when something appears, something appears

Hi.

When there is grasping, the grasper Comes into existence. If he did not grasp, Then being freed, he would not come into existence.

- Nagarjuna, "Mulamadhyamaka-Karika"

So, when something appears, something appears.
Is it the same something?
Yes and no.
Buddhism is sometimes a little bit hard to get, it's a little difficult philosophically.
Or so it may seem.
The buddhist philosophy pend between the absolute and the relative and neither.
THe absolute stand for how it really is, not how we perceive it or think it is, thats the realtive.

We may think that something has the colour blue, but does it really?
yes and no.

We may think we are driving a car, but do we?
yes and no.

Now, you might say that it is really a yellow truck we're driving and that is why it isn't as we said.
Yes, but thats not what i'm talking about.
I'm talking about how we perceive and interpret the world.
Something is blue because we say it's blue, it's driving a car if we say its driving a car.

Makes you wonder what would happen if "driving a car" meant something like a "fork" and blue meant happy in another language..
It could be something like this
-hi! what are you doing?
- hi. im happy fork (driving a blue car).
Could make some interesting discussions....

But, what i was talking about was perceiving and interpreting the world.
We do it constantly AND we do it according to our mind.
Thats a really important lesson to see.
What we see is not always what is true and not even what others might see.
We create the world around us and revolves around us.
In a sense it is us!

Which gets us back to Nagajunas Quote.
If we do not try to interpret things around us, if we stop thinking about them, just letting them be as they are, we are not caugth, we are free.
And this is we're the neither part comes in, because we can never be truly free until that one is.

But remember, it's all good practice.

May the force be with you
Fugen

Hardly Hard?

Hi.
How do you explain the colour blue to a blind person?
This Koan struck me today as a friend of mine asked me how everything was and i said "as it should".
And he got all roused up since my life is kind of turbulent right now.
But, as i tried to explain to him, when something is hard because it is hard and you realize its hard because it is hard, then it's not so hard anymore.
It just is as it is.
When i have a hard time i have a hard time.
When i have a good time, i have a good time.
Nothing more.

Now, this may be hard to understand, and believe me, even harder to explain.
But thats how it is.
Follow the stream, don't force it.

Now, some might say you "can't do that" or "it would take me forever to learn that" or...
No, it's not hard.
It doesn't take more than a moment.
You just do, or do not.

May the force be with you.
Fugen