Use it, or you’ll miss out on the best part about living on Earth right now
Published in Orient Yourself
Dec 31, 2023 (Medium.com)
In 6th century China, a monk named Huike wanted to receive the most powerful teachings he could from Bodhidharma, a Buddhist master from south India. He was rejected.
Bodhidharma took one look into Huike’s mind and decided he wasn’t worth the effort.
Huike then proceeded to chop his own arm off and offer it, as a symbol of his dedication. In that one act, his entire mind’s orientation and potential transformed. He got accepted.
It’s the most extreme case in history — but generally speaking, pursuing spiritual knowledge usually meant you had to sweep the floor of a guru’s ashram for 12 years before so much as a whisper of metaphysical knowledge reached your ear.
When you get something easily, it’s hard to see its preciousness.
If you work for it, as if it’s the central purpose of you having life, you’re bound to never waste it once you receive it.
How many of us have wasted valuable spiritual knowledge?
Our brains are constantly awash with information, some of it sticking, while most of it gets flushed out like pollution.
We usually treat spiritual knowledge the same as regular knowledge. It’s in the same format, written in some of the same places (such as right here) and often competes with our leisure time.
Sometimes, it even becomes fancified ‘self-help’ therapy or intellectual entertainment.
But it’s not your fault. It’s (un-updated) modernity’s.
Details regarding the point and purpose of human consciousness — explored by millions of contemplative explorers across cultures and millennia — is now at our fingertips.
And it’s awakening people from their slumber like no other point in history.
The sheer value of this era can’t be overstated. You have access to things that people just 100 years ago couldn’t even dream of!
The game-changer is that we’re realizing how information, by itself, can’t actually transform us.
It’s what we bring to it that matters. This is why you can spend years reading books, and know nothing about the actual experience of attaining higher awareness.
But that’s not to say books are useless. You just need to figure out how to make their wisdom come alive within you.
The first step to that?
Be like Huike. Offer something equally valuable in return — not an arm, but perhaps your undivided attention. Perhaps some emotional investment. Or maybe just some plain old patience and consistency.
Because nothing valuable ever comes for free, even if freely given.
Written by Rami Dhanoa
·Editor for Orient Yourself
Re-thinking human potential with meditation & Indic philosophy.