Finally got around to making a Fine Art America page now that I have a new piece in the works. https://t.co/NtvMPlUy7J

And for a moment you realize the freedom from them you’ve always had. A moment turns into an hour. An hour into a day. A day, with practice, into a lifetime. 6

like the zen practitioners of old who simply met the moment as the moment. From this vantage point all of the coping mechanisms we use to soothe ourselves appear as what they are: old karma, empty. 5

But there’s eventually a moment when all of this falls away and work is simply happening. Suddenly the work is a joy, and you’re simply vibing as the Dao, 4

NB: no one’s forcing you to do this and you can leave at anytime. Everyone else is also following the same schedule and is there trying to cultivate the bodhisattva path. 3

You’re tired, you’re expending energy, the work is not glamorous (cleaning toilets, cooking, etc). The day is highly structured, so you often don’t have a lot of choice in what you’re doing. 2

Zen work practice has the unintuitive side effect of opening up the Way. As I experienced it, at first, there is great resistance. 1

At first I thought it was crazy that the early Mahayana and the ancestors of the current Theravada school used live, work, and practice side by side in the same temples. Then I started living in temples. Seems pretty reasonable actually.

Is premium Twitter worth it? Thoughts 👀🤔

It’s good to note though that this was a gradual process that spanned about 10 years. From drinking way too much to not really drinking at all. 7

So I never really “quit drinking.” I still drink like 4 beers a year, one every season, but I effectively stopped drinking, because the underlying issues were taken care of. 6

I was able to notice that even one drink would cause a spike in depression the following day. While zazen on the other hand had the opposite effect. 5

Sitting lessened the anxiety and calmed my body-mind to the point where the negative effects of alcohol became so clear that they detracted from the “positive” effects. 4

My practice effectively ended my dependence on alcohol. I’d been in a loop of anxiety, drinking, feeling great, feeling bad, anxiety, drinking, etc. for over a decade. 3

In zazen we simply sit down and study the body-mind. This is where things can quiet down enough that we can really see what’s going on. 2

Zazen for me has been essential in working skillfully with all of my various issues. It’s hard to get a handle on things when those things are obscured by the whirl of experience. 1

This is how we typically see it in zen, which is influenced by the Chinese teaching of original enlightenment (although with origins in Indian Buddhism), which sees the nature of mind as suchness. 6

but of buddhata (Buddha-ness, Buddha Nature).  Even later on in China, Buddha Nature was mixed up with the Dao and with the Tathagata-garbha (Buddha Matrix / Womb) teachings, which saw the fabric of reality in its unnameable, empty aspect as synonymous with buddha itself. 5

This meant that in a sense he wasn’t really gone, but that he continued to live on through the body of his teachings. This would later be expanded upon in the Mahayana, which came to see the world (the dharmakaya) as the true body of not just the Buddha, 4

There were discussions of why the Buddha couldn’t have lived even longer than that. Eventually the idea occurred that the Pali Canon itself was the Buddha’s body. 3

You can see the early sangha coming to grips with the Buddha’s parinirvana in the Pali Canon. Ananda feels guilty for not having asked him to stay for a 100 years (instead of the 80 that he did). 2