Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Empty your cup - get rid of the crap


Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This does not mean that we should be filling our minds with more crap. There is already enough in them. We need to be emptying our minds and communing with our heart with the universe.

This search for truth and meaning takes us inward and not outward.

Famous and popular Zen story - Empty your cup

A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about Zen. The master poured the visitor's cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. "It's full! No more will go in!" the professor blurted. "This is you," the master replied, "How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup."

Simon and Garfunkle sang their great song, Kodachrome, with the lyric, "When I think of all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can still think at all."

Our minds have been filled with all kinds of crap. We are conditioned through schooling to memorize and learn crap. Our religions have filled our minds with crap. The media, now days called "fake news", has filled our minds with crap. Gossip runs rampant in our families, our social circles, our work groups and this gossip fills our mind with crap.

The septic tank is full. It comes to a point where it won't take any more. We have to call the septic tank guy and get it pumped out.

Osho says to his sannyasins, "...because what I am doing every day is destroying your knowledge, destroying and destroying all your clingings and strategies of the mind. Any day when your mind collapses, when you cannot hold it together any more, there is bound to be sudden enlightenment. It is not attainment, hence it can happen in a single moment, instantly. Society has forced you to forget it; my work here is to help you remember it." p.27 "Ah, This!"

When we turn from the path of the ego and embark on the path of the spirit we must forgive ourselves and others for our ridiculousness. We have been wallowing in crap. We have forgotten who we are and in the turning, we begin to search for that which our conditioning has buried in crap.

 

1 comment:

  1. Great post! Thanks for the Kodachrome song. Crap indeed!

    ReplyDelete

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