You are Buddha

Being a well-known enlightened being is a rare thing - those guys usually want to stay hidden, living their wholeness privately and for the love of it. Not many are called to teach or to spread the word widely, but if they are, then they do it for love.

That Buddha is called Buddha is an anomaly really - he was an awakened one, but not the awakened one. He knew this himself and he tried so hard to share that wisdom with his students. His last words were to this end - do not rely upon me for your enlightenment, he said, you must be your own light.

Be the light and share the light.

Awakening does not call for fame or renown, it simply calls for doing what you do, wholly, quietly and beautifully. Whether it’s walking the dog or washing the dishes. There is nothing that is too humble for it.

So much peace comes from this way of living. It is a choice, that’s all. A choice that the one we know as the Buddha made beautifully, but one that you can make too. No pressure, no striving, just being delightfully who you are and meaning it.

The truth is that there is no alternative to being who you already are. Haven’t you worked that out yet?

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Empathy

What empathy is not: imagining someone else’s pain, thinking about how you would feel in that situation and projecting that feeling on to another.

What empathy is: Love and the practice of abiding in love.

Empathy is love in action: listening carefully, paying attention, sitting alongside someone as they go through something. Saying to them, this isn’t my pain, it is yours and I am here with you for as long as it lasts. Today is not my day for sorrow, but I have known sorrow and will again, today is your time and I am here.

Where is the peace?

You keep reading about inner peace, but where is it?

The few times that you have glimpsed it were temporary and it soon disappeared again. Where did it go?

The seeking of peace requires constant courage. It requires you to be prepared to make yourself vulnerable over and over again, because it requires you to tell the truth. Not in great outpourings of your innermost feelings and insecurities, but moment to moment honesty and authenticity.

Let me tell you - most people are pretending. They are pretending to be in control, that they are happy, that they don’t make mistakes and if you are committed to the idea of being someone who is peaceful, who tells the truth and is calm in the face of life’s vicissitudes, then you will have to be the one who tells the truth.

And other people won’t back you up.

Do you understand? You will say, I am nervous, I am unsure, I am afraid, I am sad … and other people will not join you with a “me too” Sometimes they will look at you as if you are mad.

But what is the alternative? Do you want to continue to be guarded, hidden, quiet? Is that where peace truly lies?

You know the answer lies in something very different: in the calm acceptance of your whole self, with all of its strengths, delights, fears and insecurities and the bravery to admit them out loud instead of hiding them away.

In the courage to be a speaker of AND sentences: I am brave AND I am nervous, I am strong AND I am in pain, there is joy AND there is sorrow.

Because this is a true life. And only a true life will bring you peace.