Taking the Self Whole | Tricycle: "Reply by Discussion Leader Barry Magid on October 6, 2013, 11:46 am
Thank you all for your responses to my question of why you are practicing. Looking through them, I see most walk the fine line between wanting to face life more honestly or fully and on the other hand to escape some aspect of life or of our own minds we feel we cannot bear. Buddha did promise "an end to suffering" in the Four Noble Truths, but the Heart Sutra seems to negate that promise declaring that there is "no suffering, no cause of suffering, no extinguishing, no path, no wisdom and no gain." To reconcile these two positions we have to see that we "end" suffering by entering fully into life as it is, not ascending to some transcendent realm beyond suffering. We have to make our practice something other than a kind of spiritual escapism (hiding in the clouds of samadhi) or an endless (and ultimately fruitless) technology of mind control. How to ground our practice in goalless presence, how to experience the vistas that paradoxically open up when practice ceases to be a means to an end, will be the subject of the next talks..."
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