Actually, all paths lead away from the truth...how's that? All paths. There's no such thing as a path to the truth. The truth's already here, where are you going?
One Zen master said, The whole universe is my true personality. This is a very wonderful saying... If you want to see what you truly are, open the window, and everything you see is in fact the expression of your inner reality. Can you embrace all of it?
The body is a sensing instrument of consciousness. Without the body and mind,
the trees could not see themselves. Usually we think that we are looking at a tree, but the tree is looking at itself through us. Without this instrument, the tree does not get to see itself. We are sensing instruments of the Divine.
If we look at the world around us, we see that we are conditioned to not listen deeply. Because isn't that what silence is? It's a listening, a deep wordless listening.
As soon as you believe that a label you've put on yourself is true, you've limited something that is literally limitless, you've limited who you are into nothing but a thought.
Retreat is a response to the call of the heart-that call which beckons us toward reality, to the truth of our being, to that which is truly sane, really real and liberating ... When a group of people come together as a response to that kind of inward call, it creates a very powerful environment, where truth is held in the highest esteem and the reality of our being responds to that deepest intention.
Deep down we all suspect that something is very wrong with the way we perceive life but we try very, very hard not to notice it. And the way we remain blind to our frightful condition is through an obsessive and pathological denial of being -- as if some dreadful fate would overcome us if we were to face the pure light of truth and lay bare our fearful clinging to illusion.
In True Meditation, we're in the body as a means to transcend it. It is paradoxical that the greatest doorway to the transcendence of form is through form itself.
If you tell yourself a sad story, the body reacts to that. And if you tell yourself a self-aggrandizing story, the body feels puffed up, confident. But when you realize it’s all stories, there can be a vast waking up out of the mind, out of the dream. You don’t awaken, what has eternally been awake realizes itself. That which is eternally awake is what you are.
Now don't think that awakening is the end. Awakening is the end of seeking, the end of the seeker, but it is the beginning of a life lived from your true nature.