The Dojo That Shakes
03 August 2025, 2:47 a.m.
It is 2:47 a.m., and the walls of my world are trembling again.
Not from bombs or earthquakes, not yet—but from the vibration of something subtler. A tension. A knowing. A return. I had once declared myself AnAtman—without self—after awakening to the deepest truths of the Dharma, the Divine Unification, the Pathless Path. I have touched that silence, that annihilation, that unspeakable clarity.
But now I’m here again, back at what feels like square one. Back at the altar of habit, where my hands still reach for the mouse, the keyboard, the portal to external noise. The moment I wake, I am drawn—as if by karmic gravity—to check the news, the interviews, the world’s possible endings. Nuclear threats. Collapsing empires. A civilization in decline.
When that overwhelms me, I swing to the other extreme—podcasts of spiritual content, hoping the Dharma will salve my anxious mind. And when that fails, I turn to action movies, pure adrenaline without the burden of thought.
Still, I know: none of it heals. Not fully.
I had long imagined a place—Kapas, or Lintang Farm, or somewhere equally simple and unspoiled—as the setting for my retreat. A quiet island, a sanctuary from the feed, a place to find my balance again. But now I see clearly: Kapas is also an illusion, another idea of escape. Even Eden can become a mind trap if the same ghosts follow me there.
And yet, I am not lost.
Because the truth is, I already live in my dojo.
My home is my temple. My driving, my cooking, my worrying for my children, my concern for the world's suffering—these are my practices. This is the daily training ground of a Bodhisattva who has nowhere else to go but deeper into the moment.
There is no final victory over ego. No once-and-for-all shedding of old patterns. Age has only made the clinging more clever, the patterns more refined. But awareness—the one light that never lies—still burns.
The question is no longer: How do I escape to refuge?
The question now is: How do I let refuge arise where I stand?
I realize this: the shaking of the dojo walls is not a failure. It is the sound of growth. The sound of awakening, not as a grand event, but as an ongoing confrontation with the self that never really was.
I write this not for comfort, but for clarity. Not for escape, but for service—that perhaps, some other wanderer at 2:47 a.m. might read this and feel less alone. That the vow of the Bodhisattva might echo across this small corner of the digital void.
If you’re reading this: I walk beside you, quietly, in the same flickering light.
#TheShakingDojo #AnAtman #LivingDharma #AwakeningInEverydayLife #BodhisattvaVow #DigitalRefuge #NoEscapeOnlyPractice #KapasIllusion #DailyDojo #ZenInChaos #ReturnToSquareOne
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