The Path Promise

The path promise is freedom from suffering, not absence of suffering.

Candidly, experience does tend to get better. But that's not really the point, and it's all impermanent anyway. Freedom from suffering doesn't mean suffering stops showing up. It means you're no longer trapped by it. It arises, it moves through. That's freedom.

The real masters might have a system that runs with zero friction, such that nothing sticks, even for a moment. For many, that's big-E "Enlightenment." Sounds lovely. I can't claim that.

But I can attest that you can get a system to run pretty efficiently, even without an insane amount of work, while still living a normal life, where even the stickiest of old karmic patterns grab you, and within a few days, possibly a week, they're on their merry way. Per Bill Hamilton, my great-granddad teacher, on enlightenment: "Suffering less, noticing it more." But still: freedom from it.

Once you're free from suffering, having clearly seen the cause (in a nutshell: taking things too personally), good feelings tend to naturally arise. Love and compassion become the default, because nothing is blocking them, and because they're what lead to less suffering.

It's also okay to just be a human. To lead your life. That's the thing doing the thing. And that's why you kind of end up where you began. The whole thing feels like a giant circle, because that's kind of what it is.

To me, that's what stream entry is all about. Once it clicks and the thing is doing the thing, you're gravy. Whatever you call it beyond that, who really cares?

Just some random Sunday morning musings inspired by a text from a friend. It's wild to think that it's been almost twelve years since I passed the A&P and had my first cessation/fruition. Practice is wonderful, whether you're deep in it or you've stopped thinking in those terms and reached the point where everything about Zen that used to drive you crazy, just lands.

(Obligatory Bill Hamilton on the "mushroom culture" in western dharma, largely referencing Zen, I believe, at the time: "They keep you in the dark and feed you shit." Still, Zen rocks, once you're past all that. :))