Be yourself

When the Buddha, my teacher, hero and greatest inspiration in my life, sat under trees in India sharing Dhamma, he spoke about awareness, love and compassion. He told us that we already have everything we need for complete liberation and that nothing is missing!

This means that we don't have to find something from outside to complete us and that we don't have to play some kind of spiritual, cultural game, where we pretend to be Japanese, or Tibetan, or Indian for our spiritual practice.

Do you think that the man who clips your ticket on the train cannot realise awakening because he does not have an exotic Buddhist name?

Or the woman who answers the phone in an office because she does not chant in Pali or Tibetan?

Whatever you are right now is enough for full awakening, and picking up a new exotic identity simply becomes something else to carry. Another burden in our life that we must defend, explain and justify.

Everything you need for complete awakening, you already have because our journey is always a personal and internal journey, to the place where all our difficulties and problems with life really begin.

As interesting and exciting as it may seem, collecting a new identity is only something else to carry and so ultimately just one more thing we have to let go of.

Who then, is truly brave enough to let go of all ego traits to awaken?

The place of liberation can only be found in the silence of what is known as meditation, and we can chant, beat drums, burn incense, engage in highly intellectual arguments and bow as much as we want, but until we stop grasping at a future goal and be still, we will never be free.

My Dhamma place therefore, is to remind people that although there seems to be a lot to do, there is actually nothing to get, and that most of what we make important in our so called spiritual practice is just another distraction from the work that needs to be done.

Our Dhamma practice must free us from self identity and not add to it. 

In reality there is nothing that you really are, and no way you have to be, and freedom is not something to get, it is something to realise.

Our journey is to be free, and we can never realise that freedom until we stop creating new identities moment after moment.

You are already compete now, nothing is missing. You need only to turn to the empty spaciousness of what you really are and surrender. Everything is waiting for you there.

May all beings be happy.