So many Zen stories are trying to warn us that spirituality can be turned into a competition, into a power play even. That’s certainly what we have going on in in our last story. Mulla Nasrudine is saying, “Look who thinks he’s nothing!” How can this beggar think he’s nothing when nothing is the great spiritual attainment of the masters?
This shows how easy it is to think that spiritual practice is about attaining nothing, when actually it’s about attaining nothing!
We so easily turn nothing into something. We make it a thing to search for rather than simply seeing with the mystical side of our brain. We try to define it. Try to rope it in.
What we are really looking to do though, with our spiritual practices, is take this mystical side of our brain and turn it into a luxurious garden. It doesn’t have actual things that you can grasp. And that’s the beauty of it.
There is this is part of us that sees beauty that creates beauty. This is the part of us that’s simple and kind. Imagine this as a as a worldwide practice where everyone, at least once a day, stops and becomes very simple. If we could all just relax into being a human being. Slow the striving down. Slow the competition down… for just a moment, and just be.
We have such an incredible world that most of us live in. We live in incredible luxury, and we don’t really enjoy it so because of all this striving and striving and striving. That’s the thing that’s ruining the environment, you know. It’s not just carbon happening all by itself. The carbon comes from all the busyness.
Why can’t we just sit and enjoy? And particularly why can’t we sit and enjoy each other? That would be a nice.
So take a second. Just enjoy it for a moment.