Ults See if you can allow everything to just be as it is.
Let all fixing or managing or planning or criticising just stop.
Letting it all just be.
Letting it all just be.
Letting it all just be.
Letting it all just be.
Imagine that you were to get a new car.
Imagine showing it to your friends.
When they see it,
I'm sure they would all agree that it is a car,
Even without you telling them.
This is one level of truth.
We have agreed that the word car refers to an object kind of like that.
Four wheels,
A metal frame with seats inside.
We can call this conventional truth.
This kind of truth is not beyond words,
It's not beyond thinking,
It's of words.
All our words are labels like this,
Referring to some other reality.
None of the words convey the entire thing they are pointing to,
Not even the word,
Word.
They're just pointers.
As long as we're stuck in thinking,
We're pretty much stuck at this level of superficial,
Limited and conceptual truth.
We'll be someone reading the menu rather than eating the food.
Imagine us taking your new car apart,
Laying out all the parts on a big parking lot.
Now where's the car?
You see,
None of the parts is in itself the car.
None of the parts have any intrinsic carnus.
It's only when those parts are put together in a specific configuration that the car appears.
We could probably have someone clever putting the parts together in a different way.
Perhaps creating something we all would agree on as a motorcycle or an elevator.
So,
You see,
Nowhere in those parts can we really find a car.
Conventional truths are like that.
They are constructions,
They're practical,
But are limited to agreed upon simplifications and generalisations.
Don't get stuck on the level of words.
A word is no more than a means to an end.
It's an abstraction.
Not unlike a signpost,
It points beyond itself.
You see,
None of the parts are in itself the car.
You see,
None of the parts are in itself the car.
You see,
None of the parts are in itself the car.
You see,
None of the parts are in itself the car.
In meditation we seek understanding based on direct experience of absolute truth.
A level of truth that is beyond words and thoughts,
Bare naked reality.
Words can only point to that.
It can never take us there.
This is why meditation teachers often speak in metaphors and parables.
Because if we focus on the words themselves,
We would miss the point.
The significance of the Buddhist teaching lies in the fact that it's not an attempt to tell us how things should be.
It's more a way of bringing our attention to the way things are.
Therefore,
Nothing of what I say is absolutely true.
The teaching is just a finger pointing at the moon.
It's not the moon itself.
The trouble is,
We have so many fingers pointing.
Most people have a hundred fingers pointing in their thoughts and another hundred pointing in their memories.
Some fingers might be pointing towards the absolute,
Towards real truth and real love.
Most of them probably not.
This is why we have to investigate.
Every religion is true one way or another.
It is true when understood metaphorically.
But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors,
Interpreting them as fights,
Then you're in trouble.
Just listen.
Just be the listening.
So,
In the end,
We have to trust our own judgment and build up our own natural wisdom.
This must be done through quite a bit of trial and error.
So we better allow ourselves to take some wrong steps,
Make mistakes,
Get stuck and so on.
Every step is a step on your path.
All teachings are mere references.
The true experience is living your own life.
The true experience is living your own life.
So,
Just be the listening.
Just be.
So,
Just be the listening.
This is kind of scary though,
Isn't it?
In the end,
We can't get the correct answers from anyone else.
No one can tell us how to live our life or how to walk our path.
I really try to find the answers to my doubts in the books or by asking my teachers.
As if I stumble upon some magic constellation of words that would make me see the truth.
But I didn't have sufficient trust in my own experience and in my own capacity for wisdom.
So,
I kept looking in the wrong direction.
I wanted to understand the absolute but kept looking for it in the conventions.
Even if I'd stuck with it for a million years,
I'd never find it there.
In fact,
Most of the books and most of my teachers told me in a thousand ways to look at the moon rather than to keep looking at a finger pointing there.
But I didn't yet have the maturity,
The self-compassion and the patience to do that.
I tried really hard to follow their teachings the best I knew how.
But no matter which way I turned my head,
I kept looking out.
I have Hai Khan proverb So,
Just listen to the present.
All the truth you need can be found there.
The truth is simple.
If it was complicated,
Everyone would understand it.
You can't just listen to the present.
You can't listen to the present.
You can't listen to the present.
You can't listen to the present.
You can't listen to the present.
You can't listen to the present.
You can't listen to the present.
You can't listen to the present.
You can't listen to the present.
