Wake Up
“The Buddha” simply means “the one who is awake.”
I try not to get to caught up thinking about him because when you get down to it this path we’re on isn’t about his journey. It’s about yours. Awake means fully present in the here and now, not lost and confused somewhere else. It also means being real, being completely genuine. What we’re trying to do is learn how to come into every situation without bringing all our baggage and bullshit and delusions. Being here and being real. That’s what it’s about.
The Buddha wasn’t a god or spirit. He was a regular person like you and me. He didn’t create anything, really. He just described a different way of seeing the human condition. He described life as like a daydream and I really like that. We go through life and we have trouble truly being present and intentional. We’re on autopilot and just reacting to things a lot of the time. It’s harder to make good decisions when we’re sleepwalking through life. And we miss what’s happening, even things that we really want to pay attention to.
Also, because we’re in this dream, we don’t see things as they really are. So much of the way we see the world is shaped by our expectations and baggage. So what we’re talking about doing is waking up. This is about empowerment and clarity. Many of our problems come from being in this daydream. We are pulled around by greed, aversion, and ignorance. These are the things that sap our sense of well being. Often our delusion effects our relationships too. Sometimes we don’t pay attention to the people we care about the most. If you’ve ever been talking to someone you love and realized you aren’t listening..that’s what I’m talking about.
So what we’re trying to do is learn how to see through all this. We want to see the world as it really is, to learn how to truly pay attention, and to live our lives in a better way. In this we hope to reduce our suffering and also reduce the suffering that spills out of us onto others. We suffer because we don’t see things as they are. We also suffer because we struggle to be content, we are always wanting more. We have trouble settling into uncertainty.
We’re trying to turn our minds so we can empower ourselves. Once we learn how to calm and stabilize our minds with meditation practice, it really gives us a chance to open ourselves up to wisdom. The path is sometimes called the gateless gate. That’s because there’s nothing special about it and there’s nothing stopping you. We’re just training to put down our shit and be in the world in a more authentic way.
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