Effortless Unity
When we completely become whatever comes along, there’s nothing left that can move us around.
Shodo Harada (2011)
That lump of rock does not feel as though it is going anywhere soon. The immobility that Harada finds is ascribed by him to a unity: being at one with the
present.
Another angle on accessing the present.
In the rock’s case, it may seem to us, that such unity is reached by just being as
it is.
And another rock, this one leading to thoughts metaphysical.
But humans have a problem: for them to be as they ‘are’, there must be a relinquishing of how they were, and how they
might be.
On parallels between Descartes reflections and mediation.
Our thoughts stand like guards as though to protect us from the onslaughts of the present. Willing, hoping, expecting to meet current experiences, and certain they are here, we remain unable to
reach them.
Under our obstructive selves we are like the rock.
Continuously diverted and obstructed by our custodians, who don the form of connections to the past, or appear as plans for the future, we are frustrated in attempts to escape into the present, and so gain the unity the rock effortlessly inherited.
The quote is from page 187 of Roshi Harada’s book Moon by the Window, published by Wisdom Books.
This rock sits looking across Morayshire near the top of Ben Rinnes in northern Scotland.
Above, hovering on blue introduces a link: click to go, move away to stay.
Saturday 1st February 2025
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