Читать книгу Opening the Door: Jan Frazier Teachings On Awakening - Jan Inc. Frazier - Страница 6

Spiritual awakening can be seen as something gained, or as something coming to an end. What’s gained is a deep, unwavering sense of well-being. What falls apart is the machinery for suffering. While most people live their whole lives without seeking liberation, or even thinking much about it, a few get a hunger for it. (There are some who wake up without having ever tried to, who never thought about it once. These people can be infuriating to the hungering ones.)

The longing can be great but stay in a perpetual stall.

Liberation tends to be seen as the final victory, the triumphant conclusion of lesser bits of “progress.” A kind of last frontier. It’s seen as the ultimate goal. But really, it’s the undoing of all goals.

Even if a person longs for liberation, there’s usually a bit of a list of other longed-for things. I want to be free . . . and I also want to be loved by somebody, and respected by my children and peers, and I want to be healthy and have a great job.

If spiritual freedom is the thing most longed for, that means it’s at the top of a list. The list is a problem. Being free means being free of the list. The other things have to be held lightly, so lightly they just may blow away. (It’s not that they wouldn’t be preferred, among other possibilities; but that the attachment to them would be less ferocious.)

But don’t I want my children to be happy? My children will be what they will be. (If they are happy, I won’t be made happier, and if they are unhappy, I won’t be made unhappy.) Don’t I want there to be world peace? The world cannot (right now) be any way other than the way it is.

A person probably can’t decide to stop wanting something, to turn off the attachment to (say) making enough money to pay the bills. But just noticing the force of wanting can have a softening effect on it. While you can’t talk yourself out of it (it’s a waste of time to try), you can look in the face of desire, the felt need to have a certain something. You can really look at the awful force of it. Feel it. Feel the pain it can’t help but cause. How it keeps the machinery of suffering going on and on.

Maybe you’ll be surprised. The desire might just turn and go then, all on its own. Maybe the thing you’ve been looking for will come in through the back door, looking for you. No more longing. No more suffering. No more list.