Doors of Joy by Daniel Odier

Author:Daniel Odier
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: The Doors of Joy: 19 Meditations for Authentic Living
ISBN: 9781780287683
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Published: 2013-12-19T05:00:00+00:00

What are my Strongest Desires?

If others do not give me that satisfaction, can I reach it by myself?

Make a list of what I desire the most in the world.

Are there elements on that list that I have already tasted, but which I would like to savour as real and by the real me?

Would it be possible for all my desires to be merged into one desire?

Which one?

Is the satisfaction of this desire dependent on other desires?

10.

What is Real?

IN ONE OF THE MOST iconoclastic sutras of Buddhism, Vimalakirti, a lay contemporary of the Buddha, managed to deconstruct the concepts of the most advanced monks. We find in his sutras some pearls of the Real, in the sense that we mean it here: ‘Reality is free of characteristics, since it is not conditioned by anything.’ Sengzhao, his Chinese commentator (384–414AD), adds: ‘No mental consideration conditions it, not the shadow of any representation, nor the echo of a thought. Characteristics unfold as conditionings unfold: remove these, and characteristics are gone.’

What prevents us from directly capturing what is Real and from finding immediate joy when we meet it? The heavy burden of our beliefs and certainties. At the heart of Chan, one finds the command of Chinese masters who state that it is essential to rid oneself of the conceptual apparatus in order to seize reality. This includes, of course, our Buddhistic dogmas, such as the emptiness of everything. ‘Our school has neither slogan nor dogma to transmit,’ states Hongzhi. As to the method, it is simple: ‘Clean the dust and the stains of subjective thinking immediately. When these are washed away, your mind will be open, light, limitless, lacking both centre and extremes. Completely one, radiantly luminous, it will shine through the universe, cutting off past, present and future.’

When we touch this radiance, we are touching joy. But how do we suppress this conceptual filter that slows us down and distorts our perception of what is real? We need a clear and constant awareness of our mental functioning, an immediate insight in to our habitual attachments, our rejections and of our habit of always establishing preconceptions. Our opinions end up forming a heavy mass that interposes itself between reality and our perception of it. Our tendency to transform the smallest element in a story, which gets inflated each time we repeat it, ends up creating a filter that prevents the sap and beauty of reality to flow, thus creating a narrative without the semblance of any instinctual insight. From Basho:

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