The universe is a shining pearl

Open your eyes, open your ears, open your hands to reality. As Bodhidharma said: “Don’t dig the cave of the daemons of the black mountain.” Don’t close yourself off from reality to pursue your flights of fancy, your imaginations, your suppositions.

In a word, stay present to reality. Leave the bubble of mental activity. Let truth come straight to your heart – truth is reality.

In the Shariraimon it is written: “Through the power of his support, the truth enters us, we enter the truth.” When we approach our Buddha dimension, Buddha supports us. When we leave the bubble of the mind, truth comes straight to our heart, we enter directly into reality.

In the end, we have to make a choice. Life is a choice. Either we stay trapped in the bubble of the mind, or we live in reality.

Nietzsche wrote: “As near as makes no difference, the day will be more dreadful than the night.” This is the point of view of those who remain in the bubble of mental activity. They mistake their points of view on reality for reality itself. Like this Japanese poet who, when he understood that Buddhism required us to leave the bubble of mental activity and jump into reality, wrote: “If this is all life is about…” Then he threw himself into the river and drowned.

Those who spend their life in the mental, in the virtual, find it very difficult to make a choice. They think that we can free ourselves from this choice, that we can free ourselves from difficulty, from making effort. This what people believe, what people imagine.

When we jump into reality, everything becomes clear. The universe is a shining pearl. We leave the bubble of mental activity and contemplate reality, changing at every moment in all aspects, down to the smallest detail. As some people say: Small is beautiful.

To take care of our life down to the smallest detail, like a mother takes care of her new-born child, without thinking about herself, even if the baby disturbs her during the night, even if the baby does not return all the love she gives them. That is what great love is: that our life be beneficial to the smallest being at every moment.

It’s not a problem of thought; it’s a problem of opening our heart, opening our consciousness and being present to reality.

To take care of life, your own life, the lives of others, the lives of all existences, at every moment.

That my life be beneficial to all lives. This implies leaving the world of thoughts, those nourished by ignorance, greed, and aversion.

In the end, those who remain in the bubble of mental activity are those who fear reality, who turn away from reality; they amuse themselves and are distracted by remaining in the world of thoughts. Whereas Shakyamuni Buddha said: “It is through distraction that we do not live in nirvana. It is through distraction that we do not live in paradise.”

Because we lack the courage, we do not want to make the choice to live reality, in reality. This is how we remain in the world of distraction, dreams, imagination, calculations.

The world of distraction: distracting ourselves from reality, deviating from reality, telling ourselves stories.

Taiun JP Faure, April 2024