No umbrella, getting soaked.
I’ll just use the rain as my raincoat. Daito Kokushi
"Facing yourself intimately and without judgment is like finding yourself in a sudden downpour without an umbrella or a shelter. You try to escape the cold and wet by huddling into your clothes, head down, but there’s no way to move away from the rain, just like there’s no way to move away from your own issues, sorrow, or anger. If you can just let go of trying to escape and acknowledge, ‘This is me, and this is what I’m experiencing,’ the need to escape vanishes. You are free to be truly there for yourself and others. It’s like standing in the rain with nothing to lose: your self is the raincoat that will protect you and protect your loved ones through your honesty. If you can see that you are not the world, but that the world is actually you, then you can begin to experience an intimacy with all things. The key is to train yourself to see this in your moment-to-moment life, to consciously dissolve the made-up boundaries between self and other, to appreciate that we are all linked together in this magic circle of relationship.
This might sound rather airy-fairy, but it is what gives us freedom, and freedom is what we really want. We want to be spontaneously alive, not stuck in our old habits of body and mind. So we flow with change; we nurture awareness; we listen with open heart-minds to ourselves and to each other. We recognize our own ‘selflessness’ and our own ‘self-fullness.’
It is the fulcrum of our relationships – with family, friends, coworkers – that can lead us to this continuous path of awakening. The key is to train ourselves to recognize how we are in our moment-to-moment lives and to honestly connect with others without fear or shame. Because, strange as it may seem, we learn more from relationships than from any other source. And they are not always easy! Buddha’s teachings tell us that suffering arises from grasping for things to be different than they are, from not meeting the moment just as it is. We’re so preoccupied with the idea of what we want, that we miss what’s really alive in the present moment. We always want to be safe and happy and to avoid any suffering, so we try to control our own lives and the lives of those close to us. We don’t feel safe enough to just let things fall apart and reassemble. We try to ‘fix’ the other people when that’s not needed, and so we create more suffering.
It may sound strange, but even when we are struggling, we can find appreciation in the struggle itself. If we are willing to experience others and ourselves as evolving beings, we may realize that even the most disturbing insight into our self may be exactly what we need. At that moment, we can appreciate our willingness and courage to take the step into reality.”
Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara. “Most Intimate. A Zen Approach to Life’s Challenges.” Shambhala, 2014.
"You need not worry about your worries. Just be. Do not try to be quiet; do not make 'being quiet' into a task to be performed. Don't be restless about 'being quiet', miserable about 'being happy'. Just be aware that you are and remain aware - don't say: 'yes, I am; what next?' There is not 'next' in 'I am'. It is a timeless state." Nisargadatta
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