Wednesday, March 06, 2024

NO ONE IS HOPELESS — Tangen Harada Roshi

Tangen Harada Roshi

NO ONE IS HOPELESS

What about you? Have you no pain, no suffering, no worries, no fears? If you honestly think: ‘Hey, not me. I can meet it as it comes, go with the flow. I am not afraid; I can always be at peace,' then you are fooling yourself, giving yourself license, seeing yourself for what you are not. You are caught up in a ‘self' notion, clinging to an ego idea. And lost in that ‘self', you cannot hear the cry or see the tears of others. If you can overlook those tears, you are not a person of great peace of mind.

The depth of truth is bottomless. Your interconnection is bottomless. A single grass in the field is perfect Buddha. How utterly ONE are all things: the grasses, the trees, the great earth, the great sky. All being is born in relation to all things. This is the true self, the perfect self. No matter what, all is goodness. However, because of deluded perception, beings fail to realize their inherent Buddha-nature. Truth is universal and complete. Can you receive and embrace thoroughly this one truth?

There is something urging you to look deeper, something which seeks to be known. Don't you see it yet? Isn't it clear yet?
 
You are sitting here because you cannot help but seek Truth. The genuine seeks to know itself. Truth is seeking Truth. That is why you are here, putting your heart and soul into meditation.
 
Your time of awakening will come. No one is hopeless. Life is not mean. No one is left out. There is no one who is more or less Buddha than any other. True nature is never lost, never hidden from you.
 
It only seems that you have to go looking for it. But you have had long lifetimes of fooling yourself, protecting self-cherishing. When you come to life again, to awakening, it will be so clear that there is no ‘self' and no ‘other'. There is no opposition; there is just this one Reality.
 
What appears as opposition is simply the result of a self-centered view, which is, of course, an incorrect view. This bad habit and wrong view causes untold suffering for yourself and others. And you will continue to create suffering as you go on living in falsehood. You will continue to experience suffering, fear, a sense of lack, and you will not be helping anybody

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