Saturday, May 20, 2017

Riding the Zen train

Not matter how  far or how near I feel towards the understanding of ,Who I am, I still feel like i am truly groping in the dark where life is concern; I am trapped within a belief system of the everyday phenomenal world like what they call, living in the Matrix. I have created yet another routine of 'being who I am' in different episodes of my daily experience. I am playing roles to fit the different case scenarios that takes place for every choice i make in due course of time. I am playing each role to fill up my own emptiness while also fulfilling my vows as a Bodhisatva and that is to serve humanity through deliverance from ignorance and suffering. As i learn more and more about myself through my relationships with the rest of humanity and the individuals that I have close encounters with, I try to share these mini-experiences or what they are worth with those who happen to read my Blog.
Yes I am almost 68 years younger now but I am still groping in the dark as to what it is all about this that we call life or existence. It was Friday yesterday, ( it is past midnight now while i am home making this entry,) ; it is said that nothing is more slippery than your self. Just when you think you got it all figured out and under wraps, you find yourself riding yet another wave of uncertainties.      Perhaps i getting old and tired of playing the same old routine, perhaps I 'm still very much attached to who I think I am or should be. Or worse yet, perhaps this whole trip is getting to become obsession of mind, just another mind tripping, only on a grander scale, this need for true self discovery...who am I? Am i becoming a rouge believer in the disguise of a Bodhisatva, a 'Truth seeker', one looking for a healing of his 'splintered soul'? : am I just a victim of my own mind created events and circumstances and believing I will attain liberation at the end of all this, at the 'end of my days'?
If I die tonight I very much doubt that i will make it anywhere close to 'Syurga' or Heaven, I am a candidate for Neraka or Hell by Muslim standards. I can safely attest to the fact that I am pretty much beyond redemption for all the things that i have done in my past; i have every right to fear the afterlife as a Muslim. This is my own logical conclusion based upon things that cannot reveal that i have committed. I have broken practically all the cardinal sins short of one, the wilfully taking of a human life. In short shaitan has got me by the balls, no argument there, the devil does not even has to present his case. Mara will be at my deathbed smiling away for having won my soul hands down. I can rattle on like a defeatist over my fate but I still have time and the hope that i will still this illusion and transcend this feeling of living in the Matrix.
Who wrote the script of life for me? How did i end up with this deluded mental formations that half the time I have accepted to be some form of truth. I believe in what I an experiencing as day to day to be reality and very often becomes a victim of guilt and doubts making me feel helpless, small and insignificant sometimes. I have become a player in the game of life but have not truly understood my role and character; I feel like a slave than a Ruler in my own  to realm of existence. I have sold myself cheap and often became a pawn in the games that someone else is orchestrating or directing. I am reading someone's script and not my own simply because i have begun to fall asleep and being led down yet another rabbit hole. 
The Second Bodhisatva Vow reads, " Delusions are inexhaustible, I Vow to end them."   
Just as all the previous Sugatas, the Buddhas
Generated the mind of enlightenment
And accomplished all the stages
Of the Bodhisattva training,
So will I too, for the sake of all beings,
Generate the mind of enlightenment
And accomplish all the stages
Of the Bodhisattva training.[1] ---- 
 What if this idea of being a Bodhisatva out to save humanity too is another mental formation? What if this vow that i took while a student at the green Gulch Zen Center in San francisco, is another cosmic delusion the mind has set up for me lead me down as many rabbit holes as there are mental formations along my path through this life? To those who are not aware of what it is, the word Bodhisatva itself has not significance or meaning and yet to me it has held a binding effect ever since I genuinely and with sincerity bowed and uttered these words in the Zendo or meditation hall while facing the altar where sat Manjushri the Bodhisatva of Wisdom and Insight. How did i end up in the Zendo making this vow anyway,  what led me there far from my home here in Malaysia?
This Blog is testimony to how i got on board Suzuki Roshi's Zen train and has not been able to get off ever since.



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