The universe itself is holy, all sentient beings, human beings included, are sacred and can be enlightened.

One must only pay attention to daily life, the middle way, and continually feel gratitude and awe in one's present existence to find enlightenment.

Now at that time a certain priest had been killed by the bite of a snake, and when they announced the matter to The Blessed One, he said:

"Surely now, 0 priests, that priest never suffused the four royal families of the snakes with his friendliness. For if, 0 priests, that priest had suffused the four royal families of the snakes with his friendliness, that priest, 0 priests, would not have been killed by the bite of a snake. And what are the four royal families of the snakes?

The Virilpakkhas are a royal family of snakes;
the Erapathas are a royal family of snakes;
the Chabyaputtas are a royal family of snakes;
the Kanhagotamakas are a royal family of snakes.

Surely, now, 0 priests, that priest did not suffuse the four royal families of the snakes with his friendliness. For surely, 0 priests, if that priest had suffused the four royal families of the snakes with his friendliness, that priest, 0 priests, would not have been killed by the bite of a snake. I enjoin, 0 priests, that ye suffuse these four royal families of the snakes with your friendliness; and that ye sing a song of defense for your protection and safeguard. After this manner, 0 priests, shall ye sing:"

'Virilpakkhas, I love them all,
The Erapathas, too, I love,
Chabyaputtas, I love them, too,
And all Kanhagotamakas.

‘Creatures without feet have my love,
And likewise those that have two feet,
And those that have four feet I love,
And those, too, that have many feet.

'May those without feet harm me not,
And those with two feet cause no hurt;
May those with four feet harm me not,
Nor those who many feet possess.

'Let creatures all, all things that live,
All beings of whatever category,
See nothing that will bode them ill!
May naught of evil come to them!"

"Give ear, 0 priests! The deathless has been gained, and I will instruct you, and teach you the Doctrine. If you will do according to my instructions, in no long time, and in the present life, you shall learn for yourselves, and shall realize and live in the possession of that highest good to which the holy life conducts, and for the sake of which youths of good family so nobly retire from the household life to the houseless one."

"Let The Blessed One teach the Doctrine, let The Happy One teach the Doctrine. There are some beings having but little moral defilement, and through not hearing the Doctrine they perish. Some will be found to understand the Doctrine and they will not perish."

-from the CullaVagga, Buddhist sacred text

The three marks of existence are also known as three basic truths about the condition of life.

impermanence

The first mark of existence, impermanence, points to the fact that everything, every thought, emotion, relationship, or situation, everything that has a beginning, also has an ending.

Typically, in our search for happiness we do not live as if impermanence were true.

If we examine much of our motivation we find that we are always trying to hold onto what we adore and get rid of what we abhor.

If our situation is basically acceptable to us we feel secure and good.

We feel betrayed by our relationships or life itself when our situation changes in a way we didn't want or expect it to.

We feel that circumstances are preventing us from being happy.

Every moment brings new arising thoughts and feelings and then they fall away.

The simple truth is that the only certainty following gain is eventual loss.

The happiness or joy we expect to experience in life cannot depend on holding onto gain if it is to be true and sustained.

egolessness

There is only this moment to moment appearance of a self caused by the struggle to become happy by holding onto what we adore and trying to prevent what we abhor.

We perpetuate our suffering by believing that we are a fixed entity who needs to be saved, protected, and freed from suffering.

Emotional confusion will persist as long as we avoid at all costs the fear that is the heart of it - that we may not be saved or protected and may suffer.

Rather than experience the fear directly, we attempt to dismantle the fear by convincing ourselves that the fear is unjustified - that we will be saved, protected, and freed from suffering.

People are terrified that they will be unable to tolerate the reality that we have very little control over the social culture, nature and the course of events.

There are two stages of egolessness

The first stage is characterized by the observer, signified by a sense of emotional detachment from passing thoughts and feelings.

In the second stage of egolessness the notion of observer is dropped as well and there is no longer any effort to detach from the reality of our impotence.

Here is where the quality of being undone or "burned up" by the fire emerges - the moment of redemption.

We cultivate a practice of living based simply on direct and immediate feeling.

We recognize that we can experience life "vividly" by direct emersion in the process of living.

We can tolerate a tremendous range of emotion, and ultimately we must.

This understanding marks the transition from using spiritual knowledge as a remedy or cure for emotional suffering to developing the courage to experience life as it is.

pain

The third mark of existence is simply that there is pain.

We age, we become sick, we die. Feeling pain is unavoidable.

When we refuse to embrace emotional pain, we unwittingly screen out a large portion of the range of emotional experiences that occur in the process of living.

A person who is alive and sensitive will feel sorrow.

This is so, not only because of the amount of unnecessary suffering produced by the imperfection of our social arrangements but because of the reality of human existence.

As living sentient beings we are aware of the gap between our aspirations and what can be achieved. In this light we understand that emotional pain is inevitable.

We have been conditioned to believe that the opposite of feeling good is not feeling bad.

To keep ourselves from not feeling bad we condition ourselves to not feel at all.

The emotional pain we experience in everyday life, the open wound in our hearts, is where compassion is born.

When compassion awakens in Sanskrit it is called Boddhicitta or awakened heart.

When we imagine what spiritual awakening must be like we tend to imagine a dramatically relieving experience.

Sometimes this occurs but more often what usually occurs is a humbling, a wearing down of the ego.

When we acknowledge that we are in emotional pain and simultaneously acknowledge that we are whole, we become available to others and are able to meet them compassionately.

Great emotional pain creates great tenderness that leaves our ego peeled raw and reminds us to let go of an attempt to control things which are beyond our control.

Great emotional pain is not punishment for being bad.

It is an extremely potent opportunity to have our hearts break open and burn with fire.

Finding that we can tolerate more emotional pain than we imagined possible we find a previously unrealized depth and breadth of being.

"When we think about what real silence is, we have to look at it from two angles; the first is to see silence through human eyes and the second is to see silence through Buddha's eyes or the universal eye. The opportunity to experience real silence occurs when we have been driven into a corner and simply cannot move an inch. This seems like a situation of complete despair, but this silence is quite different from despair, because in the area of despair, the conscious flame of human desire is still burning. But real silence is the state of human existence that passes through this despair. How can we experience this silence? Without everyday life it is impossible to experience this silence." - Katagiri Roshi

Buddha's Zen

Buddha said: "I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as a golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated ones as flowers appearing in one's eyes. I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons."

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