falling up

You just have to do it.

Pull back from the people around you and do the practice. No more sensuality, no more self-sabotaging, it’s time to walk this path to the fullest.

You know your own mind and what it’s getting up to. You know what it’s doing at all times, and if you’re honest, the beginning and the end of the path ends here, right in this spot. Everything flows from satisampajañña.

If the people around you aren’t on your level, simply walk away and go back to your kuti and leave it all alone. Don’t worry about others, about the practice of others, about what they think, what they say, what they do. It’s irrelevant. Do your practice; walk, sit, and be with the Dhamma and the Vinaya - get clear.

You have to be able to stand on your own two feet. It’s already half-happening, and you are already so much more mature than the majority of people in this place, you are young enough to have time left, and wise enough in the heart now not to spend it on stupid pursuits.

You know what to do.

Are you able to just walk away from all of this? To endure going back into you room and being by yourself and letting the silence envelop you, nothing to turn to except your mind, your body, your breath? Intrinsically you know that this is what it will take, and you must not only be able to do it, but to maintain this kind of practice, day after day, kneading into the moment, searching deeper, falling up.

When the bliss takes hold it is clear that the path is easy to those who stay with the practice always, enduring all the myriad ways the mind tries to derail itself. Those freaky little sideshows are worth it when the time comes for the mind to open up.

This is the right kind of emptiness. It’s not a vacant, unfeeling hardness, masquerading as monk; it’s the warm glow of an inner peace that lubricates the mind and embalms all the facets of consciousness, washing through you like rain so that stillness is simply natural consequence.

It is this space that one needs to cultivate, as this is the only thing that is true and good. It’s just that to know that one cannot rely on anything else, is large, and hurts to bear. It is a grief that must be endured though because you see that most people in this life don’t make it. They don’t have the faith, or the endurance, or the heart. One must find happiness in this bhikkhu life, as it is full of challenges, and the joy is all we have to keep us going.

If one finds oneself in moments of quiet desperation, one must know that we choose this hardship no matter what, and that really there is no other way, no other way than this.

It doesn’t matter if I don’t make it. I need to try. I will rise each day, grateful for the challenge. There are no guarantees that any of this is real. All the bravado around me is just that; empty words, the prattle of people that need it, to soothe their fears. It’s enough to take stock of the way oneself and commit to walking it, alone if need be, but likely with a few friends along the way. Be patient, they will come.

It’s time to become your own man and make this path into the way of life that you came here for. Put down everything else and make it yours. Commit to this path and bring it into your heart and let the softer aspects of your nature sing.

There is nothing in this world, there never was. You know this. All these little fantasies are just that - illusions. They move through the glass of your body in shifting shadows, the slow, creeping spectre of your former self, come to visit. That’s not your gig anymore.

You are your own man, your return into the life of a renunciant is made clear by the marking of the Buddha on your belly and the light in your mind’s eye. This is the new life you are leading now, it’s yours for the taking.

Give in.

• Peace