It Only Works If You Use It
By Michael Erlewine
The above words have meaning and IMO are the hallmark of any serious dharma practice, because they are strikingly true.
Dharma is not only a do-it-yourself project, but unless we turn the wheel of dharma ourselves, each and every one of us, nothing will happen. We will remain as we are.
So obvious a truth has real teeth, and it puts the onus directly on each one of us to turn the wheel of our own dharma. There is no free lunch.
As we move past and beyond words, what remains for us? No words, of course. Perhaps that is what is called in the occult traditions as “entering the silence.”
This obligation on our part to move the needle by our own activity hangs over us like a cloud. Who likes to be forced into anything, and the obligation or responsibility to get on it smears out our whole practice with the stain of effort. Effort is exactly what not to do.
So, it’s a waiting game until the right moment strikes us, a moment of serendipity when we feel like it rather than ‘we have to do it’. Wait for it, and that can mean for a long time.
Like the game of Pick-Up-Sticks, at some point our every move has to be very careful, in fact effortless. Yet that’s just what we don’t know how to do, rest effortlessly.
And wrapped in that thought I believe is the heart of dharma practice, “Rest As It Is.”
[Midjourney graphic prompted by me.]
EMAIL Michael@Erlewine.net
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As Bodhicitta is so precious,
May those without it now create it,
May those who have it not destroy it,
And may it ever grow and flourish.