Kids stories
Everybody loves kids. I just love to watch kids stories. I am a kid at heart. I love the innocence, the freedom, the spontaneity and zest for life these little rascals have. (no pun intended)
Ever since Sherilyn now 7+ started schooling, I’ve gone from yelling to backing off to keeping quiet and these days I listen very carefully to what she says. She is my spiritual guru. She tests me on what my heart knows. I look and check myself – I internalize and purify myself with each tantrum she gives. It works wonders. Try.
I look forward to the times we go to watch movies during the school holidays. I would say to her “find me the lesson in every kid movie” and towards the end she would tell me “Dad… is it … this and this …”
Take the good old Nanny Mcphee series. Magic comes in the form presence and kindness with hellish kids. Or How to train a dragon where we learn how to befriend our enemies. Or Megamind where evil becomes good and good becomes evil – which is which? It is a koan from zen.
Zen koan is cool. What is the sound of one hand clapping? Shitou asks the pillar, Does the dog have Buddha nature… regardless of the question, it is not the answer nor the question that matters. What matters is the deconstruction of the mind. It’s meant to confuse you so you can’t understand and give up.
In giving up understanding or trying to understand, one becomes vulnerable and at loss, many times desperate and helpless. Then when we are empty and desolate we surrender to what is. Don’t try or strive – only be and be yourself at the calmest point … be yourself at the most equal of restful states. Find that state and enter zen from there.
When the inner and outer harmonizes there is an equilibrium. You don’t think or rationalize or conceptualize or try to understand – you just accept and know. Life lives by itself. No striving … only arriving.
Memory is mind. To prepare for the moment is not necessary and redundant. Unpreparedness and totally savouring the air and atmosphere to intuit and sus every situation to deal in full alertness at that particular time/moment. Here and now. Thoroughly present with full of one’s faculties and senses. Practice makes perfect.
Everytime we stray our attention, we gently bring it back to the object of focus ie guiding our attention, watchfulness back. If we are watching a particular kids movie for example we look for the hidden lessons in life either for adults or children alike. Lessons are lessons. Lessons are to be tried and practiced as a trial as a journey as an exercise as a living. The freedom to choose how to live at every moment in the present is precious as the past and future is rolled into the now always in a ever new blissful now and here.
If you are fixated or worried about anything at all it is mental so ease off the mental activity slowly and switch to just being. Switch to just living in full mindfulness and awareness. Always conscious, always watchfully alert right here right now.
I don’t make things happen. They happen to me. And there is the happening. I am all and beyond. I am the silent witness, the witnessing and beyond. I am you, you are me. It’s we all the time and never they. Harmonize with all as we are all one being. One existence.
