Strength.
Where & How Do YOU Find the Strength to Practice?
Come to the work with a question. The question needs to be of universal nature since the Master is interested in helping you approach Endless Delight not a mundane, bittersweet taste.
Write down your question otherwise you will forget what you asked to know.
Approaching Endless Delight
Take the backward step. YEP. This is where we begin the approach to endless delight. It is a simple action of shifting your focus from the material world to your thoughts in the mind until you are able to relinquish all thoughts.
Relinquishing thoughts requires non-attachment, your opinions, and self-interest. This relinquishment requires a pure mind.
Pure mind comes from freedom from attachment to thoughts, emotions and impure ideas. GREED, HATE & DELUSION are the three thoughts that are relinquished. Purifying the mind takes effort and strength and a willingness to clean-up the wanting, disliking and confusion in the mind.
To accomplish this work we study our mind, we contemplate and practice silent, still meditation as a method to get out of the burning house of desire, anger & false views of external, worldly form.
This method like all methods is done by you in your way. Just as a child learns the alphabet and learns to write in their own hand so too, you learn the method and do it in your own hand. What is important is whether or not your heart pierces open and that you and others sense the purification that results.
Part One
So, the first part of the method is to sit in silence according to your schedule. The “according to your schedule” is your measure of trueness and actualizing of the Endless Delight. In other words, if you are not true to your schedule you remain insincere and this dishonesty requires more work on the basics of morality, “do not lie even to yourself.”
There is no one checking up on you, but even though that may be the case you might find yourself deceitful and the consequences of deceit are mostly related to shams of all sorts.
Shams do not pierce the heart. You practice being willing to admit the deceit to yourself. If deceit is a problem, return to the moral structures to bolster your capability of piercing the heart but not as a punishment or harangue. Punishment only fatigues the heart.
Part Two
The second part in the method is the wind of confidence often thought of as inspiration. The wind of confidence is unique to you. The wind differs for each one of us.
I like to think of the wind against the sails of a small sailfish, it lifts the sails upward and moves the boat. But what is necessary is a sailor who steers and attends to the direction as the wind meets the sails. It may be different for you. But it is helpful to know your wind of confidence.
What makes sense for you? What or who inspires you? What moves you upward? You’ll need this confidence when the heart pierces. It’s one of those things, ya know, don’t leave home without it.
Check the weather reports in your own interior. Is there enough wind to get you across to where you want to go? If not, then work on confidence in your meditation. Confidence is usually known by the words, “faith or trust.”
Preliminaries like the previous parts are foundations for the work of slicing open your heart much like a sanitary room, utensils and hands in a surgery. And yet, if infection sets in that is where you work.
There are no guarantees or certainty in this work, but there are spiritual antidotes of all sorts when infections arise. Don’t worry too much about these infections, the body is going to die at some point. You can use your body for good deeds and helping yourself and others. And when you feel sick with infection, get some spiritual medicine to at least allay the bug.
When you practice in this Way, you begin to approach Endless Delight.
Don’t Give Up. Keep Going.
A Single Thread, Contemplative Order of Hsu Yun
