Wednesday, April 13, 2016

To go home to arrive (Touching Peace)

Watch the following Thay's video on "The practice of arriving of going home (To go home to arrive)deeply from 4:41 to 11:57


The followings are the excerpts.

Quote:
My dear friends, I'd like to describe my practice, my teaching as the practice of arriving of going home. These beautiful poems that we use to practice of arriving and going home, it is like this.

I have arrived,
I'm home
in the here and the now.
I feel solid, I feel free,
in the ultimate I dwell.

And of course, we may practice mindful breathing with that poem. When you breathe in, you practice arriving. "I have arrived". And when you breathe out, you practice being home. "I am home". You may enjoy several times and you switch into "in the here and the now." It means I have arrived in the here, I'm home in the now. "I feel solid". Guess when you breathe in. "I feel free". That is why you breathe out. At first, you may feel that you are not so solid but if you continue the practice, you get more solid and you get freer. Then the last line is "in the ultimate I dwell." 

To me, it is very important to go home to arrive in order to make peace with ourselves, with our society and with the people we love. Sometimes we suffer a little bit too much and we want to go away to run away from home. We have the impression that at home there is only pain, suffering, deception, and we go and take refuge in something else. Maybe in the past or in the future or in our project. Even project for social change. 

Learning to go home to arrive is important. We go home to the present moment. We go home to the here and the now. Sometimes we don't want to go home because we have the impression that is not pleasant. Back home, there is a thing like violence, fear. Back home, there is a thing like Haiti, Somalia you want to forget.  

Going home, we are afraid of touching our pain, touching the war within. Sometimes we find ourselves at war with another person, maybe with our family, with our society, with our tradition. But we may learn that when we are at war with someone else, that may be a war in us. And that is why we don't want to go home. Of course there is a war within and around us. But there is something else. There is peace and joy. And we should learn to go home in order to touch joy and peace within us and around us. And this is very important because all of us need to be nourished to be stable in order to be able to go further to do something for the people around us. 

I know many of you are very dedicated to the cause of peace or social justice. But many of us feel at times lost, angry, despair. We are overwhelmed by the tremendous amount of suffering that is there around us and even inside of us. We need the source of energy, the source of peace, of joy in order to counterbalance. Because we know that if we don't have some amount of peace, of joy, of happiness, we can not do anything, we can not continue

The practice of arriving will help us to touch the peace and the joy within in order to get nourished. And that practice will help us to generate the energy of mindfulness that will help us to touch the war within and around us. Because the touching the war without strength, without the energy of mindfulness, may be dangerous. We will be overwhelmed by it. We will be shuttered by it. And therefore, before we touch the war within and around us, we should cultivate the energy of mindfulness. And that kind of cultivation could be realized when you learn to go home and touch the peace and joy in us.
:Unquote

(My commentary)
"To go home to arrive" sounds like "Back to the future". It has a deep meaning. In other words, we need to return to true self in the past to attain awakening, or enlightenment in the future. I understand that everyone was enlightened at the beginning of this life but true self (awareness, non-separate self) was covered up by fake self (ego, separate self) due to the lack of unconditional acceptance, or love. That's why we need to go home to arrive. That's why we need to revive true self to wake up from fake self. This means awakening, or enlightenment. And the awakening method is mindfulness. After temporary awakening, if we throw away all notions by understanding the ultimate truth, we will be able to attain full enlightenment.

(Cf.) http://compassion5151.blogspot.jp/2016/04/notice-of-private-lessons-for-one-more.html


Thay's calligraphy