is no definitive, demarcated line of success in the world.
Everything is fine. No idea what the future holds; never did. Never will.
The spirit is flesh and bone / if you don't bleed the blood of love you'll end up all alone.
Just try
Just breathe
Just feel
Just think
Just cook
Just clean
Just work
Just chew
Just listen
Just speak
Just practice
There is no performance
It's all practice
If you get lost,
Just ask
If you ask, just answer
Just remember
Just forget
Just yes
Just no
Just sit
Just, just!
...
I find it valuable to ratchet my understanding into these static rivits from time to time, just to have a handle with which to climb backwards down the rungs in the ladder of my personal development.
*I know nothing. The only firm grip is on the seeming. it seems as it seems, andfeels as it feels. This is the indisputible. I don't know where the way leads, only recently am I learning to follow it. It isn't about happiness, not about supernatural abilities, nor even excellence. It is accepting life as it is. Everyone says it, but much easier to say than to do.
*How to do it is to practice. Practice is zazen. I have no idea why it works. I have no idea what it working even means. It might be that I just want to have faith that something is worthwhile, and I picked at random this randomly praised activity; but it doesn't seem so. I've tried giving meaning to temporal things before, and it always bothered me deep down in side and I couldn't ignore it. Flowers bloom in the mists of dawn, as we sit when the gravity pulls us to our cushion.
*What is different about zazen is that it isn't a thing. It is bigger than thoughts, or activities, or ideas. But it isn't big. It isn't a size, it is a non-size. Everything exists within zazen, within nothingness. Approaching nothingness causes the space around to ripple. Red apples to blind Susan.
*There is no hand to open, there is no letting go. There is no me to hold or release, only a gradual softening of the tense fibers of metalicised utiltarian lifestylings.
*I am not programmed to be a winner on a genetic scale: although the capability is there to breed, it is offset by the contemplation of such a decision.
*Vegetarianism leaves me feeling light, cheerful and energized. My metabolism is quick and efficient, my breaths are effortless and pleasurable. My body is at ease. I feel strong.
*My left knee hurts in a way that feels structural. It worries me that I have damaged it walking alone across the Earth. But because my knee took me over the mountains, I can sit knowing well what is on the other side.
*It is important to know which parts of oneself to listen to, and how to remember. Writing is the only tool I know of that can cut through the fog of emotionally laden -mis-remembering. There is so much rosy colored light surrounding what were ostensibly the hardest and darkest times in my life. Yet, it was sharpening a spirit on a grindstone...to cut what?
**Gaining is delusion, losing is enlightenment.
*it all comes down to you, constant stranger.
