Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Bodhisattva Road

Home
Buddhist
Face What Appears Before You

Face What Appears Before You

Last updated on: March 27, 2019 at 1:47 pm by Daniel Scharpenburg

Face What Appears Before You 2019-03-27T13:47:53-05:00 Daniel Scharpenburg

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

“Separate yourself from disturbance and face whatever appears before you.”

–Hongzhi

Sometimes our being is described as like a mirror.

There are several conditions that a mirror can be in. A dirty mirror might reflect what’s in front of it in a distorted way. A broken mirror might be even worse.

But a mirror that is clear and clean is going to give you an accurate representation of whatever you put in front of it.

We often see the world in distorted ways. We’re like a dirty mirror. We don’t see things clearly, rather we see everything through the filter of that dirt. We might feel like a cracked or broken mirror if we’ve had some particularly awful traumas in our lives.

We come into every situation carrying disturbances with us. Sometimes that’s okay. If you’ve been struck by lightning it certainly makes sense to be wary of all storms.

But other times it gets in our way.

We’ve all been kicked in the heart and a bad relationship can haunt us forever, making it hard to let people get close to us, making it hard to trust and have an open heart.

Or in the workplace, if you’ve ever had a boss that you really trusted who let you down…well, you know what I’m talking about. That’ll make you look sideways a little at all employers for a while.

And a lot of the time we project our own things onto others. If we feel really guilty about some aspect of ourselves, selfishness for example, it’s really easy to project that on others and see everyone as selfish. Or look for any little clue that might make that argument.

So, with our practice, what we’re trying to is train our minds, so we can learn to see things as they really are. We may not be able to clean the mirror, really. But what we can do is remind ourselves that it’s dirty. In itself, that is a kind of success.

———————————————————————

*quotes are taken from “Cultivating the Empty Field, The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi” by Taigen Dan Leighton, which you can get here:

Cultivating the Empty Field | amazon

————————————————————————————————-

Daniel Scharpenburg

Daniel lives in Kansas City. He leads public meditation events through Fountain City Meditation. Daniel is an ordained Zen teacher in the Order of Hsu Yun and he regularly teaches at the Open Heart Project. Daniel is also a co-owner of the website The Tattooed Buddha

=====================================================

UPCOMING EVENTS

4/6/19: 10am-11am

Fountain City Meditation: Meditation Gathering KC

Nelson Atkins Museum Lawn

4525 Oak St.
Kansas City, MO

This is a public event. I’m going to give a short talk and a bit of guidance, then we will sit together. Tell all your friends.

Previous Post

March 8, 2019

Sitting Quietly, Doing Nothing

Next Post

August 20, 2019 Encouragement

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 37 Practices blog bodhisattva book review boundless heart buddha buddhism buddhism for beginners compass of zen compassion dhammapada dharma emptiness Faith in Mind fearless heart han shan impermanence inspiration interfaith koans life Lojong mahayana meditation mind training mirror of zen movie review nagarjuna news questions recording song of mind steps to the great perfection suffering sutras suttas Uncategorized vajrayana video videos zen

Select a Month July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 September 2021 August 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 August 2020 June 2020 May 2020 August 2019 March 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 October 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who said, "The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand’"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

David Isaiah Solomon Moses

Support this
Column