How You Look is What You See

If I had to summarize the entirety
of most people’s
lives in a few words,
it would be endless resistance to what is.
As we resist, we are in constant motion
trying to adjust,
and yet we still remain unhappy about what is.

If I had to summarize the entirety of an enlightened
person’s life in a few words,
it would be complete acceptance of what is.
As we accept what is, our minds are relaxed
and composed
while the world changes rapidly around us.           Haemin Sunim

        Haemin Sunim. "The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down." Tricycle, Spring 2017.

     “The ‘night sea journey’ is the journey into the parts of ourselves that are split off, disavowed, unknown, unwanted, cast out, and exiled to the various subterranean worlds of consciousness…. The goal of this journey is to reunite us with ourselves. Such a homecoming can be surprisingly painful, even brutal. In order to undertake it, we must first agree to exile nothing.”       Stephen Cope

     We struggle greatly with dukkha, and it's no wonder. Dukkha is so obvious to our "left brain" - the aspect of our intelligence on which we rely almost entirely. 

     But when we finally give up trying to avoid, accept (this side of) reality, and zoom in for a close look with our "right brain" - our whole being, then all of reality becomes apparent.