Buddha on the Mind and Samsara

The message I have today is about the mind as the source of samsara.

For the past few nights, I have been sleeping on the couch in the living room. I could not fall asleep in my bed, and so I surrendered to the large TV in the living room, which plays Buddha’s meditation throughout the night. This is the only way I can sleep these days. I fall asleep meditating and wake up meditating.

As I sit on the couch, I let go of my body and my mind. My spirit moves higher and higher until I am sitting in a lotus position, facing the Buddha. At first I see the golden white light he emanates, and then I see his form shifting, from how we portray him today, all the way back through different traditions and images of him, back to his physical body walking among us.

The Buddha is not the body.

I become aware that I am a fragment of Buddha. In the beginning of time, he chose me and others to carry his light. I ask him if everyone is a Buddha. He tells me no, not everyone is willing. Very few are Buddha, and he has chosen very few to be his fragments. This calls to mind how the relics of his incarnation were carried to different parts of the world by his disciples.

In his light, voices appear, as if mocking me:

You are a liar.

You don’t deserve this.

Who do you think you are to sit with the Buddha?

The desires of your heart are evil. Don’t follow your heart.

You will burn in hell.

You are too young.

Nobody will listen to you.

I become aware that these are voices of this world, of Maya, of the matrix. They tempt me to stop my meditation, to stop believing in the words of my teacher. And yet my teacher gently reminds me that I am not a student and he is not a teacher. We are reflections. As he is not his body, I am not my body. I am his embodiment of light. The same light.

I am not the mind. The mind will try to lead me astray. And yet in the stillness of my being, I understand that his light shines throughout the planet, and anyone may be a follower or a light bearer. Most people, however, deny this as their identity.

The mind is the gate of samsara. Fate is nothing outside of you. It is one’s reaction to forces outside of oneself, based on the forces within oneself. To sit still, to surrender, to let go, is the way out of samsara. It is all in the mind, and the mind is no thing.

The Buddha asks me to focus on silence. And so I return to the silence now.