Fear, et. al.

I have put this in my journal and thought I would share with you. It is one of the daily devotions/thoughts/passages from Everyday Mind, a book of 366 'reflections on the Buddhist path.' The entry for June 14th (I never read them in order) is this:

Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that. I am impermanence itself in a rapidly changing human form that appears solid. I fear to see what I am: an ever-changing energy field. I don't want to be that. So good practice is about fear. Fear takes the form of constantly thinking, speculating, analyzing, fantasizing. With all that activity we create a cloud cover to keep ourselves safe in make-believe practice. True practice is not safe; it's anything but safe. But we don't like that, so we obsess with our feverish efforts to achieve our version of the personal dream. Such obsessive practice is itself just another cloud between ourselves and reality. The only thing that matters is seeing with an impersonal searchlight: seeing things as they are. When the personal barrier drops away, why do we have to call it anything? We just live our lives. And we we die, we just die. No problem anywhere.

The bold type is my emphasis.

This is a constant reminder that I just need to live, not try to be anything. That might seem antithetical to a 'successful' life, but I see that it all comes together when we let go. What does this mean? The answer is different for everyone. It may not seem exciting to let go, but I think all that excitement is really just the energy of fear employed as 'cloud cover.'

So, if and when I write music, I am writing music. If I am not writing music, I am not writing music. It is so much easier this way.

jason

UPDATE: I always reread my posts for formatting, typos, etc., and noticed a strange turn of phrase in the beginning of the passage. 'I fear to see what I am: an ever changing energy field.' Should that be 'I fail to see who I am . . .' ? I checked the quote in my anthology . . . that's what it says, 'I fear to see who I am.'

The quote is attributed to Charlotte Joko Beck in a book titled Everyday Zen. Typo, Freudian manifestation, whatever . . . what a beautiful thing.