When attention settles back into ordinary experience without trying to improve it, something lively resumes on its own. Curiosity returns. Interest broadens. The world regains texture. Not because some higher ground has been reached, but because experience is no longer filtered through the demand that it justify itself or lead somewhere else.
Nationalism, at its root, is a longing for belonging, for being part of something greater than oneself. Fascism exploits this longing, offering the illusion of unity and purpose, while demanding conformity, obedience, and the sacrifice of personal freedom. Those who cannot tolerate their own individuality are often the most enthusiastic supporters.
In the beginning we consult the great traditions to see if we have got it right. At a certain point we consult the great traditions to see if they have got it right!
The most confronting truth is this: Clarity is not born from deeper interpretation.
It is born from restraint.
From choosing not to fill every space with story. From allowing moments to remain undefined. From permitting uncertainty without attempting to dominate it.
There is no value in trying to transform your experience into something
else, better or worse; instead, simply accept its immediate, raw
sensations exactly as they are.
Too lazy to be ambitious, I let the world take care of itself. Ten days' worth of rice in my bag; a bundle of twigs by the fireplace. Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment? Listening to the night rain on my roof, I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
If I have to suffer, then let it be from my reality. A neurosis is a much greater curse! In general, a neurosis is a replacement for an evasion, an unconscious desire to cheat life, to avoid something.
Loneliness, then, is the price of awakeness. It’s what we face when we stop clutching second-hand notions—religion, nationalism, spiritual slogans, gender banners, racial labels—and instead meet the terrifying fact that we don’t actually know who or what we are. But once we admit that we don’t know, we’re finally being honest. And without honesty, there’s no freedom.
Once the sense of self is understood as a functional stabilization rather than a mistake, the whole project of opposing it collapses. There’s nothing to fix, only something to recognize. The pressure to improve or eliminate experience dissolves because no error is being diagnosed.
Attainment means something very specific in Zen. It does not mean acquiring a belief or arriving at a philosophical position. It means direct realization. It means that something has been seen so clearly, so immediately, that it no longer depends on thought to exist. You do not believe it. You do not think it. You know it in the same way you know you are alive: without effort, without argument, without reference.
We speak as if awareness were an agent; the self were an inner object; and experience were something that requires management. Presence is treated as a place one can enter or leave. Attention becomes a faculty that stands apart from what it attends to. Each move is grammatically licensed. Each produces sentences that seem significant. And each quietly manufactures problems that then call for solutions, paths, methods, or practices.
…what you want is comfort, permanency, a state of mind that will never be disturbed, which you call peace. And you will find what you are seeking, but it will not be the real, it will not be truth.
The UK is a bizarre country where its seen as just fine & normal for people to sleep in tents in the freezing cold. Temperatures to hit -4 this week
But the idea Billionaires could be less rich. Not poor, not struggling, just a bit less rich, this is seen as extreme and radical
Whatever I call “me” is just part of the show. Whatever I call “self” is a useful tool, not a tyrant. And whatever I’m trying to become… maybe I already am.
