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The Daily Reflections
of Jan Cox

OK, here's another of those annoying little facts that may be realized only by you and me (now that I'm telling you):
It doesn't ultimately matter whether there is actually such a thing as awakening. As long as you vigorously pursue it for an adequate period of time (and don't get drowned in it), you'll get what you wanted, anyway.

 

 

Lifestyle:
A man with a dog, a canary, or a rat in his house
will never catch on to what's going on.
....well, more exactly, IF he pays any attention to them.

Simple Seekers think that they're being misled by
the delusions of the world,
or by evil forces,
or by fate,
or their own Karma;
the alert man discovers that only the thoughts in his brain do the job.

 

 

Weather Report:
When a man is in the ordinary state of mind his thoughts are like a little boat riding atop ever-rolling waves: continually bobbing up-and-down, sliding forward-and-back,
but never actually going anywhere.

 

 

Returning from a day in the world,
A father said to his son: "Today I encountered a most impressive sight: I saw a man who could endlessly pat his head while rubbing his stomach, and at the same time play you a chess game in his head."
"Wow!" responded the lad, "was he awake?"
And the elder's head jerked up in surprise: "Huh! You know, I didn't even think of that--which offers the lesson: You can't let your attention be enchanted by externals, and still have the ability to put thought to any profitable use."

 

 

The reason certain brains (or "men" if you like) are drawn to the academic and scientific life is that such affords them the required reason to concentrate their thoughts, an activity that under routine everyday conditions men find to range from the merely annoying to the downright distasteful.

(Without there being a specific, useful reason it can accept as such, the brain is not naturally given to concentrating its thoughts on one subject for extended periods.)

(What has this to do with the goal of mystics?)

 

 

Then there's this one guy, who lives down the street from some mountains, who developed his own private approach to achieving the goal: He emails, "Don't respond to anything but being physically touched; don't respond to anything anyone says or does." And that is his method.

 

 

Every day this one father would ask his son a new question, and if the boy hesitated at all before responding, the elder would slap him; on days when the boy would respond immediately to the question, the old man would kick him; he told his son to never believe that you can tell where anything is coming from....since there is no "from."

 

 

That guy, who lives down the street from some mountains, would shout into an echo canyon for fun, thinking that his shouting was the cause of the echo, whereas it was the existenceof the echo canyon that caused him to shout.

(Try conveying the significance of this to your ordinary mind....IF you're run COMPLETELY out of other ways to spend your time in the new year.)