Now that I don't have to be a Zen master- I am free to be one!

Well, now that I have accepted that I am not a Zen master, it leaves me free, free not to live up to expectations of others, free even to disentangle myself from my own expectations. When I have no expectations and I am free, what fills me is a “Peace that passeth all understanding.” And in this peace I am able to really take the steps needed to be a Zen Master- not because it is the expected thing or the right thing to do, but because it is a natural expression of who I really am- My pure spirit self!

On being Peace

I have been trying to express the peace I always feel within me and when I meditate but somehow if you have been following my posts you must have realized that it never really translated itself in my physical life.

Well,enough is enough. I just about got fed up with the agitations and rushing around being too busy with the demands of life. I came to a point where I realized that I had wasted enough time giving peace a go. So now I am doing a lot of research on why I am not able to float around in the world as calm and peaceful as a master-Zen or otherwise.


The tips the Universe gave me are-First I must hold the intention for peace and call for peace when I meditate, second I need to be really still when I am meditating, not answer when someone calls, not get up when the phone rings. I must still my body and my mind and intellect at least for the time I do sitting meditation. Then when I go out into the world I need to “Step back” as The Mother of Aurobindo ashram says and remember Peace.


I need to decide what it is I want- the need to be right or peace. As usual I need to make a choice. The choice I make will be greatly influenced by what I believe in. If I think that the world is all there is, then I shall be hurrying and scurrying running around and getting nowhere. If instead I believe that I am a spiritual being just having a human adventure I will concern myself with the sweet nothingness of life. I will smell the roses; enjoy the coffee and sunsets. Just as I write this the solar eclipse is going on. Looking at the park just in front of my house the whole area looks other worldly. As if dawn is just breaking though it is one  o’clock noon now. The koels were crying a few minutes back. The light was different. When I take the time to really see, the big and small things of life,life appears in a different light. It rolls itself at my feet and peace becomes a reality.

I am not a zen master

“How come you get angry though you are into meditation and all that stuff?” many of my friends asked me when they saw I had not sprouted a halo.

I would then sigh and wonder what I was doing wrong. I too wanted to walk around like one of the Zen masters you see and hear about, looking peaceful and without a care in the world. How did they do it? I wondered. Was it because of their constant attention on their breath? Was it because they made their whole life a meditation?
I did a lot of work on myself, trying to regulate the breath, trying out various meditations. But the more I meditated the more circumstances appeared in my life which triggered my dark self- the shadow self. All the meditation I was doing was bringing up stored up memories which had been hiding in my subconsious. The more I turned my focus from the ego to my soul the more negativities came up. I found that from being a fairly quiet calm person I was running about like a cat on hot bricks.
I met a few friends who were into meditation and they reported the same thing. Friends  and family were criticizing them for not reducing their anger or other negativities.
It was then my friends and I realized that our spiritual path this moment was not about being Zen masters .It was about being ourselves. It was about feeling the emotions we were having instead of trying to be masters before our time. There is a time for everything and now was the time for our souls to give us a good spring cleaning. Yes, Life was doing a spring cleaning on us. It was taking us to the basement where we had swept down all our dirt. It was bringing up all the dust into the forefront so that we could be aware that it was there and clean it away. How on earth would we know what was hidden in our subconsciousness unless a trigger came along to bring those emotions we had suppressed, to the surface. Only once we were aware of it could we claim responsibility for it. You cannot release what you don’t hold. Once we accepted and identified the emotion, we could make a choice. Hold on or let it go.
People expect you to sprout a halo the minute they hear that you are into meditation but things aren’t that easy. We have built up all the negativities down the ages and unraveling it also takes time. Things would be hunky dory if we could always release negativities with a smile and show the other cheek but that is not how things work. In life you win some you lose some. Sometimes we choose to hold on to the anger to the resentment. The thing to do then is not kick ourselves but accept it as part of our humanness and make a decision to make a higher choice the next time.
One way to make the path easier is to see the bigger picture. To pause in the moment of temper or stress or anxiety  and realize that the person or situation that is pushing your buttons is actually an angel sent by life to give you an opportunity to say goodbye to one toxic emotion. The minute you think of the villain as a godsend, the equation changes. A shift occurs and your anger subsides, your low spirits rise. You can release yet another emotion that has been thrown up from the subconscious.
That is what life is all about. Releasing all the negativities till all that is left is the true self, pure being.
That is what is called enlightenment.