In Gaza.
Here it is so easy to find anger. i denounce the enemy, and
wonder what i am capable of. Yesterday a man told me, “I am a rocket without a
base.” He raged against the injustice of it all. He was not wrong. It is easy to choose sides, factions, and flags. i consider victory. i'm
lost in confusion. I stand in the rubble of broken houses and broken lives and
i am ready to utter the words "i hate". Then a love sends a message
and it breaks through the swirling clouds that surround me. i stand on the
barricades as the sea crashes on the rocks. i find my ease, i smile and i hold
everything, even my false distinctions, close.
Do you know what it is like to have such a friend? If not,
maybe, just maybe, i can be that friend.
Huang Po
Give up those erroneous thoughts leading to false
distinctions! There is no 'self' and no 'other.' There is no 'wrong desire,' no
'anger,' no 'hatred,' no 'love,' no 'victory,' no 'failure.' Only renounce the
error of intellectual or conceptual thought-processes and your nature will
exhibit its pristine purity--for this alone is the way to attain Enlightenment,
to observe the Dharma, to become a Buddha and all the rest. Unless you
understand this, the whole of your great learning, your painful efforts to
advance, your austerities of diet and clothing, will not help you to a
knowledge of your own Mind. All such practices must be termed fallacious, for
any of them will lead to your rebirth among 'demons'--enemies of the truth--or
among the crude nature spirits. What end is served by pursuits of those? Chih
Kung says: 'Our bodies are the creations of our own minds.' But how can one
expect to gain such knowledge from books? If only you could comprehend the
nature of your own Mind and put an end to discriminatory thought, there would
naturally be no room for even a grain of error to arise.
