The Human Dilemma and the Way Out

This truth pierces a conceptual past, conceptual present, and conceptual future. Equanimity and wisdom cannot appear if we are continually commenting both internally and externally on people, events, situations, and conditions. Commenting causes all sorts of emotional responses. This is the crux of the human dilemma. We lock ourselves in a prison of self definition wasting precious life energy there engaged in countless cycles of reinforcing and protecting a false tapestry of ideas. Our state of mind is always changing as our emotions change. Lacking a true center we may think we are working for our career, our family and society but in fact we are only being prodded by circumstances. Spending the majority of a lifetime trying to perfect our mental movie is truly pathetic.

However there exists an unmovable place where we are not pushed around or confused by life’s external events.

Being silently aware in the present moment allows prajna wisdom to manifest. Achieving tranquility in any and all situations requires practice, discipline, and attention. In order to tame our “monkey mind,” one that jumps from thought limb to thought limb, we must be diligent. Zen Master Seung Sahn referenced this by saying that “all human beings have different outside jobs – teacher, office professional, construction worker, doctor, lawyer etc., but everyone without exception has the same inside job, and that is finding our before thinking universal substance mind and entrusting it to serve as the foundation and fulcrum for all our actions.

By Zen Master Ji Haeng
Excerpt from Back To Basics