Buddha

 I feel like I am seeing the world through the same eyes I had as a young child. It is hard for me to describe this without distorting it. What would the world look like if you didn't see anything wrong with it? Yet as a child I wasn't aware of how I saw things, I just saw them the way I did and that was that. It seems like the difference is the awareness. Part of me is awake to a completely awakened perception. The best way I can describe it is seeing without filters or conditioned perspectives, seeing things as they are. This is not saying they are anything, just seeing things as they are. Things are simply what they are. What they are is apparent when you see them. When the mind is stuck on seeing things a certain way, it doesn't see things as they are. When the mind is fully awake, conditioned consciousness no longer dominates perception. Things arise in consciousness without much distortion. You can get a sense that you are seeing things as they are, that I think is undeniable. Obviously you wouldn't know this unless you could see it for yourself. What strikes me is how composed this mode of seeing is. Consciousness seems to be fully restored in formlessness as formlessness, this seems to be essential for accurate perception. I think this is true because form is truly formless. Seeing the world through a mind that is dominated by conditioned consciousness is like trying to understand the color yellow when your looking through a blue tinted spyglass. What also strikes me is how we remain human even when we have passed through Emptiness. It is a marvel. It seems like we are meant to be enlightened. That we are clearly designed for it, to hold it. It seems like the natural expression of the fullest sense of our being. Also that this enlightenment is always apart of us because we are human beings. Other sentient creatures have Buddha nature, while human beings seem to be the only one's that can fully express it. 

What I love most about being here is how simple I can be. I just feel fully myself, I feel ordinary and wonderful at the same time. I like being ordinary. I think when you are enlightened everything is ordinary and wonderful at the same time. On the way you are trying to both attain this perspective. I think we lose both the ordinary and the wonderful. We are restless so we are not satisfied with normal, when much of what is normal is what we need, and we have forgotten that wonderful springs from the natural simplicity of things. We look for something else and there isn't anything else. Greatness springs from the ground up. Everything is full of it because everything has sprung up from Buddha-nature. When we are composed and grounded in the ordinary, we can fully appreciate how awesome this really is. Everything is charged with emotion and feeling. There are so many different feelings out there that life is an unending adventure. Wherever our awareness turns, we discover something new. When we pull our heads out of our asses, out of the dirt, and out of the clouds, we are free to experience this. We are so set on having certain experiences, being a certain way, that we fuck up the only experience we can have that is passing before our awareness right now. The flavor can seep into our awareness. When we get out of our own way...we are free to live in this unknowable unpredictable space. And the whole fucking time, there is nothing wrong with being blind, having an ego or fucking up. We are already free as we are. This is just how life is...We are frogs sitting around a pond, feeding on flies and taking dips in the pool. We leave the Dharma as children and we may return to it as adults. Ignorance is born of the Dharma, and the Dharma is born of ignorance. The seeds of the dharma lie in all things. If we look carefully we may give life to the seeds that are sown in our own consciousness. How great a fortune it is to be born again as a Buddha in this human vehicle? 

I feel like I belong to this world. I feel like I am rooted in my environment. This is what I missed as I grew up. I felt like I didn't belong, that something was wrong with me. If we wish to recover this childlike simplicity where in fact we just belong in the fiber of our being, then we should pursue enlightenment. Nothing we find in the world will give us peace or fulfillment. The Dharma is the road to the Buddha and the Buddha is the restoration of our natural simplicity. We seek the Glory of God, yet also the peace and serenity that come from living from our most basic nature. This is quieter, yet much more powerful. It really is peace, and from this peace I believe comes happiness.