Be As You Are

Christmas Meditation Retreat December 2016

“You are already that which you are looking for. Stop all search and be as you are.”
(Nukunu)


The third patriarch of Zen, Sengan says:

“Let things be in there own way
And there will be neither coming nor going”

The way we keep our self ignorant and in separation is by maintaining the dualism between the seer and the seen, the thinker and the thought, the feeler and the felt. In short me – the subject and you the object.

Both the subject and the object are essentially one reality – pure consciousness but we don’t realize that because we are constantly opinionating, judging and labeling. If we could stop this for a moment and just let things be what they are we would see through the illusion. The illusion, that things has a separate nature other than pure consciousness.

Sadness is a word, a label, we attach to a particular feeling. When we call a feeling sadness we are no long present with the feeling because the word sadness drags us into associations with past experiences. By labeling we miss the present and the truth is here now. Could we just let the feeling be without calling it anything, just experience the feeling, it would be understood that the feeling is a movement. Could we just let this movement be we would realize that it is essentially pure consciousness.

In a Zen Meditation Retreat we just sit in what is being aware. By sitting and relaxing into what is with awareness we will become aware of this tendency to judge and label and spiritual awakening can happen spontaneously when we are present with the present.

When it happens it is a shift in our perspective that brings us back to the unconditional freedom we had forgotten was always so.

In the retreat we will keep social silence that helps the agitated mind to relax.
Vegetarian meals to make the digestion easy.
The days program start 7.00 in the morning and ends around 21.30 evening.