The dharma we are encountering… precisely is the contents of our life, warts and all…
Occasionally we hit difficult times in our practice and may be tempted to think the practice surely can’t apply to or “fit in” with these rough times.
I remember one phase early in my own training when I was caught in a complicated, painful situation. I assumed I would have to forego training for a while, until I had sorted things out better.
But each time I went to see my teacher, they wanted me to work on my koan, and sent me away either to keep at it, or to move on to the next one. The situation I was in, from that point of view, did not constitute a reason to change still less interrupt the practice.
Our training ploughs on regardless. It rides roughshod through it all.
Practice and training are based both in the heart of our daily life and in the vast reality of the buddha-dharma. The dharma we are encountering in fact precisely is the contents of our life, warts and all, at the same time as being the single boundlessness that encompasses all beings and binds them into one existence. Therefore it cherishes the billows and turbulences of our lives, but also sees them as no more than ripples on the surface of a great deep. It sees them in perspective. And it sees them with precise clarity.
Hence it rides through it all.